Best Laid Plans O' Mice and Texpats

If Morgan and I haven't learned anything else over the past week and a half, it's how much we wish we understood and spoke the language. Everyone has been great, but, it's still a hassle not being able to follow all the conversations without either missing something or wasting other's time requesting explanation. So some planning (or was it plotting?) was done last night.

The fellow on the right in the blue shirt is Tony Haywood, Oracle consultant extraordinaire. Also, all around good guy. (Has enough b.s. to be Texan by acclaimation. ) Tony lives here in France with his wife and two young children. We're hoping to bribe, threaten, or extort him (back) onto our project.

But, to the planning point: the gentleman sitting next to Tony is Florent Racape (pretend there's an accent over the last "e"...this blogspot isn't too much on latin emphasis). Florent is a native who speaks excellent English and, more imporantly, teaches French. Jerry and I are working on using Florent to help us out. If we do this it'll mean putting off my planned winter travel to Paris to spend each Saturday and Sunday over the next five weeks in extensive immersion into French. After that we'll work together weekly to continue the improvement.

Obviously, we won't be fluent after five weeks, but we can advance considerably, and lay the foundation for picking up more in the shorter term. Here's hoping it works out. (It better...if I'm giving up Paris for five weeks.)

New Found Favorite

I'm sure most have heard of crepes. These are light, fluffy pastries that are wonderful. There's another kind, though, specialty of the Britagne area called Gallets. Instead of sweet, these are brown, salty, square tortilla-looking pieces of heaven, oh so much lighter than a tortilla. They put all kinds of stuff in them and they are somewhere immediately past great! Had one the other night filled with jambon (ham), fromage (cheese) and egg (Oeuff). It was great AND, I think I found my Saturday morning breakfast! Now, if I could only find some good chilli. A Cisco gallet. What could possibly be better?

The Price Ain't Right

Okay, now it's time for some of the sticker shock. I have mentioned that things are expensive here, but some things are really off the wall. Case in point: washed underwear.

I went to the cleaners (pressing) last week and dropped off six shirts for laundry and two pair of pants for dry cleaning, The bill? A whopping 25.80 Euros. That's a smooth $36.64. The shirts were $4.04 each and the dry cleaning $6.18. Complaining, I was told that, perhaps, the service offered by my apartment (actually an appartment/hotel) might be better. I checked and they weren't. In fact, they wanted 2.35 Euros ($3.34) to wash my underwear!!! Now, it may come as a surprise to some, but I'm not your regular Yves Saint Laurent type of fellow, walking around in $25 boxers (or briefs). I'm your basic Haynes from Sam's Club sort of guy and I pay about $3.34 per pair. I felt like asking if I could rent them until the spot in the back got too large.

This is only one example. Tonight I stopped for another gallet and ordered a Pepsi with it. It came in a small 250ml bottle (reminiscent of the old, small Coke bottle). Price: 2.35 Euros ($3.34). So, there you have it. A Pepsi is worth as much as a pair of washed underwear. Figure that one out Bernanke.