Daily Archive

Sheesh. I can’t believe January and February flew by like that. Sorry for failing to update! Hi all. It’s Ange writing again – Bruce promises to start writing sometime soon.

We left Lyon on early January and drove over to Agen, where we’re now living and settling in properly. The drive over was a saga, which nearly left us with a car that didn’t quite fit all of our gear. We spent two hours re-packing the car until it all finally fit in.

We spent January living with a lovely family who helped us to organise our French paperwork, taught us some French, fed us lots of awesome French food and generally made us very welcome. These people are also Bruce’s bosses, so he’s pretty happy that he’s working with nice people.

Bruce wasn’t able to start work straight away, despite EU legislation being clear that he could, French authorities want things to be done their way and we had to get him a titre de sejour first. So, January became one big saga to get Bruce a titre de sejour. We would have had to do this anyway, but it was nice to have a native French person helping me to work out what was what. To get it, we eventually collated around 200 bits of paper with French explanations as to what it all meant, official French translations of birth certificates, proof of French housing, bank details, passports, proof of entering the country, proof of employment, proof that we plan to pay French tax, insurances, Australian tax returns, payslips going back half a year, proof of housing in Australia etc etc. Luckily, you don’t have to pay to apply for the titre de sejour, but you do have to pay for the official translations ($50 per birth certificate/wedding certificate) and spend hours and hours chasing up bits of paper and collating them ready for submission. By the end of the month, we had a titre de sejour, so now he can work. Woo!

So, Bruce now works at Agralis, troubleshooting and fixing soil moisture monitoring probes (Some from Sentek, some from competitors). He has a 6 month contract, which will be renewed if his French has improved, presuming Agralis has enough work for him. He’s also on the website. He seems to be doing a lot of travelling for work at the moment, since he helps people to set up their probes correctly and goes to conferences. He went to Vienna for a conference but I haven’t uploaded the photos yet (Bruce took about 400 photos of a couple of swans and I have no idea which ones to keep – seriously).

Oh – I forgot the big news of January. Bruce got a haircut for this job. The head of the company thought Bruce looked like a hippy (and didn’t approve) so it’s gone now.

So, that was January in a nutshell. The picture version of January is here, although I still need to add some photos.

February saw us moving into our own place-ish. We’re renting part of a mansion from a couple known to our previous hosts. It’s a very nice house and we have heaps of space. Downside is that it’s not permanent, since the owners are trying to sell. But, we can unpack as much as we can be bothered and the rest can live downstairs in storage. If we’re still here when it warms up we can make use of the pool out the back, too.

Our new landlords are also a lovely couple, who I’ve now had a meal with (while Bruce was away at the SIMA agricultural exhibition in Paris) and gone for a nice wander around a forest.

Bruce also got sent to Biarritz for a work thing, so I tagged along and we made a weekend of it. We managed to stay in a hotel run by an English guy who had lived in Adelaide for a few years. We had to leave before we found out that we’d been to school with his family or whatever other Adelaide effect was in store for us.

I guess this is a good a time as any to mention that the Grillies got their own blog. Silliness ensues.

So, February was mainly settling into the new place and Bruce settling into the job. I’m finishing up the last of my degree and hunting a few more bits of elusive paper which will ensure more permanent titre de sejour. The picture version of February is here.