New life in Montpellier

I haven't blog for such a long time and so many things have happened.... new places, streets, stores, food, people, lots of Internet googling, trying to communicate and understand French....I am happy that even tough my conversation French is very poor, my French comprehension is good, I understand quite a bit........

It is hard to move to a new place, at least I found it hard; yes, I know we all find exciting to go somewhere, travel, meet new people, experience new things, but when it is actually happening is not that easy, sometimes is fact is darn frustrating.

Our place is quite cozy by now; we made 2 trips to Ikea and we got a few things that we need and make your life so much more comfortable. Last trip we got ourself a small treat, a 2 yummy hot dogs for 1 Euro, now we are addicted and we will have to go back:) At home in Vancouver I don't really like hot dogs because of the "white" bun, I don't like soft spongy bread, but here at Ikea to Mark's surprise I eat the Hot dog in a few wolfy bites.

We also got our self a TV; we bough the TV from some German students. We had to carry the very heavy TV which is strapped on a old chair from their place to other. I wish I had a video camera filming Mark and I carrying that TV on Montpellier streets, I am sure we could have won a prize on American most funniest videos. As soon as we got home, very tired and sweaty we both sat down in front of the tv and all Mark had to say was " gee, this is the most darn ugliest TV I ever seen". On top of the TV being very ugly it doesn't have a on/off switch button, every time we want to turn it on or off we have to plug/unplug the dam thing. I am the lucky one and I have the TV in my room, we have only 8 channels, but in fact only 5 and all in French. So far we haven't seen anything good on TV, only soap operas and stupid game shows.


We found a market close to our place with tons of fresh fruits and vegetable, the vendors are mostly arabs; they seem to be very nice people chatting happly with customers in French and arabic among them. I love to go there in the morning (as the matter of fact I go there EVERY morning) and buy "de fruits et des legumes"; right now there are lots of fresh strawberries, so every day I buy strawberries, bananas and any other fruit I feel eating for the day.

We have been eating 2 meals a day; brunch around 11 am and dinner around 7pm. Every day we are trying something "new". I am getting quite innovative at breakfast in mixing "fromage blanc" or yogurt with jam, chestnut cream (maroons), with cereal and fruit.

I finally start to get to know the city and adapt to new life style; I start running and that makes me happy. Every day I find a better route and my fear that I will always have to run on narrow streets with people and cars has started to dissipated.