Our new house is in a small housing estate of similar houses, with a
communal garden area and a pool. The place is really well maintained
and looks quite nice. Apparently there is an Australian couple a few
doors down, too. It's only a short walk from a new shopping district
and a twice-weekly market. Not too far from Bruce's work, either
(Bruce's bosses think it's forever away, but it's only a few
kilometres, really).

The actual house is a two bedroom, two storey town house. There's a
garage (read place to store bikes and boxes of stuff from the
shipping), decent sized lounge room, kitchen (has NOTHING in it except
a sink, but we'll fix that), bathroom etc. There's a little private
backyard with a place to put a table. It's all very new, well designed
and clean. We have a 3-year lease, good landlord etc. It's all looking
great.

We're allowed to be here for now, but we need more documentation to be
allowed to stay permanently. At least when we have a house and
internet we will be able to research stuff easily, then I can dedicate
a small amount of each day to negotiating the paperwork.

There's a million years of historic bureaucracy that says Bruce needs
a bunch of papers approved before he can work, even though technically
he shouldn't anymore. Meh. It's paperwork we needed to do eventually
anyway, but it's still annoying. We may have found a loophole to allow
Bruce to work right now. At least then Bruce can start work while I
keep hacking at our paperwork.

The really annoying thing about French bureaucracy is that they've
given local councils HUGE powers and then left them with confusing,
conflicting rules (and no information on EU rules). Plus, they don't
seem to have effective communication on changes in the rules. In the
end we think our guarantee to stay here will depend on whether the
people at the prefecture like us. *fingers crossed*

Posted at 7:31 AM #