And.... ça y est.

We're gone! Farewell my beautiful apartment! Jube and I are living with his parents in the small town of Gallargues le Montueux while we look for apartments in Nice. That's right, Nice. The teachers' union called last week to tell him that he was "attached" to a middle school in the city. So we can finally start looking at apartments! As we were packing up, I found this "special edition" Tour de France version of gummy bears: gummy bicyclists! I took a picture of the package, and I was going to reconstitute one of my Tour pictures, but I got really hungry while we were packing and ate them instead.

All weekend after the Tour de France we cleaned and packed. On Monday, Jube's family came and helped us pack all of our stuff up and put it in a rented moving van. After we moved everything out, we took it to his grandparents' house in nearby Saint Jean de Védas. His aunt gave us some useful appliances (such as a washing machine and a real oven!!), so we moved those out too. So as you can see, I have spent some quality time with Jube's family in the past few days. And we are so grateful to them that we have decided to ignore all of the "You should have packed it like this" and the "Well, I'm not used to moving either, I just do what seems logique!" comments--or laugh at them instead, as Jube recommends.

Tomorrow they are going to Narbonne to drop off "le Pacha," Jube's younger brother. He's spending a week or two with a friend's family. Then on Friday Jube's older brother, "le Parisien," is coming to visit with his new girlfriend, "the Lisper." In fact, we haven't met her yet--le Parisien called to warn us that she has a "slight speech impediment" and not to make fun of her... so of course the entire family has been doing just that ever since. "Hello, my name ith The Lithper," for example... or, "Tha va?"

I had always heard stories about how hard it is to get along with/ live with the in-laws, but I have a great time. I'm just afraid of what they say about me behind my back...