New art for the wall

Hello dear readers!

Lille was great yesterday. We arrived early, so we wiled away an hour sitting at a cafe munching on a pastry and sipping tea. This is what France is all about. There's something great about being still while people are scurrying past you. This cafe was in between the two train stations, so there were lots of folks scurrying.

The doctor's office turned out to be full of other Assistants, so that was the most fun I've ever had in a waiting room. They X-rayed our torsos. They weighed us in kilos, which is great because I only have a vague mathematical understanding of how they convert to pounds. So, there's no reason to feel guilty about eating pastries (yet). Appartently I passed muster, and (translated from french) "Fulfilled the sanitary conditions necessary to be authorised to reside in France."

The best part: we get to keep our chest x-rays. So, I've got this life-size thick black plastic x-ray art to hang on the wall.

Then we went to IKEA and made a mad dash to get the essentials. IKEA here is the same as IKEA at home. There's not much they can change because it's all in Swedish to begin with. It was not fun to haul weighty blue sacks around (in the rain) for an hour back home, but it was incredibly worth it to have rugs, a clock and lamps. That WORK! The electricity is on! And this morning, I made French press coffee. All is right with the world.

Just think, tomorrow we may have furniture.