First apartment in France

We wanted to show you a couple pictures of our apartment. 

In the kitchen there are 2 burners, a small dorm-style fridge, a toaster oven, electric kettle, and a toaster. I think there was a coffee pot too (that I stored under the counter)… if you know me, you know I packed my French press in my luggage. My only lament is that we couldn’t fit the ice coffee maker in our luggage too, because an iced coffee right now would be amazing! So cooking has been fairly simple so far, but as we accumulate more spices and supplies we should be back in business. I already baked chicken in the toaster oven and it turned out pretty good, but I want to attempt baking a loaf of bread in there soon. 

The living area has two lounge chairs, a desk & chair, a dinner table with four chairs, and a bookcase. Some of our teammates gave us the sweet tree on our first day to welcome us to France and they gave us great advice to start well by establishing good roots in the language & culture, and building relationships. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but we have great big windows in the living area and our bedroom. The windows do not have screens but are open air. I am kind of surprised how few bugs have flown in, but I think part of the advantage is that when bugs do fly in they quickly find their way back out. 

Our bedroom is very practical. There is a bed with two small nightstands, a hidden IKEA wardrobe for storing our cloths, and a small sink area. The showers and toilets that we use are a shared space just a few steps down the hall. I was most nervous about this but it really has been fine so far, you just need to do a bit more planning than we do in the States. Outside and below our bedroom window is a small courtyard and garden area for our building and there are beautiful pine trees that are the first thing I see every morning when I wake up. 

We have gotten to explore the area right around us quite a bit. There are three different places we can get groceries, a Carre Four express (normally these stores are huge but this is a smaller one), a small discount store, and a gigantic store called Cora. Cora is our favorite so far because there is such great variety that it’s fun to explore, but once we get a little more confident, there a a couple little markets I would like to try for produce. We have also stumbled across 3 different parks within walking distance. Here we are at one of the parks. The other photo reminds me a lot of the type of scene Monet would paint. The giant lily pads were gorgeous and they had big pink and yellow flowers in them. After five days of being here we are feeling more and more comfortable in our neighborhood. Our classes started this week and are going well, we are excited for the learning process and even more to have the ability to communicate better and better with people we meet.