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this morning we got into our place, but for only an hour while the electric man came to turn on the power and the realtor did the inspection. i see for the first time, under light, that the bathroom is a pretty beat. years of grime have found their way deep into the grout work of the little pink tiles, in fact, it's seems that under light there is dirt cakes on all the tiles in the house. and in the toilet room (the bathroom and wc are often in separate rooms here; this is a good thing for us), well, there is a rusty patina etched so strongly in the bowl as if someone dropped a bunch of pennies in there decades ago and they decayed in there. this dampened my enthusiasm for the place somewhat, i must admit. were we too hasty? are we paying too much?

tonight we saw a debussy & shostakovitch quartet at the chapelle des pénitents blancs (church of guilty white people?). though everyone but us was decked up and over 60, it was only 6 euros (we claimed the student rate) to get in. seth enjoyed himself immensely, but while i found the musicians to be amazing, and the chapel a perfect venue for the quartet, the music's dichromatic tones gave me anxiety and i left needing therapy.

so the weather starting to turn cool and the wind blows fall, dried leaves are starting to swirl in the street. we bought our first baguette today, still warm and so very delicious.

our bank appointment was at 9am. the monsieur that scheduled the appointment and another mademoiselle help us set up our account. between our limited french and their limited english we manage to finish an hour and a half later with a joint checking account, and a carte bleu/visa/debit cart. there are lots of fees associated with french bank accounts. (as i'm learning, there are a lot of fees associated with everything here.) there were fees for my bank card and a different type of fee for seth's bank card, a fee for opening the account, a fee for automatic payments, a fee for checks, a fee for internet connection. oh, but there are no fees for using other banks atm machines. so to spite them i will never use theirs. ever!

we come back to the etap hotel to take a nap. the etap is where we've been staying for the past few days since our first hotel was booked. it's close and the same price, but the room is barely big enough for the uncomfortable bed. and it has a 1985 mauve and green trimmed decor. it's incredibly ugly. and everything in it is the lowest quality they could find. the shower curtain looks like a trash bag with loops, and how is 9 square feet of plastic supposed to keep water in the tub anyway? i wake up with brush burns from the sandpaper sheets. my face hurts. seth's back hurts. the worst thing is that it's nearly completely automated. you check in with a kiosk outside and slip of paper shoots out with your room number and 6 digit code. there's one guy that works a short shift in the mornings and evenings, but otherwise you're at the mercy of a sleep machine. "open the pod bay doors, HAL."

at least we have bbc on the telly.

it's late on wednesday, 23:08 european time, and seth is a chatterbox. he should be relishing this time that i'm absorbed in something else, since we've been spending all of our time together for 8 days straight, but for the last 2 hours that i have been writing, he has been drinking a bottle of wine. (he has been drinking a bottle a wine a day for the past three days. he says he is indoctrinating himself into french culture, learning about french wine. i say he is a 2euro-a-bottle wino). now the bottle is nearly finished, his lips and teeth are purple, and he is one chatty fellow. it is cute, if a trifle irksome as my concentration is tenuous. he is obsessed with going to switzerland at the moment. flipping through the channels he says, "alaska is the switzerland of the united states."

we wake up and head for la poste/western union to pick up the money that seth's parent's have hopefully sent. that was our best idea. the next best idea involved maxing our daily atm withdrawls for about a week and hoarding the money at the etap. have i mentioned how much we need up front to get a place? in france, you typically get an apartment through an agency and they take a hefty finders fee, usually less then a months rent, but our chi chi agency charges more. then there's first months rent, and a security deposit of two months rent. also taxes, renters insurance, paper fees. so we have a huge stack of money we're carrying and i'm nervous. but we make it unmugged, and we sign all the paperwork and viola, the place is nearly ours. but not yet. we are informed that we will have to wait until the first of the month. afterwards, i realize that i have been bitten alive the night before by mousquitos.

all last evening and all this morning and afternoon we tried to figure out how to get the money for the apartment. we have the money, but no way to get it out of our american bank account on time. so we have some pastis at a bar and think about it.

later i got yelled at for strolling in and using another bar's restroom. they're pretty touchy about that stuff here. oh, and i stepped in dog merde (which is everywhere, everywhere i tell you) and dragged it into an internet cafe.

get up early. we had to find an apartment, and we were determined to do it by the end of the day. this meant approaching various immoblier, or real-estate, agencies and requesting afternoon appointments to look at apartments, in our still-poor french. it would start by me introducting myself as an assistant de langue anglais and then seth as mon fiancé. and then saying that we would like to find a deux ou trois pièce entre 500€et 700€. the first three agencies were very nice and patient with our slow french. in the fourth agency there was just this hella cranky perma-sneer woman who wanted to see our paperwork before we could even sit down, and then after four minutes of silent scrutiny said she could only offer us tiny furnished studios because in france, she informed us, you have a contract for three years and they will not rent to you for less. we were nervous about this, of course. so i called corrine who assured me that it wasn't true.

our afternoon appointments. the first guy shows us two places in such a hurry i could barely make out any detail. we didn't love either. the next guy, the only agent to wearing a suit, in hot weather no less, shows us two gorgeous places. the first one has so much light and those enormous french windows. it's overlooking a quiet street and the back faces a courtyard. the next place is a lovely little chalet style place with the ceilings crossed with logs. and it's in an amazing and lush courtyard. but it's also little, and seth would hit his head on a log going down the stairs, and again when walking into the kitchen, and again when waking up.

we cancel our 5 o'clock apt and decide on the first one that he showed us, the windowed one. After all, it is nearly the end of the day and we had our goal. I call corrine to ask her a question about the rental contract and she says she's going to come to the appointment with us. so we meet at 5, er... 17:00, seth and me, the realtor, an english speaking manager, and corrine. first corrine and the realtor get in a fight about the contract. not sure about what part, but it's fast and french and finishes with a souffle of air. then we find out that we can't get the place without a french bank account, and we can't get a french bank account because we don't have a place. one of many catch 22s that happen here everyday in french paperwork land, ladies and gentlemen.

the annual bicycle celebration all day today in avignon. bikes, bikes everywhere.