Playing House

As promised, here I am again to regale you with tales of my flat, with added photographs for good measure! More of that later; first, allow me to fill you in with all that's happened in-between blog posts. WARNING: it's a lot.

So, Wednesday we paid the rent, and got the keys - or rather, key, as there's only actually one key to the flat door right now - so Marine moved in on Thursday, and I stuck to my guns and moved in on Friday, when I wasn't working. I was planning to have a bit of a lie-in that day too, but Claudia's housekeeper had other ideas. Once I was washed, dressed and fed, the two of us began to execute some complicated choreography, during which I tried to pack the rest of my things up and see if I'd forgotten anything, and she tried to make all the beds and hoover the floor. We got there in the end, and I had a nice lunch with the family before shifting my stuff over to the new flat in the afternoon. Luckily, it's about 30 seconds walk from Claudia's place, so it wasn't difficult.

Once I'd unpacked and settled in and had a shot of ridiculously strong coffee (no sugar, as we had yet to buy it), Marine and I went grocery shopping. Forgive me for making the assumption, but I believed we would just be splitting the cost of everything we bought. Not so - Marine got this strategy into her head where she would pay for what she wanted, I would pay for what I wanted, and we would both pay half for the things we'd both need, like sugar and washing up liquid and soap and milk. Call me crazy and unreasonable, but to me that seems unnecessarily convoluted...

Anyway, Friday night saw us back at Claudia's. I went over to give Simone another English lesson, Marine needed her new timetable, and we both wanted to make use of Claudia's incredibly generous offer that we can pop over and use her wifi whenever we want (I think she's adopted us both as her English and French daughters). I also made pizza and calzoni from scratch for the first time ever, in partnership with Simone, which involved him bashing the dough instead of rolling it out and dropping tomato sauce on my shoes more than once, but the end results were delicious. I must get the dough recipe so I can do them myself!

Saturday morning, our landlord was supposed to come round, but – surprise surprise – he didn’t arrive until the afternoon, so we spent the morning making apple cake and rearranging the kitchen. We hid such monstrosities as the vase of the china flowers that was in the middle of the kitchen table, the broken lamp by the oven and the two horrible blue plates that were hanging above the fridge (we kept the third one, which has pretty yellow flowers on it). After a simple lunch of pasta and tomato sauce, the landlord and his mate arrived to tell us that we wouldn’t have hot water until at least Monday(!) because no plumbers work over the weekend...

Also managed to get the internet (if you can call it that) sorted on Saturday, after trudging out through the pouring rain under a shared umbrella to buy an Internet Key. It’s basically dial-up, but it suffices for Facebook, checking my emails and updating this ol’ blog, although if I actually want to use the video side of Skype in the future I will have to take Claudia up on her offer, as she has a significantly speedier internet connection. Fortunately, an added bonus of the package I bought means it’s only €12 a month for unlimited usage! Not a bad buy, I reckon.

Sunday was a relatively lazy day, and today saw me returning to work, teaching two new classes, doing a LOT of food shopping (and getting a free chef's knife because I spent over €15 - that's one less thing I'll need to buy)...and we now have hot water! Showers are so much nicer when you're not petrified with cold.

Right, so, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! Da-da-da-daaaa! Photos of my new home for the next 7-and-a-half months! :D

 Our lovely new kitchen, minus the hideous vase on the table

 Sofa-bed, which is unfortunately one of the hardest things I have ever sat on, so we added pillows

 Our bedroom, with sheets and blankets provided by Claudia :P

 The painting that hangs above the beds - one of the pieces of art we both wanted to keep!

 The eNORmous wardrobe, which takes up an entire wall of the bedroom...

And the bathroom, now with both hot and cold running water!

Next time the post may not be as long, depending on whether anything interesting happens, or even if I can be bothered to write as much as I did today. Until then,