Day One

Unlike Peter Mayle, my year did not begin with lunch. It did not even end with supper. The traumatic journey began with breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien where I considered ordering champagne, feeling distinctly sorry for myself, but went with a coffee and a croissant, and sat next to a french lady who pointed at a nearby screaming baby and said 'she is beautiful, no? just like you'. Whilst I was digesting this backhanded compliment my train was called and I boarded, found my seat and was just wondering how much time I had on English soil to send emotional goodbyes and ponder the tragedy of my circumstance when some man wedged himself down next to me and started chatting. He amused me well enough with modest tales of selling his house for 3.5 million and what fun the generations of his family have had at Marlborough college ("perhaps you've heard of it- Kate Middleton went there", at which I pretended to be vague and uninterested), before asking with polite interest where I was schooled; "er.., you may not have heard of it...". And before I knew it, the border was crossed and he was still telling me his plans to enter his 60th birthday party driving a train when we arrived in Lille. The only mild embarrassment I suffered was my confusion that the train was destined for Lille/ Brussels, causing me to wonder out loud whether they were the same place. He looked at me with the pitying resignation of an Old Marlburian, wondering what has gone wrong with the world. 

The journey went smoothly and six hours later I was in Avignon. I found the bus to Apt and arrived at 8pm, tired and hungry and mildly shell shocked, but met at the bus stop by my new housemate Becca, from Michigan, who is very very nice. Our apartment  on the other hand, is not so nice. It's really very basic. It did not quite hit me how basic until, starving hungry from 14 hours of travelling with no food in the house and eating hours over, I decided to fill up on a few cups of tea before bed. Except of course, no kettle. And the microwave was broken. So I was resigned to turning on the hob and boiling a saucepan of water et voilà, a short twenty minutes later we had  hot water! And then after catching up with Becca and unpacking it was time for a shower and bed. Or not that easy. The shower was, as I probably should have guessed by now, either boiling hot or freezing cold. I experimented with turning the nozzle just half a millimeter to try and find a less offensive temperature- oh no, apparently not. And so I settled for freezing cold, before finally getting into bed for a restless nights sleep. 

My room- partially decorated

Today, Becca has proved a hero. We went for un petit déjeuner français; un croissant aux amandes and she helped me buy a french phone (the cheapest one)- at which the man at Orange looked at me curiously and asked how long I would be living in France for. When I told him 9 months he looked at the phone incredulously and said witheringly, 'with this?!!'. Next stop, the bank, where again Becca helped me set up an appointment with a man called Alexis, who helped me open a bank account with a mixture of english and french speaking, and told me not to spend beyond my means- he seemed to have summed me up fairly quickly. So all in all, a successful first day and a trip to the supermarket meant today I have been well fed and watered, on salad, avocados, tomatoes, olive oil, nectarines, fresh bread and the Luberon wine the region is famed for. The afternoon has been endless admin and this blog- something I did not plan to write but I know my family will appreciate. Tonight, Becca and I are going to eat in the canteen- where you have to scan your fingerprints to get a meal no less, and where said meal, is apparently very substandard. We shall see. À la prochaine!

The beautiful views of the Luberon from the apartment