We got news today that our crate has arrived in port and should be delivered next week. I say should because Jeremy will be away from Tuesday to Friday on his first "on-field" job. The shippers had wanted to deliver it on Wednesday or Thursday so they have to see if they can deliver it on Monday or Jeremy has to see if he can cut his trip short and have them deliver it Friday. Otherwise, it will have to wait until the following week.
          I am itching to finally have our stuff. An air mattress and a lawn chair are taking their toll on my back and neck, and it will be nice to eat off plates instead of a Pyrex bowl and take-out tins. Oh, to sit on a couch! I can feel it now!
          Tomorrow should be my first trip to the supermarket. I have tried to go before now but between being sick and the fact I wanted to go with Jeremy my first trip, the days have just not aligned properly. 
          I found one app that has coupons to take in store, but so far that's it. I have spent all day trying to find "freebie" sites and coupon sites to no avail. I have found a few freebie type sites but for one, they are all make-up and perfume related, and secondly, they only give out a handful of freebies so by the time I get to them, they're all gone. The coupon app is interesting. You download the coupon and with proof of purchase, either through using a store loyalty card or by scanning the receipt and barcode, you are refunded directly to your bank account.
          Speaking of, everything is done through your bank account here, as there is no such thing as credit. Anything with a monthly payment is taken directly from your bank account. Our rent, cable, electricity, phone, everything comes straight out of the bank account. When we went to sign up for my phone plan, we had to bring a slip of paper from the atm that states our account information which they put into their computer. There is no such thing as credit, either. Approval for big payments such as apartments, cars, and so on are done by your salary, and what kind of work contract you have.
          For example, the two types of job contracts are CDD and CDI. A CDD job contract is basically how it is in America, you go to work, you work hard, and you can get fired for any reason. A CDI job means after an initial 90 day period, it is almost impossible to be fired. Unless you do something illegal or go tell a CEO to **** off, you are basically invulnerable.
          So the higher your salary and whether you are CDC or CDI takes the place of good or bad credit here. In one way, I like it a lot. There is no worrying about what a missed payment or a freak accident involving medical bills will do to your credit. On the other hand, if it were just me here, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone willing to let me get a 10 euro cell phone plan let alone an apartment or car. It's funny the way things turn out. I was the one with impeccable credit and Jeremy was the one with the money, now I feel useless!
          It's odd not working, but I make try to make myself useful with money management and, once the necessary equipment gets here, cooking and cleaning. It's a whole new world, that's for sure. I've been working from the age of 14, thanks to my parents owning a deli, until my car accident last year. Now I am a lot better, though still fighting with a few injuries, and ready to work and I can't! Even though we're not married, it's like being a house wife. 
          When the cleaning goes unnoticed, the cooking goes unthanked, and the only one who cares about a budget is yourself, well, let's just say it's a lot less of a gratifying job then protecting puppies and kittens from disease and removing cancer from beloved older pets. Almost every day I got to say, "I helped save a life today!" Now it's "I vacuumed and found a 2 euro coin while grocery shopping!"
          Hopefully I will eventually learn to find benefaction and self-fulfillment in what is now my "job", but I imagine it will take a while. Hopefully when our stuff gets here and I can throw myself more into my hobbies, I will feel better.

          Well, 39 days after its original delivery date, we have both our washing machine and our microwave. Now we just need some drying racks and detergent and we can finally wash from home. Why do we need drying racks? Because the French don't use drying machines! That's right, everything is air dried, even sheets.
          If you go into a specialty appliance store, you may be able to find a couple dryers, but it's not really worth it economically to get one. Dryers in France consume a ridiculous amount of electricity. I don't know whether it's because they're not in demand so companies don't bother to release energy efficient dryers, or they're not in demand because companies don't make energy efficient dryers, but either way, there it is.
           I don't understand how people can go on without a dryer! They have racks that the put over their tubs, hanging rods, hanging racks, and clothes lines. I just don't understand it. For people who have such limited space to have to worry about enough space to dry their clothes, you would think that they would want a dryer.
          We are getting a dryer, though we will only be using it for sheets and the duvet cover. The dryer is free from a coworker of Jeremy's. He was originally from the UK, has been in France for maybe 10 years or so, and is now going back to the UK so he is giving us his dryer that his UK wife insisted on. I don't blame her, I insisted too. I can tolerate hanging up all the clothes to dry, I always hung up my clothes anyway so now it's just a matter of adding undergarments and towels to the list, but I just can't imagine trying to air dry queen size sheets.
          So that was my day! Boring, I know, but maybe you found it interesting to learn about the French and their lack of dryers.

          For the first few months we are living here, Jeremy's company is kindly paying for expenses related to us not having our shipment from America yet. For example, they pay for us to wash our clothes at the laundromat because we don't have a washer or dryer, and they pay for us to eat out since we don't have cookware, but they won't pay for food we would buy at a grocery store because we would be doing that anyway. Get it?
          So while they are being so accommodating, we are eating out as much as possible. Eating out is expensive here, so we figure this is our only chance to do so! So far we have had Thai, Chinese, Pizza, Sushi, and various fast-food type meals. I was surprised to find that these foods aren't more universal. I can understand pizza being different depending on where you go, but you would think that since Chinese is neither American or French, it would be kind of the same where ever you go.
          So one day in the thick of my cold, not wanting to go out, I told Jeremy to go to the Chinese place we had seen and grab some lo mein or egg foo young and some veggie fried rice. He came back with something different because they didn't have any of that stuff! Have you ever heard of a Chinese place that didn't have fried rice? Me either! So he got me something kind of similar to egg foo young. It was an omelette with vegetables, but no bean sprouts or leeks, and no brown gravy. Instead, it was saturated in butter. And Jeremy, who wanted general tso or beef and broccoli, ended up with chicken and cashews in a sweet sauce.
          Then for the Thai food, I got Thai iced tea and vegetable fried rice and Jeremy got a chicken and noodle dish that he thought would be similar to drunken noodles. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Thai food but with American Thai food, Thai iced tea is tea with condensed milk. Vegetable fried rice is a mildly spicy mix with assorted vegetables (the one near I always went to did tomato, broccoli, leek, onion, carrot, and green pepper), pineapple, egg, and your choice of meat or fried tofu. Drunken noodles are stir-fried broad rice noodles, chicken, and various vegetables in a spicy sauce. French Thai tea uses coconut milk, making an already sweet drink much sweeter. The vegetable fried rice was slightly sweet with onion, carrot, and some unidentifiable vegetable. It reminded me of a small broccoli stem. I don't know. The noodle dish was rice noodle, but short and fat, with chicken and slightly cooked kale in a sweet sauce. All in all, it was good but since it wasn't what I was expecting I think it set my mood a little sour. The dessert, however, was delicious. A warm, sweet, sticky rice with thick slices of mango next to it, all laid in coconut milk.
          The pizza was hit or miss. The first place we tried (when we visited back in November) was delicious. The second place, not so much. We got a vegetable pizza which consisted of tomato, mushroom, and potato. Yes, potato. Precooked, soft, cubed potato. Pair it  with a soupy, slightly metallic tasting sauce, and you have two very disappointed Americans.
          The sushi was disappointing as well. The rice tasted like normal rice, not sushi rice, and none of your typical "specialty" rolls were available. They had odd rolls like The Italian, which was wrapped in prosciutto instead of seaweed and The Caesar, which was wrapped in romaine with chicken on the inside. The California roll is nothing like ours either, consisting of crab stick and mango. Many other rolls had a soft cheese in them, kind of like how some of our rolls have cream cheese. I was never a fan of cream cheese rolls and consequently am not a fan of these either. The only roll I could see being served in an American menu was their Dragon roll, which was shrimp tempura and spicy mayo topped with avocado.
          Most fast foods are kebabs, burgers, sandwich shops (there is even a Subway!), or paninis. There is seriously a kebab place every block. Three blocks down there are two kebab stores right next to each other. The burgers are huge but basically similar, as are sandwich shops except for their lack of vegetarian options. Paninis here are very long and thin, as they use baguettes instead of slices of bread.
          So far I am unhappy with my eat out options. We have a few more places in mind, including a place with a veggie burger and a couple Italian places, but it seems to me I need to keep away from anything that might also be found at home, or I will wind up disappointed. It seems we will have to venture out further to find actual French restaurants in France! 

     This was the Magi of France, whom I surprisingly discovered in my mouth one fine morning. When baby Jesus was born, the Magi went to visit him and bring him a gift. He arrived on January 6th, the Solemnity of Epiphany, with his gift of a doughy French bread with sugar on top, called a galette. Over the years, the galette has evolved into more of a pastry or, in some regions, a cake. Every region has a different type of galette. The Franche-Comte region's galette is a flaky pastry with a center filled with frangipane, giving it a mildly almondy shortbread feeling to it and is really quite delicious. During the month of January, every bakery sells them and it has become not only a common treat for at home, but for in the office as well.
          So Jeremy brought home some left-over galette from work one day for me to try. I had it for breakfast and was half-way through when I bit down on something hard. I furrowed my brow and searched my mouth for the intrusion of my delightful pastry to find a ceramic figurine! The figurine is hidden in the cake and whoever gets that slice is crowned "king" for the day. It is even sold with a paper crown that the king must wear for the whole day. Yes, even during office meetings. In some offices, the king is the one who has to bring in the galette the next day. Originally, before the figurine took hold, a broad bean was hidden in the cake and whoever found it was king of that feast.
          Traditionally, when served at parties or the first time it is served at the office, the youngest person goes under the table and determines who gets each piece. This prevents a biased serving from the server of the galette, who may see the figurine while cutting.
          This may all sound somewhat familiar, because it is! The American Mardi gras king cake is a spin-off of the galette. Allegedly, a French-Canadian explorer introduced Mardi gras in 1699 just 60 miles south of what is now New Orleans, while on expedition on behalf of the French crown. Then, in 1870, the tradition of the king cake was said to be introduced in New Orleans via visiting Frenchies. The New Orleans king cake is very similar to the southern France style galette, which is more of a torus-shaped brioche decorated with candied fruits and sugar, completely different from the galette in my town!
          I hope you enjoyed the little history lesson! Tomorrow our microwave and washing machine will supposedly be delivered. This is after Thursday, when they said it would be delivered the 29th, then Friday when they said they would call in the next two days to set up a delivery time and has no notes about anyone saying it would be delivered the 29th, and then Saturday when they said the washing machine is still being delivered (but didn't say when) but they ran out of the model of microwave we selected so we need to pick out a new one. My hopes are not high, but my fingers are crossed anyway!

          After the tram incident, the rest of the day was pretty fun. Jeremy's coworker, Jennifer, picked me up to take me to a cafe where they have get-togethers for  people who want to practice their conversational English. They also have music, kids events, cooking classes, and all kinds of things. It was very interesting, though there wasn't anything going on at the moment. It was a very quaint set-up too, it had old linoleum tiles, long tables so you sit with other people, and purposely mismatched chairs and place settings. There was also a dog!
          After the cafe, we went bowling with Jennifer and another coworker of Jeremy's, Franck, and people they knew. It looked like I walked into a bowling arcade in America, everything was the same. Even the bowling balls were the same! The walls were painted with pictures of antique American cars, and American oldies were playing over the sound system.
          It was very fun, although I do tend to get in a frumpy mood after a while considering I'm so bad at bowling. Or any physical activity for that matter. It was Jennifer's first time bowling and even her score was higher than mine.
          Yesterday, Saturday, was very relaxed. We were supposed to go visit the mall and some other general shopping areas, but I woke up feeling very sick so we stayed home and lounged all day. We got our food processor/blender delivered, which I can't wait to try out! Oh! And Jeremy found the GLS delivery office so now Lux has her food.
          Maybe tomorrow I will venture out, but as for today, everything is closed. Sunday is the day for rest, too bad we got that all out of our system yesterday!

          Well, while my lovely American readers are probably just starting their morning, I have already had quite the day. This afternoon I was to take the tram to meet Jeremy near his work so he could take me to the tutoring center to assess my skill level. I had only ridden the tram once before, and it was with Jeremy, so this would be my first time operating things. I got on the tram no problem. My stop is about 20 minutes away. The tram ride was pleasant, not very bouncy at all.
          When you get on the tram, you have to scan your bus/tram card. When I tried to scan it, it wouldn't work. The bus was already moving, and I didn't know how to buy another card. I starting getting nervous and imagining being kicked off by an angry card checker. Then I noticed other people were having the same problem and used a different scanner and it worked. Phew. Now I just have to sit back and wait for my stop.
           The tram announces my stop and I get up. A man in front of me gets up as well. There are three or four doors to the tram and we were in the middle. The tram came to a stop and the man pressed the button to open the door. It wouldn't work. Oh lord, I'm thinking I'll have to sprint to another door and try to make it. Finally the door opens as I'm about to go to another one, so I decide to stay. Then, as the man is passing through, the door starts closing! Shoot! So I stick my leg through the door so the sensor will react and open the door back up, only the door doesn't open back up.
          It starts squeezing tighter and tighter around my knee and I'm starting to panic. The button for the door won't work, the door won't open. I start pressing some random button whose function I am unaware of, that won't work either. The man who had gone in front of me and is safely on the other side is staring in horror, and my yelps of pain and English pleas of "It won't work! I'm stuck! How do I open this?" is grabbing the attention of the people around me. I try to physically pry the door open to no avail and the train starts moving.
          I start crying, of course, I'm in full on panic mode, and finally I manage to pull my leg back in. People around me are looking at me wondering if they should try to speak to this strange woman who obviously can't speak French, or if they should leave her be. I pull my phone out to call Jeremy and that is when everyone starts politely looking away. Luckily, the next stop wasn't too far away, and Jeremy would just meet me there instead.
          What felt like an eternity, but was probably only 3 minutes, passed and I got out at the next stop to wait for Jeremy. A few minutes later, the guy who had gotten off at the previous stop turned the corner and starting heading for me! He had walked out of his way to see if I was at the next stop and if I was alright! He could speak English decently enough, and once he learned that my fiance was on his way and that I was okay, he returned from where he came from.
          A few minutes later, Jeremy comes over, we go to the tutoring center, and I take my assessment. Eventually, the adrenaline and nerves started settling a little and I could tell my leg was sore. I'm home now, poor Jeremy had to take the rest of the day off because I wouldn't get on the tram by myself again.
          I'm shaken, I'm sore, I'm fatigued, and I'm embarrassed, but I'm here and I'm okay. Hopefully the rest of the day goes smoother.

          Today I was supposed to get my first every delivery to the apartment. It was food for my cat, Lux. We are having a really hard time finding high quality food for pets here, especially for cats. The French don't seem to care much about preventative care or high quality food for the pets. When Jeremy asked a friend where he could find high quality pet food, his friend looked at him funny and replied, "Why? Is she sick?"
          Cats look as if they're "feed 'em and leave 'em" type pets. Cats are constantly wandering the streets but aren't skittish or malnourished, leaving me to think ownership of a cat is basically leave a bowl of food out for them and maybe let them in on a cold or rainy night. The other day I opened the shutters of my living room to see a cat just chillin on top of the garage roof!
          I managed to find decent cat food online and ordered it for delivery. I had two options for shipping, kind of like Fed-Ex versus UPS, and not knowing the difference between the two I chose the one called GLS. Our apartment building is private, you can't get into the lobby without a key so what normally happens is the delivery man comes, finds your doorbell, and rings it. This sets off a phone in your apartment. You can either answer the phone and speak to them, or simply press a button on the phone that unlocks the lobby door. This way, a delivery man (or visitor for that matter) doesn't have to wait for you to go down however many flights of steps it may take to reach the lobby. If no one is home, the delivery man sends the parcel back to whatever delivery service office they came from and you have to pick it up there.
          Knowing the delivery was scheduled today, I opted to stay home all day. Well, at 2:14 pm I get a text saying that the delivery many tried to deliver the parcel at 2:11 pm but no one was home so now I have to pick it up at some town I've never heard of before. Um, excuse me? I have been waiting here all day! I didn't shower! I was afraid to go to the bathroom! I guess upon seeing that the apartment building was private, the delivery man was too dang lazy to lift his tiny, lazy finger to press our doorbell. Seriously, our doorbell is one of the first ones listed, and very easy to spot. Now I have to go to somewhere that, for me, may as well be Timbuktu to get my parcel. Meanwhile, poor Lux is almost out of food.
          Upon trying to find out where this GLS office is, because they don't text you an address, no, they just tell you the town, I find one somewhat near the town they said it was in. It's 20 minutes away by car and google maps can't tell me how to get there via public transportation. I also find out that it has 17 reviews, all 1 star. This is shaping up fantastically. I can't call and complain because 1. I don't speak French and 2. their call center CHARGES you for calling! I don't know what to do. Hopefully Jeremy's coworkers can shed some light on the situation tomorrow, or at least tell us how to get there via tram and bus.
          I am so angry, I feel like my whole day was wasted. To top it all off, I posted this entire thing, and somehow the website deleted it! I hadn't saved it in a draft or anything like that, so now I had to rewrite the whole thing. At least tonight we will try a Thai restaurant we spotted the other day.
          Early tomorrow afternoon, I have a meeting with the company who will be tutoring me to determine my level of French so they can plan a program to my skill level. Late tomorrow afternoon, I am meeting up with a coworker of Jeremy's. She takes her daughter to a place that teaches, among other things, conversational English. She told them about me and they said they would love to have me volunteer, so we are going tomorrow to see what it is all about.
          Tomorrow is a very busy day! But hopefully I will have time to post. Even if I end up posting very late at night, it will still be a decent time for all my American readers!

          Last night we went out with some friends Jeremy had made to a bar. The bar was a board game bar! You drink and play board games. The bar provides many games, but you can bring your own as well. It was very neat but the drinks were very expensive. I suppose the bar was losing money because people would be there for hours playing a game but only order one or two drinks and nurse them because they're so involved in their games. Jeremy's friends, Benjamin, Jean-Nikola, and Amondine, were very nice and spoke English very well.
          We played a game that roughly translates to "Manhunt in New York" where one player is a thief and the other players have to find him. There is a map of Manhattan from Central Park downwards and you can get around by taxi, bus, or subway. The thief is invisible and only shows his location once every five turns, and the rest of the players have to guess where he went and catch him.
          The bar doesn't serve food, and I think it's common that most bars here don't because Jeremy has gone to two (one was themed for e-sports) and neither of those served food either. I can't imagine why they wouldn't at least serve small things to nibble on. Amondine was hungry the whole time, and I didn't see any one at surrounding tables bring in snacks.
          Speaking of food, I have found that even the same foods taste different here. Onions are sweeter, garbanzo beans are more flavorful in a way I can't describe, and bread is more bitter. Broccoli and bananas taste the same, though the bananas here are absurdly huge. If I had to guess I'd say they're about 1.5x the size of ours. The only rice we've tried so far is riz rond, which is a very small, round rice. It is extremely dirty! I don't think I've ever had to wash my rice in America but I kept washing and washing and this stuff just wouldn't come clean. It's very sticky, but that could be because it wasn't completely washed. I just don't understand how anyone would have time to cook rice here when you have to spend a good 15 minutes just washing the darned stuff! We'll have to try a different rice and see how it turns out.
          We also got news from the shipping company! The container will arrive on the 29th. Supposedly. Jeremy doesn't believe it and I'm pessimistic as well. You see, in my last post I got my date wrong. Remember how I said it was supposed to be picked up and delivered by the 19th? Well I was wrong, Jeremy said that no, the original quote was also the 29th. So tell me how our original date of arrival was the 29th, and now it has been shipped 2 weeks later than it was supposed to have been shipped, and will still arrive here on the 29th? I just can't believe the ineptitude and lack of sincerity in their mistakes, especially considering Jeremy's company is paying them almost as much as I used to make in a year. Yup, you heard me right. Maybe I should get into the international shipping industry.
          Now I need to go lay down because my cold did indeed get worse. I was planning on making my first trip to the local grocery store today, but I'm getting fatigues within 20 minutes of standing. We'll see if I feel better later. Maybe I'll just sit in the shower with the water as hot as I can take it and inhale the steam or something. Thanks for reading! 

          Yesterday's big adventure was getting a cellular plan. Luckily, Jeremy already had a phone I could use which saved us some big bucks, so the only thing left was to find the best plan. After many uses of a translation app (I like google translate the best) we decided to go with a company called SFR. For 9,99€ a month I get 2 hours of phone time, unlimited messaging, and 500 MB of data. The funny thing is that there is not much competition between the phone companies here. They are all priced the same (except SFR just happened to have a sale that ended yesterday - lucky me!) and come with about the same stuff. It's not like the US where switching phone companies could save you a good $30 or more.
          So we go into our local SFR office and try to explain what plan we want and that we already have a phone. The guy then tells us we need to buy a SIM card from a convenience store and come back. Meanwhile, they're closing in 30 minutes. Yikes. So we rush to find a convenience store, buy a card for a wince-worthy 15€, and scuttle back on over to SFR. We get a different sales person so we have to repeat everything all over with her. Well what do you know, turns out we didn't need to buy the absurdly expensive SIM card after all, since she gave us one for free.
          I had forgotten my passport, stupidly thinking I could use my driver's licence, so we ended up having to put it down in Jeremy's name. Then came trying to spell out my name and e-mail address in French. Then Jeremy and I had different ideas of how to spell our street address. Isn't it sad when you don't even know how to say the street you live on properly? Finally, everything was all said and done and the only thing left was to put the SIM card in the phone. Uh-oh, the tray for the card is missing, and it is inoperable without it. So we take the card home with us, hoping to find the tray in the apartment from when Jeremy was playing around with it to make sure he could unlock it from Verizon.
          We decided to try and go back to the convenient store to return the SIM card. Hey, 15€ is 15€. We couldn't get our point across and Jeremy finally said something along the lines of "I give you card, you give me money" and upon proving it was unopened, he eventually gave us our 15€ back.
          I have caught a cold which isn't surprising at all considering every 5 minutes someone would sneeze or cough in the dang plane. I just got over a very severe sinus infection. Hopefully this cold will stay small because I won't have health coverage until my visa goes completely through which will be another 2 or 3 months in the making.
          We finally got news that our washing machine will arrive January 29th. It's over a month late and do you think we got an apology or compensation? Of course not! So we're trying to find another one we like from a different company. Even though it might take a little longer to get the washing machine if we do that, at this point we would rather the original company not get our money and wait a few extra days.
          Also, still no news on whether all our things from the US have shipped yet. Jeremy has emailed them two times and his HR manager has called them, to no avail. I can't decide if all these events are just coincidentally poorly run companies, or if this is just how France operates. Only time will tell, I suppose, but so far it seems if I want anything slightly major done, I should expect it to take months.
          Tonight's adventure is going out with a couple friends that Jeremy has made. Along the way, we need to scout for some restaurants to eat at, because it seems we won't be having our cookware for a long, long time.

          Well, after 48 days, two trips to New York, a plane, a train, and two trams, I am finally in Besançon! After an uneventful month and a half, this blog is about to get busy! My plane ride was mostly unremarkable. I have to admit, I expected much stricter security at both the Philadelphia airport and Paris airport due to the attacks in France lately, but they were even more lenient than when I had gone back in November!  
          I had a lovely window seat next to a lovely woman. Unfortunately, my movie screen did not work. I could not stand this flight without movies! So I was moved to an isle seat behind a rather malodorous man who kept laughing out loud to whatever he was listening to via his headphones while vigorously digging for ear gold.
          Jeremy met me at the airport and we caught up with one another. He had just received an email from the shipping company that our crate has not been shipped yet. This crate was packed on the 22nd of December and originally expected to arrive in France by January 19th. Now we are looking at mid to late February. Wonderful. I guess they figured foreigners living in a strange land wasn't enough of an adventure so they decided we should live out of our suitcases for a long amount of time as well.
          Luckily Jeremy's coworkers are very nice people. We now have silverware, a pot, three chairs, and three coffeemakers compliments of numerous coworkers, along with the pan and Pyrex bowl Jeremy brought in his suitcase and a wooden spoon, spatula, and bottle opener I brought with me. Hey, if I'm expected to live like this for an extended amount of time, you better believe I'm buying some wine! Disposable plateware is ridiculously expensive here so we're trying our best to make it on paper towels, the Pyrex bowl, and some plastic tin thing for biscuits.
          We have a fridge and a stove but no washing machine or microwave yet. Jeremy ordered the washing machine and microwave in mid December. They were to be delivered on December 19th. He took a half day off from work to wait for the delivery man and no one showed! Once he got to work he asked a coworker to call the company and see what happened.  Apparently, the washing machine wasn't in stock and the company decided that 1: calling and telling him that they didn't have the washing machine was unnecessary, 2: they decided that since they didn't have the washing machine in yet they weren't going to deliver the microwave, and 3: calling and telling him they weren't going to be delivering that day was unnecessary as well. He was told it would be there by December 29th at the latest. Well, here it is, January 19th and no washer or microwave. I don't know why Jeremy hasn't asked someone to call and figure out what the heck is going on. Maybe he feels like he is asking for too much help. Hopefully he will get the ball rolling now that I'm here.
          After Jeremy comes home from work today, we will hopefully find a cell phone plan for me. I don't feel comfortable walking around by myself until I have one. For anyone who doesn't know this about me: I have a terrible sense of direction. I think terrible is an understatement. Atrocious? Horrendous? No, I don't think any word is descriptive enough to describe my lack of directional skills. So call me crazy, but I want to make sure I have a phone with data so I can use GPS and translation apps before I go traipsing around an unfamiliar city full of people who speak an unfamiliar language.
          Wish me luck! I'll update tomorrow about tonight's adventures! I also want to take a moment and thank every one who has been using my amazon link! It really means a lot! For those who don't know, you can shop amazon through my amazon affiliate link search bar in the Support Us page and a percentage will go to me, with no extra cost to you!