France has so many things to offer.. including free money

Banks in France are funny. You can open a bank account and put absolutely no money in it. They will charge you 35 Euros total for your bank account deposit and your debit card and will simply leave it as a negative on your account until you put money into it. When you are overdrawn, there are no consequences. In fact, if you need money from the ATM, simply insert debit card and withdraw money. Sure it may be money you don't have but your French bank account does not care. It only cares that it has fulfilled your request. All the while, you can go however long you want with that one straight line in front of your balance as the only sign you are in the negative. How has the French banking system not collapsed? How can I be overdrawn for almost a month and have received absolutely no notice whatsoever and no overdraft charges?

Interesting system they have here...my American bank account is to the rescue though as I look sadly on at its rapid decline. My own misfortune and consequence is I did not bother to convert more American dollars to Euros when the going was good. Too bad I am not a European living in the U.S.... I could be rich.

My Home Comes with Room Service

Traveling.. it is amazing all the places you can travel and even more amazing how a hotel room becomes more comforting and normal looking than your own home. All I want at this point in time is for one single weekend to spend in my home, no constant running around, no quick trips to Paris or Florence, no planning required except for what our next great meal will be... Pure laziness with the Playstation and Wii in its very best form. I do not believe this will ever be in my future...although I do have high hopes for a calm relaxing month in possibly March.

If I knew a fortune teller with a crystal ball, she would have a field day with how un-boring my life is. All of her fortunes would come true. You will meet someone new. You will go on a great adventure. You will have a romantic night with the one you are thinking of. It is virtually impossible not to experience all these things at once when you have a new city to explore. Too bad all I really want is to not leave the house for two days.

Since the middle of May, we have been to Strasbourg, FR; Lyon, FR; Beaune, FR; Mulhouse,FR; Besancon, FR; Zurich,Switzerland; Antalya, Turkey; Istanbul, Turkey; Paris, FR; Florence, Italy and countless little towns. I have only been here for 15 weekends! I have seen more churches than they have in the "Bible Belt" and crossed enough water ways to wonder why our main transportation in Europe is not by boat. I have gotten up at 4 am to be on a train for 4:19 am. I have been in Switzerland and France at the same time in the Basel/Mulhouse/Freiburg a.k.a. EuroAirport. I have taken trips that not only require travel by foot, train, bus, taxi and airplane but also a transfer to a completely different airport within a city all for ONE trip! Life has been exciting, adventurous, crazy, physically and mentally tiring and absolutely gorgeous and stunning in every way.

Now please, everyone join with me, in holding out hope for a uneventful weekend to come my way soon. Although not this weekend... we are going to Basel, Switzerland. Enjoy your weekend!

Old but not in a good antiquey way....

We went to the movies last night...boy, was that a treat! I believe there were only 2 people working the entire theater, the guy who showed up 15 min before our movie started to sell us our tickets and turn on the lights to the theater and the guy who pulled out the film from behind the movie screen and walked it back to the top to begin the film. The seats did not recline and the armrests did not have coke holders. The vending machines for "movie snacks" gave us water instead of coke (it must have sensed I had been eating too much chocolate) and I got a French version of Reisen's. We had one preview before the movie started and with almost the entire place empty were super comfortable in our child size seats with less room than a coach class flight. It was wonderful. Woohoo for movies in their original English version though!

Five and a half miles later

Always be prepared.. for anything! Weigh your options, would you rather have a heavy handbag or would you rather be soaked through with water, have blisters all over your feet, be freezing from the cold and dying of starvation and thirst? I am always trying to lighten my handbag. Taking out whatever I can and whatever I think I quite possibly will have no need for. Its like the second you sit down to dinner, a telemarketer will always call or when you finally give up on someone showing up and you lay down for a nap, your doorbell will ring. If you leave the house without an umbrella (and usually its the day you actually take the umbrella out of your bag), it will without a doubt rain.

We are going on a beach vacation next week so we are trying to eat healthy, be a little more active, you know those last ditch efforts to make yourself feel as great as you possibly can even though two days before you will probably gorge on all the high carb foods you can find and inevitably be bloated up as big as a Macy's Day Parade balloon. Well we decide to take a little walk. Nothing major, just a walk around our little town. I wore flip-flops,.. flat-soled, hard wooden-bottom like flip flops. I knew it might mean disaster but it was a leisurely walk so no big deal. I previously took out my zebra print cushioned insoles out of my bag (stashed there for those just in case moments..you never know when your feet will rebel against you and demand a change of texture) so as to "de-junk" it. Our walk started out innocent enough, we followed the water for a little ways and it didn't feel as if we had walked too far. We continued on our walk, i began to recognize things we had driven past in the car in ANOTHER town! The weather was nice though and it was a nice easy walk. We started passing things on the ground that said 3.5 km, 4.5 km and I joked that the walk was so nice but it wouldn't be so great to walk it back if we got too far. We kept walking.. eventually passing 6.5 km, 7.5 km and began hearing strains of music from the big international music festival that was going on.. a music festival that was NOT IN OUR TOWN! My feet started to hurt at this point, just a little bit then suddenly a searing pain. Soner suggested we turn back but I knew I wouldn't make it that way so we forged ahead hoping for a train station to take back to Belfort. I was willing to pay whatever it took to take the train back. Luckily we did manage to find the train station and we managed to sneak on to the train with the hordes of other people boarding (apparently with the concert ticket stub you could ride the train for free and I guess no one would be in that town for the weekend unless they had attended the concert so...we got very lucky). So as it turns out I have big blisters on the bottom of my feet from walking in my flip flops! I've never had blisters on the bottom of my feet. I didn't even thinking you could get blisters there. What an odd place. Moral of the story, the minute you make a conscious decision to leave something at home you would typically have with you is the minute you will need it. Oh and don't walk over 2 miles in hard soled flip flops much less the estimated 5.5-6 miles we walked (Thank you Google Maps for showing our walking route with mileage)!

Lucky Pennies

See a penny pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck. Do you still have good luck if it was your penny you are picking up?

My trip back to France had already started a bit rough, my flight was delayed (only by about 15 minutes though), I realized I shrunk my jacket and my Kindle did not work. Upon arriving to the Atlanta airport, I went as quickly as I could to my terminal and gate only to find it was also delayed by 30 minutes. Mom suggested I buy a few books at the bookstore since I no longer could take my Kindle on vacation in a week so it kind of worked out perfectly that I just so happened to still be in the US and capable of purchasing English books. The books in the International terminal do not seem to cater to those in search of girly books though. If a physcologist were asking me to think of the first thing that comes to mind when she says "International Terminal," I would say "shopping!" Every International Terminal is always filled with big bookstores with lots of books and magazines, sunglass stores, Duty-Free shops, the works... Not Atlanta! Maybe I was wrong and Terminal T is not the International Terminal. As it turns out..I just looked it up..it is not the International Terminal. No wonder I was a bit depressed at the offerings of T Terminal. It is just a boring ol' terminal. Anyway, so I'm at the "bookstore" and the lady hands back my change and I drop the penny and the dime but woohoo!, the penny is heads up. This is good luck, right?

So I have decided if you drop your own penny and it is heads up, DO NOT PICK IT UP! You are only in for disappointment. My trip home only got worse. My flight ended up being delayed until 9:50 (we were supposed to depart at 8:40). I don't think the plane actually departed until 11pm. At least I got an exit row seat though! My lucky penny is working! Ah but I forgot how freakin' cold the exit row seat is so I tried to tighten myself into the tinniest ball possible and sleep an off and on sleep where I missed dinner and breakfast. My pillow would get so cold if I did not have my head on it that I started having to put it under me even for the few seconds I would move around so it would not be too cold to lay my head on. We finally arrived to Paris at 1pm..about 2 hours before my train would leave as opposed to the 3 hours and 40 minutes I should have had to make it all the way from the outskirts of Paris to the train station. Yeah so I get my luggage fairly quickly, condense it from 3 to 2 bags and am on my way! Woohoo! I can still take the bus and make it instead of spending beaucoup money on a cab. Lucky Penny is NOT working again! Out of all the suspicious looking people, the sweet, slightly rough and tired looking girl (me) gets stopped by customs as everyone else, 100s of people, walk right on by. I have to lift all my heavy luggage onto the scanner to be scanned before I left out and she had to check through my carefully packed bags. At this time, it is too late to take the bus and a taxi is my only option. Online it said it would take about 20-30 minutes to make it to the train station without traffic. It took my taxi (without traffic) about 45 minutes but 57 Euros later, I was finally at the train station before my train had left so that was a plus. One day, I will have someone explain how my amount owed went from 49.10 euros to 55 Euros then to 60 Euros all in the matter of 30 seconds. He said 55 Euros in French and then 60 euros 2 seconds later in English. Maybe he thought he could rip off this poor tired American girl. All I could come up with was 57 Euros so apparently that was good enough... It should be! That one stupid cab ride cost be 80 US$. As much as my 4 hour train ride cost but at least I made my train and secured my luggage and I was good to go except that it looked like someone threw up on the corner of my seat and had not been cleaned up but at this point I was hot and sweaty and did not care and oh by the way Mom, about those trains being air conditioned...this one had air that barely crept out but at least I had air. The cab driver wouldn't even let me open the window in the cab and he turned the air on only in the front while I am dripping sweat in the back. Lovely! Train ride wasn't terrible though..I was only 5 minutes from home I thought until Soner had to call and burst my bubble and tell me the board actually showed my train was 40 minutes delayed. I am alive though and clean after a very long shower.

Moral of the story, I will never pick up a so called "lucky penny."

By the way, every guy that chalks it up to "experience" ought to be shot and then taken on their own "experience" trip. I have never had a woman tell me "oh well, it was an experience" especially when another woman is at their breaking point and just pushing their luggage out the train door just to be out of the stupid train. Thank you Dad and Soner for letting me know it was an "experience." I will plan a great experience for just the two of y'all and I'll even let you two enjoy the "experience" together instead of having to deal with it by yourself, in a foreign country without a normal working phone or people who even speak halfway broken english.

Exciting Moments in a Newly Implanted Belfortians Life

I have had countless exciting days since I have moved to Belfort such as finally finding an apartment we could call home for the next 5 months (4 now! Wow how time flies!). It wasn't the beautiful European style apartment I had imagined myself living in with a wrought iron balcony that I would have my morning coffee and read the paper on, if I drank coffee or read the newspaper much but I have grown to love my apartment regardless of the boring ultra modern exterior with bright and I mean seriously bright red balconies and grey-blue exterior.

Actually receiving the furniture so we could live in the apartment was also another great joy. It is a bit depressing knowing you have an apartment but cannot live there although what is even more depressing is actually moving into your apartment and not having the essentials to actually live there. You know the essentials are on their way, making their way through some part of the deep blue sea but having yet to have arrived, it was quite a costly adventure on our part but at least we could finally stop eating out! Trips to Ikea ensued and we became the very proud owners of a rolling cutting board/storage and an adorable cafe sidewalk in Paris table and chairs for our balcony along with some other its and bits. Some of the biggest excitements though have been the actual arrival of all of our stuff. The wondrous container from Turkey! It was like Christmas when it arrived. Everything was new and shiny and fun to play with...well that is until I had to wash it all..by HAND! Ooh but the food, so much food! We had every kind of food imaginable from nuts to bulgar and rice to canned tomato paste and stuffed grape leaves. We had soups and desserts and a huge can of olive oil. We have enough tea to last us for several years! (Click on some of the pictures to see the full photo)
Those two boxes are filled entirely with food...the food in the other photo is additional food that was not in those two other boxes.

As you can see, I am having quite a lot of fun here with all these new and exciting things. Hand washing dishes every single day has become something I greatly look forward to not having to do but somehow we are left with dirty dishes if I do not do them. Laundry, another fine example of one of the great joys of life in Belfort! I wait for my very "efficient" washing machine to wash one load of laundry, roughly about 45 minutes then I hang each and every individual piece of laundry from the towels and sheets to the rugs, socks, underwear, shirts and pants. I hang socks! That is what I do. I uncrinkle the socks and I place them neatly on the drying rack so they can dry. This is one of the great things Belfort and my apartment have to offer me. A learning experience and each and every day, I learn more. For example, last week, I learned how to create a pocket shape so my laundry will billow in the wind hopefully creating enough friction and beating between the fabric to soften them from board stiff to paper soft. I also learned that our square plates do not fit well in our drying rack which is causing a lot of stress and headache as one day the domino effect will happen when one slides out and push them all to a shattering death on the floor. By the way, FYI to anyone considering getting an apartment with all tile and wood floors, beware! Somehow hundreds of particles of fuzz land on our floor everyday, I am assuming from other people hanging their laundry out to dry and everyday, I have to vacuum only to have more fuzz and particles on the floor by the end of the day. Today, I have vacuumed twice by the way and it is only 1:45 in the afternoon. I mopped earlier and I didn't want my pristine floor to be dirty. We don't wear shoes in the house yet somehow our feet the bottom of our nice clean feet begin to look a bit dirty after a few hours on our floor.


I love Belfort and all the great learning experiences and exciting times I have. It is truly a joy to live here (I am not actually being sarcastic). This is the only time in my life in which I will probably ever wash all my dishes by hand and hang dry all of my clothes (I will even go to work everyday and let Soner stay at home and do all those things if somehow we cannot seem to have those little daily conveniences in the future!) and I will always be able to appreciate all the hard work and effort that goes in to it and whenever someone tells me I don't know what work is, I will tell them to try running a household without the conveniences you have grown accustomed to and then, I will show them my cut up, dried out hands.

A New Year with more traveling and growing and laughing

So yesterday, Soner and I celebrated our two year anniversary. We have been dating for two whole years. It is amazing and I do not remember the time flying by so quickly. i feel as if we haven't even been dating a year! I had a lot of fun preparing for it. I bought these great big heart shaped leaves (I thought they were Elephant Ears but they are not) to show that obviously, my heart and love for Soner is much much larger than his as everyone should know and I set to work on cooking and baking A-L-L D-A-Y L-O-N-G!!


I cooked and I baked, cooked and baked,..literally going back and forth between several different things at once. I prepared bell peppers and celery for Tabouli (it is a "clean eating" recipe) and also prepared eggplants and potatoes (I am learning...the eggplants and potatoes are for tonight's dinner actually but it said I could prepare some of it ahead so I did) while at the same time trying to figure out where in the world I was going to find baking soda! That was my last missing ingredient. You know how everyone says, well duh!, of course they will have that in France, well they don't! They don't have baking soda or sour cream or any differing kinds of heavy or whipped cream as far as I can tell. They don't have popcorn you can buy in a box with more than one package and they don't have what we call steak tenderloin. They have Filet and Faux Filet and Entrecote,..all of which I cannot tell you exactly what it is because supposedly Faux Filet is Sirloin and supposedly Entrecote is Sirloin,..why would you have Sirloin and Sirloin right next to each other in the grocery store?? What they do have is about 8 different types of flour used for a bajillion different types of things whether you want cake flour, pastry flour, bread flour, cookie flour and on and on and on and half a row in the cold section devoted entirely to butter (Think long Walmart aisles!)! I had quite a time the other day looking up all the ingredients I would need for the next few days and then another hour and a half going through the grocery store trying to find them. They do not put tomato paste and tomato puree next to the tomatoes in the canned vegetable section by the way..I am not quite sure where they put them actually but they are not there and they do not put baking soda in the baking section because they do not cook with baking soda because it is "old fashioned" and they keep their melting and baking chocolate with the chocolate, not with the baking. You can actually find (Soner joked the day before to look for baking soda in the toothpaste section since toothpaste is made with baking soda sometimes and he was right!) baking soda at the pharmacy and luckily, I realized this about 20 minutes before they closed for their two hour lunch break yesterday.

So anyways back to the cooking, after I had prepared the ingredients for Tabouli and for today's meal, I began the long day of making Red Velvet Cake from scatch. I am quite the little Betty Crocker these days it appears. Not only did I make Red Velvet Cake from scratch, I also made the buttermilk to go in it! (Ok so it was just adding one tablespoon of vinegar to milk and letting it sit for 10 minutes but still!) I then continued to make Buttercream Frosting and the actual cake..I ran out of food coloring though so it is more a brown-red than red but oh well...maybe next time! By the way, if anyone can tell me how to sift flour properly (Mom!) please let me know. It seems like it would make quite a mess and while I sifted it, I did make a mess and I don't even know if it was worth "sifting." I prepared my cake, baked it, then placed it in the fridge to cool then came the real fun! I was making Red Velvet Cake Balls! I crumbled up all of my cake minus a little that I cut hearts out of (again to show that of course my heart is bigger and more full of love than Soner's) and mixed in the buttercream frosting to make tons and tons of little balls which I then froze. (This is quite a long process by the way.) After frozen, I coated those suckers in melted chocolate and again let them cool. I rock by the way! I made awesome Red Velvet Cake Balls! They were delicious and wonderful and perfect.




Yesterday was quite a long day of cooking but it was all so much fun and worth it because Soner seemed to really enjoy it. We had steak skewers I had marinated before and the Tabouli for dinner with a Eggplant-Yogurt sauce I had made also which came out very lumpy but didn't taste terrible. And for dessert the wonderful Red Velvet Cake Balls. It was perfect AND I took lots and lots of pictures of the baking process so Enjoy!

The Cravings Begin!

You move to a new place, everything is going well then BAM! you suddenly get a craving so bad for something you didn't even eat that much to begin with back home. Chinese and Mexican food! Ok so I am always craving Mexican food but Soner and I have made it our new obsession to try to find a great Chinese and Mexican restaurant in France but we have not been very successful. In Chicago, we were always on that quest for a great Mexican restaurant but there was only one that we knew of so while it was good, we did not frequent it more than once every two months or so and we NEVER ate Chinese! So we have traveled to Besancon (about an hour away), we have traveled to Zurich (about an hour and a half away), to Strasbourg (about 1 and a half hours), to Mulhouse (30 minutes) and all the way to Lyon (3 hours away!) and what do all these places have in common?? The quest for Chinese and Mexican food! At times, it has seemed we simply visited these places just to check out the food and it was not your traditional French cuisine we were checking out even though we should have as each place seems to have their own speciality food. We spent much of our 2 day weekend in Lyon looking for a Mexican and Chinese restaurant. Before we left Belfort, I actually looked up Asian grocery stores so we could buy chopsticks and maybe a little food as Soner kept stocking up on noodles and soy sauce in Belfort and it was never resulting in an actual meal.

So off we go to Lyon with an address in hand for an Asian super market and voila, there is one and several around it! We are in the Chinatown of Lyon it seems! It is all Asian restaurants, stores, markets, etc. It is amazing. Who would have thought all the way in France, they would have a Chinatown in the large cities also. We bought chopsticks, noodles, sake and little packages for mixing up some good Chinese food... it was all in English! As I have always imagined, Asian food seems to be only near and dear to those in the United States and in actual Asia as evidenced by the English labels on everything in every supermarket we went to in a very large French city.

We did find ourselves a little Tex-Mex restaurant, actually called El Tex-Mex and while it wasn't wonderful but how many Mexican restaurants have you actually eaten at that have been? So I would say it was about right on par with some of the Mexican places I like to eat at... it was lacking in the mandatory, must have section though... we did not have chips and salsa on our table! And we ordered "guacamole" and what we got was a big blob of green stuff (it looked like the stuff we got out of the jar from the grocery store...in fact, Soner swears it is) and about 10 chips (also appeared to be from the Doritos chips you can buy at the grocery store that are lightly dusted with chili powder). It was a bit disappointing but at least we sort of quenched our craving for Mexican a little. Sunday, we continued our quest for great Asian food, specifically Spicy Kung Pao Chicken! We had a recommendation from the hotel concierge but it turned out to actually be a Moroccan restaurant and we passed by a really great looking Mexican restaurant but restaurants close around 2 or 2:30 after lunch so we were turned away.

This is what we found ourselves doing in Lyon, on our great weekend excursion away, not looking at the huge cathedrals built as early as the 14th century or even shopping (although I did convince Soner to take me some place to buy a yoga mat and its not really even a yoga mat..we do not have one in Belfort). The entire time we were in Lyon, we searched for great non-French food! We took a few great photos of staircases and tourists which by the way, all the way from South Louisiana we met a large group of... LSU Law Students! (Soner thought it would be funny to take a photo of the big group of tourists looking all about and then we heard them speak and I commented about their great southern accent then we saw the Purple!.. the shirts and hats and jackets! You will always know LSU fans, they love to always have at least one item on them that shouts to the world we are LSU Tigers, hear us roar! So that was exciting.) It was a great trip that I will always remember for its food!

Which brings me back to last night. I made Soner the Chinese food he had been craving and it was absolutely delicious! I chopped up broccoli, carrots, threw in some baby corn with some chopped up chicken, threw in the syrupy brown sauce from the Asian supermarket and we had a wonderful Chinese meal complete with noodles and chopsticks. I only wish all my meals would turn out so perfect. So anyway, thats that! Sorry I am a bit long winded in all of my posts! I'll add pictures to this post this afternoon or tomorrow!
"Place des Terreaux"
Another place that was built by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. France seems to be covered by places built by this guy or maybe it is just where I live. He built the Lion in Belfort and this statue as well as...what we all know and love and see as one of the great United States symbols, The Statue of Libery!





Water Fountain on Rue de la Republic
Lyon's major Pedestrian Street in Presqu'ile












City Hall in Lyon
City Hall is located in the square with the Bartholdi Statue and Palais Saint-Pierre















Basilique Notre-Dame-de-Fourvière












Cathédrale St-Jean
Built between the 12th and 15th Century

What do I do all day??

Yesterday I got absolutely nothing accomplished but I was busy all day. I have no idea what I did with my time other than chop up some parsley and strawberries! I still try to think back and I can think of absolutely nothing else I did except check the internet from time to time looking for a great little weekend trips we can take in the future. France has ANOTHER holiday in July. A nice two day one and this time, we will be prepared. I really wish we had been prepared the last 2-day and 1-day holidays! It would have been great. We could have done so much. Now it looks like the holidays may be dying down a little bit but there is still so much for us to see and do before the summer is over and it begins to get chilly. So for our 2-day holiday in July we have decided to go to Turkey to an all-inclusive resort. We went to one while I was in Istanbul in October and it was so much fun, you didn't need to bring your wallet or anything and you got to eat all day long and lounge by the beach. It was wonderful. They had great nightly entertainment and the whole thing was very nicely packaged and priced. It was like a cruise but without the moving. But there are also so many other places I want to visit and I don't know if a weekend is time enough to visit them. In France, EVERYTHING is closed on Sunday unless it is a touristy area but even so, a lot of places are still closed. This happens in Switzerland and Germany also. I think Italy is the only country that seems to have a welcome, all is open here sign out for us weekend adventurers.

GE would have made it so much easier on us if they had rented us a car for the duration of Soner's stay. It would not be so terrible if renting a car was not quite so expensive. For a day's rental, it costs 60 or so euros, almost $85! Quite pricey for someone who is used to renting a car for $20-$30 a day without having a really great deal! Supposedly you can take a train everywhere but is the train going to drop me off along every vineyard I want to see and every country side I want to drive through with the option of staying really late? We rented a car this past weekend for Saturday and Sunday with a Monday morning return because the rental places are not open on Sunday. A bit of a bummer because you have to pay for 2 day rental then no matter what. If we want to go drive through the wine routes, we have to pay 96 Euros at a minimum with Soner's discount. It is incredible to me! I hate it. I've thought about trying to rent a car just for the Saturday and return it Saturday evening but no can do. They close at noon on Saturdays! You get a better deal if you go for longevity! 15 day car rental at Avis without any discounts is 578 US$! That is only $38.50 a day, only 27 Euros. How amazingly different is that compared to the 60 Euros they want you to pay a day for a weekend! In Europe, they seem to want to charge you an extraordinary amount of taxes also. $151 of taxes is tacked on to that 15 day car rental. It is very depressing.

So anyway, on with my day. It rained all afternoon but I need to run out and get some lettuce for our new Monday night tradition. It is no longer Monday night Pizza night as it has been for quite a long time BUT Monday night Salad night! Woohoo! A great big salad each in our great big bowls. So I went out to brave the rain and check the mail and I had a nice little notice saying I had a package at the post office. (Big smiles!) Its raining and I am getting wet but yay, I have a package at the post office. I practically skipped down there only to be met with a crowded room full of people. Oh well, this can't possibly be hard. At least I knew the word in french for package, "colis." So I waited in the line, if you could really call it a line, that said "colis" over the window. I kept getting looks from this man in front of me though, I mean I know I am drop dead gorgeous with frizzy rain hair and no makeup on but is that any reason to stare! Eventually...he spoke! And he spoke English. Apparently I was not supposed to wait in line but to take a number and wait for my number to show up on the board. Thank you for the kindness of strangers or else I would have been waiting there until they closed trying to figure out why I had not been helped yet. And I got a super cool looking box. So nice and pretty and it brightened up the rainy day. I only wish it had not been raining or else I would not have put it into my bag to keep it from getting wet but I would have carried it proudly back to home so everyone could see how cool I was.

The contents were awesome! I was planning on baking a cake tomorrow for Soner and the pirouettes will go perfectly around the outside of the cake (I have to do something creative with them or else we will just sit here and eat them until they are gone!) and thank you Mom for trying to keep me healthy with Almonds instead of Cashews although if you saw my refrigerator, you would know you have absolutely nothing to fear! On Saturday mornings, they have a market and we bring my rolling cart and buy up a whooolllleee lot of fruits and vegetables. There is not a space that is not taken up with fruits and vegetables right now. We have eggplants, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, parsley, broccoli, carrots, 3 different types of peppers, bell peppers, apples, pears, strawberries, raspberries, lemons, limes, bananas, onions, garlic and potatoes and I think that may have been all we bought the other day. We actually eat all of those things too! We will hopefully finish it all by the weekend. Last week we bought a few less items, just tomatoes, a couple types of peppers, pears, appleas, limes, onions, garlic and potatoes and we ran out by Thursday. Anyway, all the goodies in the box were wonderful and it was like Christmas. I keep having a lot of "like Christmas" moments lately. New apartment, furniture, all the goodies from Turkey, all the goodies from US. Its wonderful.

So that was my exciting day. We finished the day off with our nice big salads and strawberries and ice cream.

It's a good start

I have been trying to pay more attention to things I cook and how I cook them so I can possibly remember for the future without having to rely on a recipe. Of course, when I cook, its kind of like when I use GPS, I rely fully on the recipe and cannot tell you how I got to the end result unless I am holding that little piece of paper in my hand. (Jennifer, you know what I mean! You can't drive around Dallas without your near and dear GPS even though you've been there a million times!) So today I will begin writing what I cook everyday in a little journal along with whatever Soner cooks as he has a knack for these things, doesn't use a recipe AND his meals are ALWAYS wonderful. Last night we had chicken salads and Soner prepared the chicken. He mixed olive oil, soy sauce, minced ginger and chicken seasoning together and the chicken tasted great. I would have never put those things together. To prepare chicken, I would put olive oil and a bunch of spices hoping it would come out decent and it never does. The chicken always tastes like chicken, exactly how it smells when you take it out raw,..not like something I want to enjoy and savor.

So I was talking to mom last night and she asked something to the effect of if we were staying in very much and cooking. OF COURSE! I cook every single day during the week and let me tell you, the first week, it was not easy trying to figure out what to cook for dinner so I could impress Soner with my great cooking skills and rely only on the oven and microwave to cook and saute things with only a cookie sheet and broiler pan for the oven, some steak knives and the 2 sets of forks and knives I stole from the hotel. It would've been great if we could've just left and gone out for dinner (actually I was getting really tired of having to read the menus in French and take 20 minutes to order something that was not as delightful and what I thought it would be). Since we have upgraded our cooking utensils since then with our great big shipment from Turkey, we are now a fully equiped wonderful kitchen! Yippee. I love it. So anyway, below are some pictures of some of the foods I have made.. a cake (it was a box mix! but I had to read it all in french and I added my own twist to it..I tried making a Boston Creme Pie but the store did not have instant pudding like it called for and I did not have a pot to cook the pudding, only a mixing bowl so I had to go with a ready to eat pudding in a container and the recipe called for semisweet chocolate to melt but yet again I could not find melting chocolate but did find a wonderful little chocolate in a microwavable pouch that could be melted. So I baked my cake, froze it in the freezer (Thanks Mom!), cut it across the middle and voila, I had space for my ready to eat pudding to go then I topped the top with my great microwavable melting chocolate and tada! a somewhat terrible Boston Creme Pie was born!...it wasn't that terrible but my melting chocolate hardened after it cooled and the pudding could have been a little thicker)
This is grilled eggplant, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil stacked on top of each other with a balsamic vinegar sauce. Not exactly a difficult recipe but it was still very good and healthy.
This is steak topped with tomatoes, peppers and onion (part of the left over "salsa" I had made earlier) with rice and a phyllo dough pouch I filled with tomatoes, asparagus and cheese. (Ha, this little pouch was a very exciting accomplishment for me! It was probably one of the first times, I tried to think what would be good together and made it without a recipe telling me how..not exactly since it only has 3 ingredients but exciting for me nonetheless!)
This last photo is of the brunch Soner made for us. He was trying to put together a creamy shrimp fondue of sorts like the appetizer you can get from Cheesecake Bistro. I think it turned out better than the one at Cheesecake Bistro. He used shrimp, cream, milk, cheeses and some spices. I am amazed everyday how creative he is and how he can figure out how to put these things together so they work. He is like people who play an instrument, they can hear the song once and be able to play it from ear exactly.

Catching Up!

I will spend the next few days trying to play catch up! The last two posts I wrote last week and are for the week before. In that time, we have traveled to Besancon, Zurich, Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Lyon and Beaune as well as drove through the country side to see more scenery. We have also received an entire apartment full of food, dishes and linens. I am happy to say Soner now has 3 times the amount of clothing I have! I have been cooking for almost 2 weeks now and have about 5 cuts and scraps adorning my hands from relearning to cut vegetables and grating cheese. It does not work to grate your fingers. Contrary to belief, it does not actually add much flavor to your cheese but rather becomes a constant reminder every time you run water over it that the cheese grater is not meant for skin. I will begin working my way backwards from most recent events and for now, I will post pictures of our lovely apartment as it is being assembled!
Our Kitchen and Living Room!

Our Kitchen, Living Room and 2 Bedrooms as the furniture is being put together.

And our Living Room with furniture in it.


I'll add better photos and more photos later! I think if you click on the photos you can enlarge them but I am not so sure.

Exciting Tuesdays!

As far as days go, Tuesday was very exciting for me. I took my first bus ride and my first train ride and finally had someone look at my passport! We had to return the rental car to the airport Tuesday morning so we start out, make it to the Basel, Mulhouse, Frieburg Airport, also known as Europort and go to return the car. Unfortunately we tried to return it to the Mulhouse side of the airport, the French side, and are told we cannot return the car to the Avis on the French side since we rented it from the Avis on the Basel, Switzerland Side. I could literally see the other side of the airport from where I was standing so lets say about 3 city blocks to the other end of the airport. We had to get back in the car, on to the highway, drive through customs and drive a little further then finally exit back to the airport and make out way to the Avis on that side. Blah! That took too much time. After we had to take a bus to Basel so we could catch a train to go back to Belfort. It was very exciting with a lot of pretty scenery. As we were crossing from Switzerland into France, the custom officers came by to check our passports and they asked where we are traveling to and me, all excited, said to France! Soner quickly stepped in and said Belfort. Ha if we were in the United States and I had said that when I am obviously heading that way and it is the only place for me to go then the other person would have thought I was being sarcastic and would not have been too happy with me. I wonder what the French officers thought...

I also made my first meal in the apartment. We have 2 forks and 2 knives, some steak knives, three plates I bought at Ikea, one cookie sheet, 5 small tupperware-like containers and a microwave and stove. I made a lovely meal with a starter of chips and homemade salsa (tomatoes, onions and hot peppers) then for the dinner we had...tomatoes, onions and hot peppers grilled in the oven. Oh and some bread and some microwavable shrimp but they didn't turn out so great. It was a very exciting day in our household!

About 2 weeks late!

So it has been quite a few days since I have updated my blog but we have been moving and we do not have internet! I never realized how much it would affect me not to have internet for a few days but it seems business is suddenly picking up right at the exact time we are moving and not only that because I am asleep half the time business is going on, emails go unanswered and I have a set of unhappy customers. I guess that is life. Now back to my here and now life!

The elevators are small here. Supposedly they fit 8 people but I have been in one with only 3 and it was a bit too personal for me but they are pretty great in my building. They have a nice full length mirror so I can check out how my outfit turned out before I step out of the building...it does have a negative though, can you imagine having an elevator full of people and have the full length mirror? It would look and begin to feel a little like there were that many more people in the tiny little space and it may become even more claustrophobic. Anyway, they do not seem to have service elevators to move all of your wonderfully large furniture so the poor moving guys had to take each and every piece of furniture apart.. Ok I say each and every but I guess it was really just the wardrobe but it had like 20 pieces to it and it is huge! It is over 6 feet long and takes up an entire wall of our "closet" room and yes, we have a "closet" room. It just makes good sense. We have a two bedroom apartment and if we had only one bedroom and tried to cram the wardrobe, dresser, bed and two night tables in there, we would not be able to open the doors to the wardrobe or the dresser and I imagine we wouldn't quite be able to get into the room either. Our "closet" room is great though. We have this huge wardrobe, our dresser, a full length mirror and ironing board and the ironing board never has to be put away or hidden because it's in the "closet" room! It is perfect.

Anyway, the move that was supposed to take about 2 hours, took about 4 and a half hours but we got everything we wanted. We really got lucky and I think someone must really like Soner because I'd be willing to be we got way more than most people AND all the living room furniture matches, all the bedroom furniture matches, everything matches. It is wonderful. Of course our hours and hours of cleaning the floors seem to have gone to waste though. The men bringing the furniture in had really dirty shoes and rolled all the stuff in on a cart with really dirty wheels and I swear I have vacuumed every single day and swifted the entire apartment 2 or 3 times and I am still finding my white slippers (that I washed yesterday and were sparkling clean again) lightly covered in a black dirt on the bottom. It is driving me a bit insane.

All in all, our moving day experience was pretty great and I ended up pretty tired. Soner went back to work after the movers left and I cleaned all the furniture. At one point I thought I was big and cool and could change the doors on the refridgerator to open on the other side. Guess what? I am not all cool and handy apparently. I unscrewed the top door at the top and bottom and reached down to do the bottom one and it isn't a screw! It's that hectagon thing and it was so tiny I didn't have a hope in the world of trying to get it off. So back together the fridge goes and right as I am nearing completion and I am beginning to feel proud again that I was able to sucessfully put it back together, the door slipped out of my hands, fell to the floor onto a bucket half full of soapy water and finally settling on the floor in a pool of water that covered the entire kitchen. Way to go Alicia! At least we know the kitchen floor is clean! Other than scrapping some rather thick chunks of skin off my hands while cleaning, the rest of the day of cleaning and moving went off without a hitch. At the end of day we had pizza on our new couch and watched NCIS in French then headed back to the hotel for our final nights stay.

Ce n'est pas possible!

It is not possible! Quite jarring and shocking to hear that phrase when all you want is a little creme brulee. Not possible as if it is the most impossible request in the world, as if not only did they not have it on the menu but it was so out of the realm of possibilities they were shocked we even asked. Strange... I have ordered creme brulee off their menu at least 3 times in the past couple weeks.

I am unsure if something became slightly lost in translation when the French began using this phrase. The phrase is French is Ce n'est pas possible which translates exactly to It is not possible in English but the meaning between the two is totally different apparently. If I were to tell someone it is not possible, I would mean it is completely out of the realm of possibilities. It is not possible I can be in two different places at once, it is not possible your handbag arrive to your door at 4 in the afternoon in New York when you ordered the bag at 3:13 that same afternoon in Louisiana, it is not possible to buy Pepsi from the Coca Cola Manufacturing Plant. These things are not possible. To buy a creme brulee at a restaurant that actually does serve creme brulee, that is a possibility, if they are out of creme brulee then they are out, not to the extremes of it being impossible! to have it.

I am experiencing this quite a bit. While trying to exchange my cell phone for a better one a couple of weeks ago, I was greeted with the phrase "Ce n'est pas possible!" Sure its possible, you just go over to your little cash register, scan the bar code on the box and voila, return is in process. However, apparently as severe as this phrase is to me, it is actually quite impossible to exchange a cell phone at Orange as I tried...4 times. I think the french need to get a new phrase, one I can better understand the meaning. At Orange, it was actually impossible to get the phone exchanged as was there policy but at the restaurant, it was in fact possible to get creme brulee but they were simply out.

Luckily for us, you ask enough times for certain things and "It is not possible" begins to mold itself into "It is possible" and voila, it is finally possible for us to have all of the furniture we asked for and it will be delivered today! Woohoo! Go GE! I am off to buy some necessities for the apartment before the furniture gets there (i.e. washing detergent so we can have wash the new temporary sheets we bought to sleep on until Soner's box finally arrives with our stuff...such a waste of money since we will have the sheets in less than 2 weeks fingers crossed but at the same time such a necessity as I am not sleeping on a mattress!)

Have a wonderful Memorial Day! I will write about our Thursday and Friday holiday and post pictures later.

This is a Test

More great news! We got approved for ALL of our furniture everything from a TV and TV stand to all the bedroom furniture and an extra leather chair to go with our leather 2 seater couch, everything EXCEPT the one other thing that is actually needed...a sideboard to store all our dishes, pots and pans, food, whatever. We do not have any cabinets in our apartment minus one under the bathroom sink and 2 and a half under the kitchen sink. My sincere hope was this sideboard would be tall enough to act as counter space as well as storage otherwise, I guess I am glad our floor is clean enough to eat off of because that may be where all the chopping, mixing and preparing is done. At least all my dishes and pots will be nearby on the floor next to me! But seriously, I am sure we will figure out a way to also get that even if we have to give up one item. We got very lucky. GE does not typically provide all these items to a CLP especially items such as an extra living room chair and a tv and tv stand. Maybe they were tired of paying for a hotel room or maybe Soner was so persistent and it was hard to argue with him. Who knows. Too bad GE didn't relinquish a little extra money when they went to ship Soner's container from Turkey otherwise we could possibly actually live in this great fully furnished apartment of ours. Unfortunately, we have no sheets, towels, no forks or knives, plates or cook ware. I guess maybe GE was right in not including our sideboard because we actually do not have anything to put into it. Maybe that is why they choose to ship Soner's container by sea! Smart move GE! Now we may have a fully furnished apartment but we cannot actually live in it until June 10th unless someone takes some action and figures out what to do for at least sheets and towels to shower as Soner has already bought these items and it is not his fault the container will not actually be in France until May 28th even though it was shipped in April and it is not his fault they will not be able to have it unloaded and through customs and to him until around June 10th. GE, I think you made a BIG error trying to save a little money and not shipping this box by air. So will it be for the cost of one hotel night hello new apartment, goodbye Atria (if GE provides for us) or should we begin to make a permanent home in the Atria hotel?

So the domino effect happens when one thing doesn't quite go right,.. it means everything else also seems to follow suit. If we are still in the hotel or even in a dish-less apartment, there is a good possibility of eating out for the next three weeks until we get our furniture. I don't think my body can take it anymore. I will go invest in some stupid knives if it means I could possibly eat an apple or some other item other than a pastry or pasta. I will invest in a microwave if it means perhaps I can eat a decently healthy meal other than french fries and pizzas. I will try to do everything in my power to assemble enough items at a very very reasonable cost (as I do not want to throw around money when we already have these items in a nice little container hanging out on a boat) to ensure I can possibly stop this ever growing weird looking roll around my belly. I hate that our oven will sit there sad and lonesome all by itself for the next month. I just don't think I will be able to justify spending 15 Euros on a crappy pan when I could get a nice one for 25 Euros and I cannot justify spending 25 Euros on a nice pan whenever we already actually own that pan!

Ah the tests GE puts us through. I do hope they are paying attention and noting how well Soner handles stress in his personal life (with me, the apartment and the lack of items to fill it, I am not quite sure how he has not taken a "sick" day) and how it is not affecting his business life. I hope they are seeing this and realizing he is the perfect man for any upper level position.

(Crossing my fingers) I can handle all this, just please GE, don't throw any more curve balls to us for at least another 3 or 4 weeks.

A Whirlwind Weekend

This has certainly been a whirlwind weekend! Friday it rained most all day so I was quite a bit restless as I did not really care to go wandering around in the rain. Two pieces of good news though. Thursday I finally opened a bank account, bad news on that, the exchange rate seems to have increased a couple days before so I don't actually have any money in this bank account because it is silly to lose so much money if the exchange rate goes down this week. Friday we got the keys to the apartment! It was great. The apartment is so much better than I had remembered it being and I like it quite a lot. Its big with lots of windows. The sun never shines directly into any of the windows yet it seems bathed in sunlight.

So Saturday, with the assumption we were dropping the rental car off Sunday and would not have access to a vehicle again, we checked out prices at the 3 stores within 20 or so kilometer of our town. They were rather quick stops as we did not get moving to the stores until about 10:30 or so. A lot of the stores whether it be a major store or not, close Noon til 2 everyday! Apparently the French like to have nice leisurely lunches and since you should be enjoying your leisurely lunch like everyone else, then obviously you would never dream of shopping between those hours. We had our nice leisurely lunch at Buffalo Grill. This restaurant is more Texan than some Texan restaurants. We had a cowboy and an Indian greet us hello as we walked in and had an appetizer of buffalo wings, cheese sticks, chicken skewers and onion rings. Oh and they also gave us popcorn with our appetizer! It was great. If we hadn't known better, from the clientele, we would have also thought they were possibly Texans. They seemed to gobble it all down and make quite a mess while doing so. This restaurant was completely unlike any restaurant I have seen in France or Turkey. It is finally almost time to start our shopping again so we went on to the Leclerc to buy up the "big" items. We loaded up on all the essentials, fun: ( Blah, I hate we have to waste all our money on cleaning supplies, drying racks, vacuums! They add up so quickly. We could take a nice little vacation for what essential items cost. We spent the day heading back and forth between stores and finally ending up back at the Leclerc at the end of the day since it stayed open the latest. I did manage to also buy some flower pots. Yay for me! I will plant some flowers for our balcony. Cross your fingers they will not die on me.

We changed our mind Sunday about the car as we have no furniture in our apartment and we will have to make a trip up to Ikea towards the end of the week to pick up items GE does not provide (hoping they will actually provide these items before the end of the week though!) There is a holiday Thursday so everyone has off Thursday and Friday so we need furniture by Wednesday. During holidays nothing is open so it is almost silly to have dropped the car yesterday so we could turn around and pick it back up on Wednesday evening. So imagine this, bright and early on a beautiful Sunday morning. It looks like such a great day, the weather is perfect, the sun is shining and we get to spend the entire day cleaning! We arrived at the apartment around 9:30 and cleaned until about 8 stopping for a total of about an hour to eat. That apartment will be spotless and I plan on being in pain from cleaning it for about two weeks so send heating pads! I have pictures so I will post soon. The apartment is so nice. We have a nice large living/dining room, two bedrooms, one of which is going to be a huge closet (hmm not so huge, both bedrooms are actually smaller than my parents walk-in closet) and our kitchen is surprisingly large. Too bad we don't have a fridge, an oven, any countertops or cabinets... I am wondering how do you rent countertops... I don't believe you can just go to a store and say "I would like to rent countertops, what can you give me" and since you cannot do that, what does one do? Maybe we can find a huge chopping board at a good price and put it over part of our kitchen sink. We do have a kitchen sink so I guess thats something: )

This was my weekend, endless trips back and forth and a workout harder than anything I have ever done! I am off now to try to finish up the bathrooms! (Eww me and bathrooms do not mix. I really think Soner should have cleaned those so I would not have to visually imagine the things I cleaned over and over and over again like a movie in my head!) Enjoy your day!

Does it thunder in French or English?

Apparently it has rained a few days since I have been in Belfort but I have only witnessed it once or twice for only a few minutes at a time. The rain here reminds me of the rain in New Orleans,.. it rains most days it seems but it is not enough to pull out all your rain gear and call it a day once a few drops hit the cobble stoned streets. In fact, three times I have thought the rain would put a damper on the day so I have turned around and headed back to the hotel, opted to drive the car to dinner once and freaked out a bit when I got lost yesterday because the rain had begun. The rain appears to only be enough to cause this southern girl's hair to become 3 times its size and then it quits! If I didn't know better, I would think I was back in New Orleans minus the giant cemeteries (although while passing through one of the small towns Sunday, we did see a cemetery very reminiscent to N.O.). So is this a French thing? This frequent rain that seems to dry instantly when it hits the ground? I have yet to find a city except New Orleans with rains like this. In San Diego, if it rains however infrequent, it pours with no end in sight. North Louisiana, if it is going to rain, it will rain and most likely all day, the same in Dallas, Chicago, Houston...

So as I said before, I got lost yesterday! I think somehow I even exited the city (not hard to do I guess since it is a tiny city but when I turned to walk back toward the way I came, I was welcomed by a sign stating "Bievenue Belfort"). While I was taking a quick excursion out of this lovely city, it did start to rain and I was already depressed after having tried to open a bank account at a bank for the 3rd time. All three times unsuccessful. I am a little backwards in thinking banks should leave their doors unlocked during business hours and not make you essentially ring a doorbell (its not really a doorbell) to call to them to let you in...at least I think that is what I am doing when I press that little button and as I do not speak french well enough to be understood over a possible intercom, I have given up completely. One bright spot of the day, I purchased stamps! A small victory but the postal lady spoke no English and I had to rely only on French. J'ai besoin d'envoyer la lettre, s'il vous plait. I also continued to explain I wanted to send a letter and a post card to aux Etats Unis. Success! My only difficulty was in understanding it was possible to send a letter and postcard to the United States using the same value stamp and I only had to use one of those stamps on each item.

Today I planned on another small victory...finally opening a bank account with Soner's help and an English speaking banker near by Soner's office. Struck down again unfortunately but we have an appointment tomorrow at 9 to open myself a French bank account. Woohoo! Finally!

On other news, we may have the keys to our apartment tomorrow afternoon. There's a good chance we will not have furniture and that we will be stuck in this hotel throughout the weekend continuing to eat out for every meal BUT at least I know there is good healthy food around the corner. It was fun at first trying to read a French menu but after a while, you just want to be able to go to a restaurant and order without so much thought! Everything takes so much thought around here. Who knows if I will ever actually take the time to continue learning French or read any of the great business books I had planned to tackle. My mind is so worn out by the time I muddle my way through any thing French (product manuals, menus, French phone, tv and internet information!) that I am unsure it will be able to grasp anything other than a kids cartoon (which by the way also takes much work just to have on in the background...lots and lots of high pitches with the same phrases repeated over and over and OVER again! At least they are an easy learning tool!)

Well I am off to enjoy my 4.20 Euro ($5.72) coke and try to be quiet and still for a little bit.

Assume Nothing

If ever I made a toast to being in France, it would go something like this: "Here's to trying to blend in, trying not to cry when your 300 US Dollars only comes to 220 Euros and never assuming anything" and then I would proceed to do everything as I would in the US and watch all the French people exchange a knowing "ah, she's American" look.

My latest "excitement" is not really excitement at all. I almost absolutely hate my new cell phone I purchased Thursday. It is a touch screen cell phone which the sales lady said was very similar to the iPhone but it IS NOT! Tapping on the touch screen always leads me to everywhere I do not want to go and the enjoyable things on my iPhone such as language translation and currency exchange cannot be put on to this phone, in fact, I cannot download any applications for this phone except ring tones. I know cell phones used to just be cell phones but I have become so attached to the ease of the iPhone, I do not even remember how to perform normal functions on a cell phone. Anyway, I tried to make an exchange today but no one in Orange parle anglais so I had to make my way in French while the little French man looked at me as if I had lost my mind. It seems, if I am understanding correctly, they do not do exchanges or returns and I am stuck with my silly little cell phone. Seriously, if the sales lady had mentioned upon purchasing the phone, I would think my cell phone was turned off in the sunlight because you cannot see the screen at all or it would take two or three taps on the screen for it to register my touch or that it simply was nothing like the iphone short of the touch screen, I would not have purchased it and instead gone with a phone far cheaper. I guess the French will really enjoy me pouring money into their pockets with all the purchasing mistakes I will probably make in the future.

Adventures in Belfort

It has been an adventurous last few days. Friday the Bellforissimo Festival began. 20-30 White tents dotted the water way with flower venders from all over the city and a few crepe, wine and meat venders. It seemed everyone in Belfort came out! Everyone was carrying flowers around and I was a bit sad we did not have an apartment yet as I would have loved to bring home some of my own flowers to plant on the balcony. We wanted to taste some of the many wines they offered but for the first time, the language barrier was actually a problem. With so many people around, it was not even worth finding out if any of the venders spoke English as it would be almost un-understandable with all the noise and chaos around. The pictures below are the little flower beds they created specifically for the festival. There was a couple of them on each of the four corners by outside the festival and a few placed nearby. I am assuming it was a paint theme! They used colored chips and flowers to create the "paint" flowing from the tubes of paint. It was very vibrant.


Saturday we made our first trip out of Belfort to Stausbourg to explore Ikea! We came home with a few odds and ends for our apartment, very exciting as it means we will actually have an apartment soon! Soner and I continued on our way about an hour or so outside Strasbourg to visit with a military buddy of Soner's. They greeted us with lots and lots and LOTS of Turkish food. I had not been presented with so much food since i was actually in Turkey. It was nice and little bits and pieces of Turkish began to come back to me.
^^We found these great little Nutella treats at the gas station with little cookie sticks to dip into the Nutella...heavenly!

The most memorable part of the weekend, the mountain! Sunday we wound our way throughout little towns near Belfort. The towns were beautiful little French villages everyone in the US imagines with their great big windows and shutters that actually open and close. On our way back to the hotel after our little adventures we decided to follow a sign with some kind of symbol on it. Little did we know it would take us about 30 minutes away or so and up a mountain! Ballon d'Alsace. We followed and followed and followed the signs and eventually began to climb a mountain..a very high mountain in my personal opinion. My stomach was in all kinds of knots as we made our way up with the edge so near the road. One false move and I could see my life flashing before my eyes. The view was beautiful from the top although a little chilly. Picture Soner in a t-shirt and shorts and I in a little summer dress, cardigan and sandals and everyone else in anoraks and pants! I told Soner he needs to start speaking Turkish when he is around people so they don't think stupid Americans everywhere we go! Luckily, our return trip down the mountain included a very slooowww tour bus in front of us so I could actually enjoy the scenery instead of practicing my in and out, in and out breathing.

Peeling Paint

Would it be as pretty without the distressed peeling paint look? Every building I see minus the brand new buildings have some level of peeling paint whether it be on the shutters, the doors, the walls,.. I wondered why absolutely no one has bothered to repaint these items in the whole city. Are they too busy living their lives and enjoying themselves to bother with such things as the exterior of their home or do they realize the true gem is the inside and the aging outside only adds to the depth and stories the building can tell. I have only made my way through 3 or 4 apartments but the same holds true for the interior staircases leading from floor to floor. They are most definitely many years older than me and appear a bit dilapidated as if one false move might cause a limb to pull a disappearing act into a rotten stair.


Would any of these places be as beautiful and pretty with a new coat of paint? Probably not. They would probably instantly lose their charm and become just like every other "faux" French home you see throughout the States. Too perfect to be French.

Today I practically skipped down the streets in sandals and a sundress. The day is one of the best days I have seen thus far with blue skies and a very bright sun! (Trust me, it was bright..so bright that at 6:30 in the morning I was wide awake and unable to fall back to sleep) I proudly purchased my first "French" cell phone. Its not the coveted IPhone but I was not ready to shell out 549 Euros for a phone I may be unable to use in 6 months. My prepaid phone is wonderful though supposedly. I can talk as much as I want and text as much as I want (as long as I'm willing to keep shelling out euros for minutes!) AND all calls and texts I receive are FREE! How is that for great. International calls, domestic calls, SMS, MMS, everything free..it is wonderful especially because seriously, it is not my fault if someone wants to talk to me or get in touch with me,..why should I be forced to also pay to give them that privilege. Afterwards, I made my first return to a store. Luckily, it was not too difficult, unfortunately it was not attributed to my choppy French but to the very kind English woman in line next to me who rattled off exactly what I wanted to say to the saleswoman. I was very excited to hear the word "sensible" in her explanation to the saleswoman though as I had planned on using the word to describe my sensitive eyes.

Drumroll please...we have an APARTMENT! Woohoo! It is a stunning European style..oh wait, it is not stunning or very European looking on the outside but modern and square, however, it will have to do. The interior is almost new (I have yet to get an explanation for "almost new" though and I am not quite sure what it refers to as there is not a refrigerator, oven, dishwasher, washer, cabinets, countertops or closets throughout the apartment so the "new" items might possibly refer to the bathtub and sink in the bathroom or the solitary sink in the kitchen.) Otherwise the inside has nice tile floors throughout the living room and kitchen and sad to say, slightly hideous wall paper in the two bedrooms..think bright red and yellow in one room and cream with blue stripes with light houses dotted everywhere in another. Soner thinks there was a passionate artist in one room but what type of person was in the other one?? I am crossing my fingers the wallpaper gets replaced. You may think 5 months is not a long time, it may seem short and you should just deal with the aesthetics but we are talking about being in a place 150 days give or take, enough time to complete a semester of college and begin another one, to find a job, work there and quit, for an entire season and a half to pass.

France is wonderful though all in all. We had dinner at the first restaurant we ate at upon my arrival Saturday and it was even better than the first time. Maybe because we are learning at least one new word each of us each time we go. Speaking of learning, I will go back to learning more french via my iPod. Talk Soon.

The economical way!

You try to save in every way you can with all the hype everywhere about this "terrible" recession we are in! I go around and pretend it has affected my life a little by cutting back on magazines. Thanks to Mom, I cut back on magazine buying but she did not! (Days ago before France, the latest Cosmo, Glamour, People, Life & Style (the list could go on and on) were to be found scattered all throughout the house.) It is a hard thing to grasp as people seem to have gone on with life the same as always in Shreveport. There were still tons of people buying their low fat, no water, no whip iced drinks from Starbucks, "Oh make that a venti!" and it was a rare occasion you could walk into a restaurant at lunch without a long wait. Of course, the argument people have to eat applies here but where else can one typically save the most money than eating?? It's all I ever do anyhow. Food is one of the best parts of life.

I have learned something about the French since I have been here but of course it came out of a news article I read off Yahoo! news from the US. It just so happened to coincide with my trip. French people sleep and eat more than any other wealthy country in the world. They sleep an average of 9 hours a night and spend an average of 2 hours eating. What they did not disclose is if that two hours is strictly putting food to mouth or enjoying conversation while eating. I have had Turkish meals that in one sitting last longer than two hours so I am very curious to know what puts the French at the top of this list. Also, how do the French stay so thin as everyone claims with all this eating? Every plate of food I have seen around here is enough to feed four people with each having leftovers for lunch the next day. Think Monjunis lasagna times one and a half plus penne pasta and another food filling another slot on the plate, each as big a portion as the lasagna...for ONE woman sitting by herself.

Anyway, back to cutting back. I have eaten at 4 restaurants since Saturday. Here, it seems the average price of a coke is 3.50-4.50 euros roughly the equivalent of 4.65 to 6 US dollars for a single coke in a bottle. On the plus side, the bottles do look slightly larger than the cans which is what we paid for in Turkey for about the same price. So you have two choices here, pay the inordinately excessive price for a coke with perhaps a second round as you continue to eat your very large portion OR pay 6 euros for 4 glasses of wine to be split between two people! So far the wine is winning out! The most expensive wine I have seen thus far was at the Moroccan restaurant we ate at Monday night and that was only 14.50 euros for an entire bottle of wine!

Suffice to say, I am very lucky as I do like wine and buying it here in France to drink with dinner or cheese will definitely cut back on our grocery bills. All in all, France is good. My limited french regarding foods is causing a bit of anxiety when it comes to where to eat dinner.. I prefer to only eat dinner at restaurants I can recognize more than one word in a food description. This is my goal for the day though, learn more french food names and apply to dinner tonight. So off I go to learn more French.

Je ne comprend pas!

Well, I take great comfort my French must be good enough for everyone to understand "Je ne comprend pas" (I don't understand). I must be saying something right although they do continue to speak French to me,..maybe they are somehow under the impression I am French and only misunderstood them and not simply do not understand a word that is coming out of their mouth!

Soner says I will not have jet lag because I started going to bed at the time he goes to bed when I got here and that the jet lag days have passed behind me. I disagree. I only stayed awake all day Saturday and Sunday because what choice did I have?? Sleep both those days and then he will work for the week and I have no one to show me around OR force myself awake and enjoy it? So I take naps, 2 hr naps in the afternoons and try to sleep late in the mornings. A bit difficult as I believe every moped bike in the city drives past our hotel and revves its engine just to spite me.

After laying in bed for hours this morning, I finally dragged myself up and out of the room to Sephora! A comforting place! Most all of the products had English and French descriptions so it was perfect. I also stumbled upon a wonderful place, the Mono Prix. Not much of an exciting place to most but for me it was heavenly! It means I no longer have to trek the endless miles (If it wasn't miles, it sure felt like it was!) to get to the supermarche' at the end of the city (so I only actually did that long walk once but it made such an impression on me). This place is a bit smaller but do I really need ALL those choices of food the big supermarche' has to offer? I think I may be the only person who gets excited about grocery stores. I have favorites in every city I have been in! In Shreveport, definitely Brookshires on Line Avenue, Baton Rouge it was Albertsons on Bluebonnet Blvd, San Diego Ralphs in La Jolla, Chicago...hmm I only ever went to Dominics across the street because I am too lazy to walk to another but I went there often to walk around and think of something to buy and in Istanbul the grocery store in Kanyon Mall, maybe also because it was the only one I ever frequented to walk around and look at all the food. I sound like a nerd more and more as I go through this post, don't I?

Last night I met a lot of Soner's CLP friends. There were 11 of us in total and a baby. We had Morocan food with lots and lots of couscous! The food was pretty good and the mixture of people were quite funny. There were two people from the United States, a New Yorker and Houstonian. The majority of everyone else seem to be from Russia with perfect English! The night was nice but there was no one on the streets when we left a little after 10. It was very quiet..almost spooky quiet.

Ok one more thing, the perfect coke..I found it! It is a miniature canned version of the regular thing. It is a real can and a real coke with only 64 calories to the can. It is the most wonderful size as I cannot actually finish a real coke ever so this is not wasteful and you don't feel the need to drink an entire 12 oz coke just because it is there.