Getting Married!

Hey, long time, no write!

But guess what, we're getting married on October 2, 2010!

We'll post details soon...

Visitors...

Our visitors are arriving on the heels of each other. We said goodbye to Erika on Wednesday morning, and Trevor arrived with his bike in tow the same afternoon.


Erika's last day in our lovely apartment.


Hello Trevor...with Saturday afternoon oysters. (In case you're wondering what you're missing)


then a nap...


Late afternoon in Parc Blossac


Moules Frites and Muscadet


After all that relaxing, it's time for a trip to the bottle depository.

Stay tuned for more photos and info from the recent adventures and possibly some guest-authored posts.

Rebecca ran (a) 10K

Breaking News: 

Yesterday, For First Time Ever, Girl Runs 10k

Well *cough*  it wasn't an actual, like scheduled 10k event, per se.

Ok, so maybe it was only on a treadmill, and not on real pavement...

maybe it was all by herself and not with thousands of screaming bystanders...

and maybe it took 71 minutes and 45 seconds to do it (a time which doesn't even qualify as "real running," according to some)

But even if it was just a snail-paced 6 mile run at her local gym -- that's pretty awesome, right?!? Next stop, half marathon.

victory

France-related posts will be back soon...

The view out our balcony

Now that we have officially taken possession of our apartment, we are even busier than before, trying to make it feel like home. The first few days were taxing... with no electricity and no furniture, but we made do...

The furniture, including bed, couch, kitchen table, chairs and much more will be arriving Wednesday evening.

On Sundays everything closes (really...everything; except a handful of restaurants), so I took advantage of the sun and went for a long bike ride in the countryside surrounding Poitiers. There were lots of roads with very little traffic and enough hills to keep me entertained. The fall colors were also starting to show themselves. There are very few road signs per se, most of the signs mark the direction to the nearest town or simply the family farm that lies down the road. Most signs in the rural areas simply signify what might be called a rural neighborhood of one or two farmhouses.

A self portait (if you look hard enough)

The weather was lovely this weekend, and, aside from the extended bike ride, the best thing we got to do was to go to the Saturday market in la Place de Charles de Gaulle. At this enormous outdoor market, we purchased goat cheese, three different kinds of cured sausage, peaches, apples, a fancy "original" German can opener, cereal spoons, wooden spoons, and a delicious hot lunch of curried chicken and sautéed potatoes. Now that we have a functioning refrigerator, we have only begun to imagine the wonderful possibilities of the Saturday outdoor market...we'll be sure to buy way too much stuff for the first few weekends...

The paperwork battle is not quite over; we have yet to apply for our residence permits. Today, we did a lot of photocopying and got a few "tampons" (French for 'stamps') from local offices (and though this may seem irrelevant and/or ambiguous to the uninitiated, the importance of tampons is never to be underestimated when in France...). We also sat in line for Rebecca's bus passes for her commute to the University. Soon to come also, internet access at our apartment, which will afford us the convenience of not having to blog on a French keyboard--theymre qll screzy///)

Rebecca's classes are going well. This week will be her first week with the first year (freshman) students; the plan is to begin with Surrealism (an excerpt from Alice in Wonderland, the famous Magritte painting that Foucault loved so much, and a quote from William Gordon: "Trust things that are alien, and alienate things that are trusted.") How does communication function within the Surrealist framework, when nothing means what it says, or says what it means...? We'll see what they think...more soon.

We're Here...

It has taken a few days to beat the jet lag into submission. In between midday naps and sleepless  nights, we have been scoping out the local restaurant scene, looking for an apartment and trying to decode various regulations.

Rebecca will start teaching on Wednesday. While she meets all of her colleagues and signs paperwork so she can get paid, Jefe will be looking at apartments and getting the cellphones operational. Sorting through all the fees and exceptions associated with renting an apartment is pretty daunting. It takes both of us listening to one leasing agent to try and catch even about 50% of what is being said. We are hoping to have an apartment by the end of the week, but we'll see what comes.

The first night here (Saturday) was the final day of a free local arts festival. There was four days of music, theater, and artwork in the streets of the center of Poitiers. We were pretty sapped from the three planes and the train, so we mostly listened to the music wafting in our hotel window.

The view out of our hotel window onto the Place de l'Hotel de Ville with a music tent and temporary beer tent, which they didn't finish taking down until two days later...

We would like to thank everyone who helped us along the way and made it possible for us to move here, especially:

Carla & Griff for the lodging and patience, Luke for that phone call, William Savage for the Baltimore crab dinner, Mr. Jim & Sherri for their encouragement, Josh for even reading our blog, Kristi for the empathy, Kyle Wehman for the...beach, Eric Day and Stacy for the guest room, Paul Prior for the "sabbatical", and the ESIP for claiming that Rebecca's paychecks should nonetheless start on the first of September.

Au Revoir, Urbana

the house is cleared out (relatively speaking)

the storage space is filled up

the car is packed up

and the bikes are loaded onto the back rack.

goodbye Urbana.

Visas

Yesterday we went to the french consulate in Chicago in order to get our long-stay visas.  It took about a week of both of us working day and night to get all of the forms filled out and letters written (not to mention photocopied, notarized, and translated into French).  

We took the tandem bike from the place we stayed on Thursday night and biked to the consulate, which is downtown.  We arrived no later than 15 seconds after our appointments were scheduled to begin, and only slightly sweaty.  The office was stark and dismal, and the two women processing the visa applications were separated from the waiting area by thick, bulletproof glass.  The signs posted directed us to wait until our names were called.  We watched as four other people in the waiting area became impatient with waiting and finally got up and approached the women behind the glass, who yielded immediately and processed their applications.  We finally decided to do the same.

The lady we approached was wooden.  She took our applications, passports, and two self-addressed express mail envelopes and explained that as soon as her office receives a labor agreement from l'ANAEM (the department that approves foreigners to work in France), both of our applications will be approved.  

This is both good news and bad news.  It is unfortunate that the my labor agreement has not yet been sent despite quite a lot of effort on my part.  But it's out of my hands, so we'll just have to be patient.  The good news is that the lady we spoke with gave us the impression that Jefe's visa will not be a problem (i.e. that it is merely conditional on my visa).  

We celebrated by going to see Tell No One (french title: Ne le dis a personne), which was spooky and  terrific.

L'appartement

We are currently in negotiations to sublet (for the month of September, and perhaps to lease afterward) the apartment of the maitre de langue whose post I will be assuming in Poitiers.  Here are pictures of her lovely apartment.  

You'll have to imagine it stripped of furniture and other habiliments.  

Okay, now picture it covered with bike parts and post-it notes.  

Yes, that's it.  

That's our apartment.

Bonjour les billets (hello and tickets)

Hello and welcome to "A Ride A Day" (ou "Un tour par jour" pour nos amis francophones), where Jefe and I will be cataloging our voyage to and about France (and other European locales).  

Big News: We've just (finally) purchased one-way tickets to Paris.  And just to spite all of those planny parts of me that told me that we should never have waited this long to get the tickets...we found two very cheap tickets after about 2 minutes of searching.  Le sigh...

Now we need to figure out how to get from Charles de Gaulle to Poitiers...train, plane, or automobile?