Survived first Paris con game with no loss, only a smile.

While Samuel and I were tacky souvenir shopping near the Louvre on Friday a man stood next to us as we were waiting to cross the street.  He suddenly bent over and appeared to pick up a gold ring from the ground.  He then proceeded to point out an engraving on the inside and showed me that the ring was not his by trying it on all his fingers.  At this point he tried to give me the ring. Under no circumstance was I going to take it but I thought I would play along at least until the light changed.  I kept pointing to my ring telling him that I was already married but thanked him anyway.  He did not see the humor in that statement.  While this was going on I was glad that I had all my valuables in my murse (man purse) and that I was holding it tight as it dawned on me that this may be a setup for a pick pocket ring.  I thought what else could it be because if I took the ring from the man what could he then do to me.  If he asks for money and I refuse to pay, what is he going to do, call the cops?

Time to go watch Chelsea beat Everton for their second FA cup in three years.

TTFN

-Dave

Samuel loves the trash bin

Samuel has many, many toys.  More than enough to keep a 13 month old engaged and happy. Why then does he insist on trying to play with the trash.  He can now cruise into the kitchen and while standing he can reach up and open the top of the trash bin?  Whereupon he attempts to pull out and play with whatever trash is near the top of the bin.

Samuel has officially outgrown his Baby Bjorn

Julia is going to New York for the next few days and in anticipation of her trip Samuel and I did some chocolate and tacky souvenir shopping.  In order to do this we had to take the metro so I transported Samuel in his baby bjorn.  As we were at the chocolate shop watching the woman complete our order Samuel began to kick his legs and I discovered(rather painfully) that Samuel's legs have reached a very sensitive area of my body when he is hanging from the baby bjorn. Needless to say I spent most of the trip with one arm holding Samuel's legs still.

One of the things Julia will be picking up in New York is a baby carrier that attaches similar to a backpack so his legs will only be able to kick us in the back.

Our travels this morning highlighted the best and the worst of living in Paris/any big city.  In order to complete our trip we had to be on 5 trains.  The first two were rather full but in both carriages a person offered us their seat.  On the next two trains there were plenty of seats and we were able to sit without issue.  On the return train, which was surprisingly full, a young lady offered us her seat.  I politely declined as the two men who were seated directly in front of us had immediately closed their eyes and tilted their heads and pretended to be asleep as soon as they saw us enter the carriage.  So I did a bad thing and stood as close to the two men as I could with Samuel's legs occasionally kicking them in the shoulders and chest.  They kept their eyes closed the entire trip(a total of 8 stops).

It's Official!

We are now the proud renters of our 6th home in less than 11 months - we signed the lease on our house today! It was wonderful to be back at the house that we chose in Chatou. Samuel became very excited when he saw the pool and was crawling and walking all over the house and outside terrasse. He was particularly keen on exploring the stairs, so baby gates will be one of the first things we need to install.

We met the owner of the house today, who seemed like a very nice man and who also spoke English well. He is letting us keep an old fridge/freezer and 3 portable air conditioning units in the house (great news... particularly with the hot weather we have already started to have) as well as a child's tent with many little plastic balls that Samuel is very excited with. The house is really wonderful - calm, peaceful, beautiful garden and view, quite warm and full of light inside and in extremely good condition. We can't wait to move.

P&G have extremely graciously agreed to foot a significant amount of the bill for our move. We now need to negotiate our way out of our current lease to reduce the notice period and to negotiate low estimates from moving companies. That will be fun for the rest of this week. Oh... and buying a cheap 2nd car, since we will now be suburbanites (the nearest RER station is a 15 min walk). Dave will now have to drive in France!

The imperative to move became even more apparent this weekend. Not only do we have 15 individual rooms rented out above our heads, with no soundproofing at all between us, with the communal showers almost immediately above our bedroom and much of this done in blatant violation of the law (on the basis that it will take years in France to resolve this in court). In addition, in the span of the last 3 weeks, we have seen a plumber (neighbours had a leak due to poor quality plumbing work done for the illegal construction above), the police (burglary in the basement due to front doors left open all the time), and now the firemen as this weekend we smelt a very strong odor of burning paint - quite scary - and had to call the firemen to check it out as it seemed linked to the work done on the rooms above. All this in addition to the fact that the elevator will be out of service for 5 weeks (minimum!!) starting next week.

So..... we plan to move starting on June 8th! And we look forward to welcoming you to our new home. We don't intend to move again for quite a while... at least a year or two :-)

-Julia

When it rains, it pours......

Good news first: we have a house.  We will not sign the lease until next week.  Our new address will be: 

16 Allee Mouille Fetu, Chatou, 78400.

To read about our new house, please go to this link.

http://www.seloger.co.uk/detail.htm?cp=78400&euro=1&idpays=250&idtt=1&idtypebien=2&nb_pieces=%2b4&px_loyermax=4500&surfacemin=180&IMMOBW_ANN_QRYpg=11

The back story.  We visited our first choice house in Le Vesinet on Friday and met the owner where we were told that they had a few offers and would make a decision over the weekend.  When we had not received an answer by early afternoon on Monday we started making more appointments to see houses on Tuesday morning.

The first two houses we saw were in Le Vesinet and both were nice but had issues that could be overcome but were still issues.  While we were visiting the third house of the morning in Chatou, Julia's phone rang and she noticed that it was the agent for the house in Le Vesinet but she let it go to voicemail.  She let it go to voicemail because we were falling in love with the house we were viewing.  More specifically we were falling in love with our view of the Seine. There is a gate at the bottom of our backyard.  If you walk out the gate the only thing separating you from the river is a paved path and a little bit of grass.

It is a modern house with tile floors and white walls. Oh, did  I mention that it has a pool?  Not a very large pool but enough for us to get wet and for Samuel to splash around.  The living room has a working fireplace, though we have no idea where to acquire firewood in Chatou.

There is a very nice guest room on the 1st floor with an individual entrance to the yard.  There is also a shower with multiple nozzles, shower heads and knobs.  By the time someone visits we hope to have figured out how it works.

The master bedroom is good sized with a small terrace with a nice view of the river.

After we handed our dossier to the agent, we returned to our car to check Julia's messages and we discovered that we were being offered our first choice house in Le Vesinet.  At this point we had a very difficult decision in front of us.  We decided to drive around Chatou and discover the lay of the land before we made a final decision.  This almost made the decision easy as it was very difficult to navigate around Chatou with very narrow roads.  We did discover a small strip of shops just 2 blocks away but learned that they were closing so that a newer commerce area could be built in 2010.  Bummer.

After having difficulty finding what we were looking for we drove to the Mairie(city hall) and asked for help.  they provided a map and suggestions as to where to look for boulangeries, butchers and markets.  With the map we were able to find what we were looking for but the shops are not as convenient as the shops near our choice in Le Vesinet.

In the end the deciding factors came down to the following:

1) From Chatou Julia will have an easier commute with more options available to her should traffic be delayed in one area.

2)In Chatou we will have a smaller, not as nice garden, but we will have the garden to ourselves.  In Le Vesinet we would have shared the garden with the owners.

3)The wonderful, peaceful view of the Seine.  We were both imagining sitting on our bedroom terrace on a Sunday morning eating our pain au chocolate and croissant, drinking our hot chocolate while watching the river roll slowly by.

Then came the difficult part of the day.  Calling back the agent for the Le Vesinet house and telling her we had found something else.  This is when I am glad that Julia speaks french much better than me.

Youtube videos

With a very cute child we have decided to be very, very careful.  When we post a video to youtube it will be under their private label.  This means that you need to be a youtube "friend" in order to see the video.

We have sent out some friend invites.  If we missed you on the original invitation list, we apologize.  If you did not receive an invite and would like one(in order to view videos) please let us know and we will correct our error and send you an invite.

Samuel's second tooth

Samuel's second tooth broke the surface today.  I know I promised pictures of the first tooth a month ago but it is still so small that we cannot get a good picture.  As soon as we can capture a good picture we will post it.