Elsien's Traveblogue

Montpellier, 1^st December 2011

It's all slowly coming together, We now have a French bank account, a French cheque book. Not much money in it, mind, because both of us are still waiting to be paid by the European Commission in Belgium, but ah, la! It'll arrive eventually – as long as they don't give it all to Greece! Sent off a cheque to Renault France who have to vouch, in exchange for our 145€ that our Belgian Renault has been built conform to French standards ... A real money-making con! Once that certificate comes back, we have to pay over more money to get French number plates.

We did manage our first lunch party, on our beautiful new French dinner table, with four very French people. Served them Scotch smoked salmon, olives, crisps, saucisson, then sweet potatoes, which none of them had eaten before, and red cabbage, stewed with plums and apple – my Dutch grandmother's recipe – followed by French cheeses and little mini cakes from the local bakers' ….

I hope we'll be able to get a few more neighbours round for drinks before Christmas, but it doesn't look that easy as some of the ones we tried to invite are not speaking to some of the others .... There are only 14 or so couples living in this block ….

Other than that, very happy! Temperature here often up to twenty. Great walks by the river or into town. Went to see a play, the other day – lovely little theatre, but the French really should leave English plays alone. Albee ('Who Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' is hard enough when you are English or American, but it's almost impossible in French. The French have a very different theatre tradition and while they have lots of playwrights of their own, are constantly trying to put on English or American plays. It doesn't really work, however good the translation.

Too much work with my telephone students right now to do much writing, but I hope to get a few thousand words written over the weekend. I might put a bit on here, we'll see ...

posted by Elsien Gale  # 10:32 PM