Banks, kids and luggage

Why not start off this post with a lovely picture of Jen and Laurent's oldest boy, Cyprien? Here you go! He is 2 1/2 years old. Hard for me to understand once in awhile because he doesn't speak clear French. He speaks baby speech French, if you catch my drift. However, hearing him say my name in French is super cute. I will try to get video of that.

Today Laurent and I went to Montpellier (where I am moving) to open my bank account, exchange my money finally, check out the city a bit and see what was happening. Here is a couple views of Montpellier from the top of a building.

This is a playground in the complete center of town. I thought it looked really cool so I had to take a picture. It's really neat if you can see the whole thing and the bottom of the playground is all rubberized so if you fall off the crazy vine you see here, at least it would hurt less.

Other than being really overwhelmed with bank information and people who talk a little too fast for me still (remember, I have only been here for 3 1/2 days), I had a nice time in Montpellier. I am very excited about living in this city. Lots of younger people (there are like 2 universities here), tons of theatres, lots of parks and generally, a really great place. I like "La Place de la Comedie". That's in downtown, where we were, and there are tons of things to do there including a gigantic Opera. I am surely going to try and volunteer wherever I can in theater or opera here. Other than it being cloudy all day, we just kinda walked around, asked for help at the tourism office for apartment searching and any kind of discounts I can get. It turns out that Montpellier is having a bit of a welcoming party to new people to Montpellier on Sat. the 27th so I am all signed up to get a tour of the city, see the town hall and have a lovely lunch of local treats. And it's all free! Free is a good thing for me since I won't get paid until the end of October.

Right now I am trying my hardest to not spend any money since I need it for my deposit and first month's rent and groceries eventually. I have multiple apartment appointments tomorrow which I will talk about more tomorrow once I get to see them.

I haven't been up to much else besides trying to make sure I have all of my paperwork in order for my teaching position. There's all these tiny little last minute details that keep getting sent via email and there are a couple things I just didn't know about. Apparently, I have to get my birth certificate officially translated in French and that sucks because it's about $45 and I have to do it because otherwise I can't get medical insurance here. And you have no choice but to have medical insurance here. I also have to get a physical. Apparently, any foreigner in the country for more than 3 months has to get a physical to make sure we aren't bringing in some crazy disease.

Anyway, it's late and I am going to sleep. By the way, for those of you I may not have emailed, I did get my luggage finally on Wednesday afternoon. 2 days after I landed. Never fear. I certainly wrote a cranky email to the airline.