Lundi le 20 octobre

Another week begins… girls off to school, Nev and I to the supermarket again! Yesterday the girls and I baked Smickerdoodles – so I took a plate over to the staffroom for morning tea. I know how much we love it at school so thought I would pass on the favour. I also took over the girls enrolment forms – about 8 different pages to fill out! Interestingly, I only have to sign 1 permission form for the year for all outings. (I have mentioned doing this at Alexandra Primary School in the past) but nice to see other schools doing this. Makes a lot of sense and cuts back on admin for everyone.
The other forms are for after school care –available till 6:30 pm- free!
Clubs after school 4:35-5:35, €50 per trimester, these include, Judo, hip hop, guitar, English, etc…all have to be prepaid for the year.
Lunch forms – whether children stay for lunch at the canteen or go home. I think it is €160 for lunch per term! 3-5 courses though – needless to say our girls come home, they quite like it and have 2 hours before going back as no one is allowed out of the canteen until 5 minutes before the bell so no playing really.

Went to meet Graziella my linguistic partner this afternoon, she volunteered to help me look and possibly find an apartment as it is very hard to find accommodation in Besancon.
Went to numerous locations about apartments but no joy and kept getting sent to another - even went to Century 21!!!
So tonight I met her and she rang a few places, quite a few, for me. Most places were gone and the ones that weren’t they didn’t want a short term rent! However we are going to look at one tomorrow morning – makes me suspicious though when this person is prepared to do short term rent, what is wrong with it, or maybe that is pessimistic – will let you know!
Property over here is advertised in square metres – and talks about number of “pieces” rooms. A 3 piece advertised doesn’t mean it has 3 bedrooms, could be a kitchen, lounge and 1 bedroom. Makes it difficult to understand all the abbreviations too, you also have to pay for water, gas and rubbish collection on top of rent. Electricity is also normally on top of this too.

Waited 30 minutes in the phone shop today to get served, along with about 4 others and about 20 others came and left! Only 1 person serving and the whole time he was with 1 guy deciding type of phone to buy and getting paperwork done! Luckily another guy arrived back from lunch and took some slack. He was very helpful and recharged my phone for me as I don’t understand all the options and voice prompts!

Next stop train tickets for Paris! The nice, young man was very helpful and even asked if we would travel a lot by train and told us of a discount pass.
€300 for return travel to Paris for 4 on the TGV. Who said train travel was cheap – NOT!!!