Meeting the Bank Manager & the first Weekly Shop!!

First day without driving on the wrong side of the road – a milestone!

It’s been a wet cold day. Snowing heavily in the mountains above us, it has been trying to snow at Le Refuge, but only succeeding in a wet sleet at this stage.

Another disturbed night’s sleep. Maybe there is something in this Jetlag business? I certainly did not feel myself at all today. Headaches, stomach cramps and generally not 100%. So we were late starters this morning, but we had to get going as Liz was taking us to the Bank to help us open an account.

Liz picked us up in her right hand drive Land Rover Discovery. Given that we are still trying to get the hang of driving on the other side of the road, this new variation made our heads spin with confusion as we headed to Credit Agricole in Les Carroz. Liz and Richard know the bank manager who lives only 2 houses up the hill from us. This of course makes all the difference!! We know that it would have been almost impossible for us to battle bank bureaucracy without her help and we can’t believe our luck that she & Richard have taken us under their wings. We still have to produce an electricity account from our residential address in NZ. Have no idea why? But if the forms say that we must, we must! And we then need to meet again with him in an official capacity on Tuesday at 3pm. So we will await our fate until then.

We shared a quick coffee with her then got ourselves organized to head to Cluses and another visit to Carrefours to pick up some sturdy hiking boots, which, given the wet snowy weather, were going to be essential. We also had to face the daunting prospect of having to buy a pre-paid SIM card for our phone. Quite a challenge but with a feeling of great triumph we managed the feat despite the kind lady not speaking very much English at all.

Last on the list was the weekly shop for groceries. I could from see from Graeme’s face that boredom was going to rapidly settle in – so I sent him off to buy the wine. Given that three whole aisles, about 20 metres long and 4 shelves high were dedicated to wine and other alcoholic beverages, I knew he would be entertained and I could get on with the mundane purchases.

Wine is cheaper than bottled water in France! We have absolutely no idea what to buy, and we are impatiently awaiting a guidebook on French Wine that Cam (Gra's brother) has mailed to us from Australia. In the interim, Graeme’s choices have certainly been drinkable although the very light Gamay style on the first night was a little shock to the palate.

Second only to the choice of wine is the cheese selection! Oh my goodness, we are in seventh heaven. Severe restraint will need to be exercised. Our fridge has already been stocked with a small selection of smelly camembert, light blue and chevre. To prevent ourselves from totally gorging ourselves, we carefully meter out the cheese at lunch time with our salad and bagette. The skiing will need to come soon to survive the diet!

The remaining things on our to do list are : the purchase of skis, boots & skins, get the bank account open, and enrol in an intensive language course for a week or so. We thought we might do this for a week and then follow up with twice weekly lessons with Liz. But most importantly we really need to get the internet up and running in our apartment so we can correspond more often with friends and family.

Fingers crossed that we wake up to snow on the ground tomorrow morning. That would be very exciting!!