Catch Up

Well, it has been a while since I have written. In the time since my last posting, we have gone to France for a mini vacation and moved into our house. I'll back track a bit to get you all caught up.
The night before the movers were supposed to come Jim got a call. The moving company let us know that our container has been “misplaced”. They said it wasn’t “lost” but they “don’t know where it is”.

How exactly does one “misplace” a 20 by 20 ocean container? We aren’t talking about a set of keys here. According to the mover, it happens every six months at the port.

I had no idea how large this port warehouse is so didn't have a sense of how long it will take to search. However, I couldn't help but envision a scene from Indiana Jones where he hides relics among seemingly endless rows of containers never to be found again.

We decided not to worry about the fact that we had an apartment but nothing to put into the apartment and took off for France. Along the way, we stopped at a rest area and had to take a picture of this tour bus.

Jim's friend, Andrew, had rented a place in Rocroi which is just over the Belgium border so was only a 3 hour drive for us. Rocroi is a small little town which is surrounded by a fortified wall in the shape of a star.

The house that Andrew had rented was huge. It had 6 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. We had our own kitchen so we went cooked and ate at the house the whole weekend.

The group consisted of Andrew (cycling friend of Jim's), Celine (his French wife), their 4 month old son - Martin, Matz (friend of Andrew's), Myriam (Matz's girlfriend), Matz's 2 teenage kids - Alex and Jeremy.

The day after we arrived, Matz, Andrew, Jim and I went out for a long ride. We got lost a few times but the roads were great and there was hardly any traffic. I was worried at the beginning of the ride because we seemed to be going downhill for a really long time. The ride back up wouldn't have been too bad, but we took a wrong turn and ended up doing the climb twice.

There were some Roman ruins that of course the guys had to investigate. However, it was a steep, rocky, dirt road to get there so needless to say, I wasn't very happy when I got to the top to look at a 3 foot rock wall, Roman or not. I wouldn't ride this road on a mountain bike much less a road bike. On the way down, Jim somehow ran over a big pile of poo and got it all over his bike. KARMA!

We went to the lake that afternoon. Andrew jokingly referred to it as the Monte Carlo of the Ardennes. It was far from it. It was actually a reservoir. The weather wasn't that warm that we spent too much time in the water. We mainly hung out on the grass and relaxed.

The next day Andrew's friend Eric from San Fran arrived with his wife, Tatti and their 1 yr old son, Gregory. We didn't see very much of them as they slept most of the day and would be up at night. It seemed odd to Jim and I that they would travel all that way to only sleep the day away.

On Monday, I was pretty sore from the long ride we did the day before so I went out on my own. I found a beautiful bike path along a river. The morning started out really foggy so the woods and the river had a very mystical feel to them.

The trip was very relaxing which is what we needed before the chaos of our move. We spent the mornings riding our bikes and then took another trip to the lake and hung out in the little town of Rocroi.

Jim and I left on Wednesday at 4am to drive back to meet the movers at 8am at our new house. Needless to say, it was a very long day. The movers do help you unpack your stuff but they just put it on the floor. By the end of the day we had all of our possessions covering every inch of the floor. I now wish I would have taken a picture of the chaos but at the time I was so completely overwhelmed by the amount of crap we had. I wish I had been even more selective about what I brought with us.

Our first weekend in our new home was spent trying to get organized, buy furniture and some electronics. We bought our phone, TV, satellite receiver and a clock radio. The clock radio was definitely a good purchase considering that both of our watches stopped working this week and the other two clocks we brought also do not work.

The TV is really nice except for the fact that we only get German channels. The only English speaking channels are news or Eurosport. So I've been reading a lot. Any recommendations for books would be greatly appreciated as it seems that will be my main entertainment outlet. We have watched 2 of our 7 movies on our computer. I'm trying to space it out a bit so that we don't watch all of our movies in one week.

We failed miserably on the furniture. We went to IKEA which was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I don't think we will ever go back. You have to stand in line in each department to get a print out of what you want. Then you have to go to the warehouse to pick up each part of the piece of furniture. Finally, you have to go to another area to arrange for the delivery. We got to the warehouse part of the process after about 3 hours. Then after realizing you have to get each piece to the wardrobe, that it doesn't all come in one box we abandoned ship and left. We are going to attempt going to another furniture store this weekend. Hopefully, this time we will actually get something.

Last Saturday, we were invited to the house of one of Jim's co-workers. They are Australian and have two kids. We had a great time at their house but they are unfortunately moving back to Australia in September. Another Australian couple was also there and thankfully they are staying here. I am going to take some additional language classes with Louise at the end of the month.

This past week I have mainly getting things organized and doing laundry. Everything in our house has a bit of an odor. I think they spray the container with pesticide or something.

Yesterday, I went to the store and bought room deodorizing spray, candles, lavender oils and some air fresheners along with the RAID products I bought to deal with my little fruit fly infestation. I can't imagine what was going through the check out clerk's mind.

Well, I better get outside and enjoy the sunshine. This week has been gorgeous but I've been stuck inside getting the house organized and haven't taken advantage of the nice weather.