Two days of running errands...somewhat successfully...neither of us could sleep Sunday night. I think I finally fell asleep at about 3am...so...
Monday...slept through our alarm and woke up at 10am! Oops. Met with the owner of our apartment, Natacha, at noon to pay our rent. Then we successfully opened a french bank account so that we could then get SIM cards for our cell phones. Everything seemed to go very smoothly! We then bought bus passes and stocked our kitchen from the Monoprix. Thankfully there is a grocery store just about two blocks from our apartment.
Tuesday...the market! Bought some yummy fresh fruit and veggies and olive oil! C'est delicieux!
Then we headed off in the direction of the school where I will take french class. The school is just past an italian part of town and I promised Josie that we could get italian food for lunch...we didn't get pasta, but she did find tiramisu! I had an omelette fromage au nature avec pommes frites et salade. Josie ordered a cheese plate, but discovered that one of the cheeses was camembert and one was blue...not what she expected, but the tiramisu was a hit and served in a bowl shaped like Mt. St. Helens.
We finally found my school, the IEFEE (very confusing to find!), and Marie was very happy to see me and that I'd made it to Aix and found them. My exam will be on Friday to determine which level class I will be in and she explained where I needed to go to pay the rest of my school fees at the accounting office at the University. The directions looked very straightfoward on the map...but oh dear...and as with everything else, my french is good enough to ask questions, but not good enough to understand the answer. We finally found the building and the account office and actually paying took only 2 minutes, but the whole process took more than 2 hours!
Next...my cell phone would not allow me to send text messages. I can call out, receive calls and receive texts, but not send texts. So, back to the cell phone store where I managed to baffle the two tech support guys and the salesman. Finally we agreed that I should come back when they weren't so busy. They were hopeful that the problem would fix itself before I cam back. (Ha! we'll see...).
Tomorrow...an outing to buy school supplies for Josie and meet her school headmaster...and hopefully sleep tonight and awake earlier!
