Le début

Salut et bienvenue! Here it is, my first post from Paris. I have been in the country for almost two weeks now, but I didn’t have any time before now. It has been hectic, let me tell you.

The first week was mainly fixing our sleep patterns (we did not sleep on the way over) and trying to get some paperwork done. See, this takes awhile, because they like to send you away to send you back to send you away again. It is lovely. I still don’t have a bank account, but I can’t get that if don’t have other things, and so the circle goes.
This week was quite busy. I was at the school for at least 4 hours Monday, Tuesday, and Friday and with a two hour commute both ways, that adds up to a lot of time. Add a day and a half of training, apartment hunting, sharing a room with four other people, foraging for food and trying to find sleep, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to do anything else. Monday and Tuesday of this week were especially hard. Missy and I were searching for accommodation together and we had just been officially declined from two apartments, and hadn’t heard back from countless others, and if we did it was too expensive or in a sketch neighbourhood. Also, my bank card was not allowing any withdrawals, or anything, so money was starting to get tight.

BUT our luck turned around on Wednesday. I had been in contact with this one agency that I found on craigslist, but the apartment was only until February and the agent seemed reluctant to arrange a meeting so that we could see the place. On Wednesday though, the place was still available and we came to have a look and FELL IN LOVE. It was perfect. The owner said that a lot of people had been looking at it, so we thought we might be rejected again. So, when I got the call on Thursday morning that the place was ours, it’s safe to say that the word ecstatic did not do my mood justice. And when she told us that we could have it until May with the possibly of extension, well, you can imagine how I felt then. So here I am, in my two-room apartment on the seventh floor (without an elevator!) but a view that is too good to be true. Look, there’s Sacre-Coeur, the top of the Pantheon, the Montparness Tower, the towers of Notre Dame, and if you lean slightly out the window at night, the Eiffel Tower. Not too shabby for two Canadian Anglophones for just two weeks in Paris.

I kid. We know we are lucky bastards.

I have also started teaching, but that will be another post.
A bientôt