Ready for the US...!

  Oyonnax, France
Tuesday, October 2, 2007

So it draws to an end, the month in France. We are now all packed and ready, have to wake up at 5 tomorrow to be in Lyon at 7, flight to London at 8 and then a few hours in the old home country. Might go to the pub :-)

So what did we do for a month in France? Relax! Neither one of us has had this kind of a month for probably more than 10 years, that is since summer jobs started at around 15. We've eaten, slept, watched rugby, and footie (not Jo), drank champagne, read some books, watched the whole season of Heroes...

You can discover anything at the market!

Imagine the only day you have to wake up early is Saturday, and that is to go to the market to buy some cheese, bread, veggies, fruit and meat. Like pigs' heads... we didn't buy that!!!

We've had the most fabulous September, some tell us it was better weather than in August here and it most certainly was better than it was in Edinburgh for the summer. if only Edinburgh had better weather, it would be the place for us...

There was some paper work to take care of before leaving. It is a requirement that you have a travel insurance and for us it turned out to be a bit of a problem... Neither one of us is officially resident anywhere at the moment and we are not covered by our own countries' social security anymore, having lived abroad for years. Officially we are not residents of UK either, we don't have any address there! So what are we, outlaws? This was causing some problems with the insurances. Julien was first told by his parents' insurance company that he's automatically covered as part of the parents' insurance. This sounded too good to be true, they cover 27 year old independent son who hasn't lived at home since he turned 20?? Great! Well it wasn't true... so had to buy our own insurances. In the end we took one that covers a couple and it is for UK residents. So in case of any emergency we get shipped back to Edinburgh. If you are in our situation, living abroad and going travelling, try to re-activate your original home country's social security or take the insurance before you leave your present home country!

Also worth checking out is tax returns, get a form from Inland Revenue and send them some copies of payslips and P45s etc and you might get some back... We have sent ours and are eagerly waiting for good news on that front!

And here we go now, to bed soon and trying to get some sleep before the long travel tomorrow. We've booked into a hostel in Hollywood Boulevard so activity is guaranteed any time of the day, don't have to worry about jet lag - we can go out whenever we want :-)