Well, it’s not official yet but he has been offered a job at a hotel in Paris. He’s going to Paris this weekend and will sign the contract on Monday. I hope that’s all there is to it and he didn’t misunderstand. I’m sure she did say she wanted him to sign a contract so fingers crossed. I don’t want to celebrate until it’s signed but I’m pretty happy about the news and so is Ferbent, of course.

So this means we’ll be moving back to Paris. Moving to Montpellier was only really meant to be a temporary move while we improved our French and so we had a base for job hunting, but I don’t really want to move now. I know I’ll be much happier in Paris because there are so many more things to do, I just don’t want to go through the hassle of looking for an apartment and moving.

It’s so difficult to find a decent apartment in Paris. I don’t want to rush my search and then get something I’m not happy with, like here in Montpellier. I want to get at least a one bed apartment with a proper kitchen, timber floorboards, and renovated. We only pay 490 euros per month here but in Paris I think we’ll be looking at closer to 1000. I did see on TV the other day when 2 girls found a renovated one bed in a really nice location for 900 but I don’t know how old the show was.

Anyway, one thing at a time. Ferbent needs to sign his contract and then we need to find some kind of temporary accommodation for him while I sort out the new apartment and the move.

The French seem to have a bit of a reputation for a lack of dental hygiene and if you saw the disgusting rotting front teeth of the concierge in my building you’d understand why. However, I’m a little confused. If you go to any supermarket you’ll see rows and rows of toothbrushes and toothpaste. I never imagined they could make so many different varieties. The thing I don’t get is where is the dental floss? They have all these different toothbrushes and then only 1 type of floss? Sometimes they don’t have any floss at all. Today I had to go to the pharmacy to buy some. They only had one variety, of course, and it cost a whopping 3.80 euros. I don’t get it.

I spent the last day and a half in Paris. It wasn’t much of a trip as the only reason I went was because Ferbent had a job interview and he didn’t want to go alone. The interview went well and he’ll find out next week if he gets the job. Apart from that it was a quick trip to Le Bon Marche for some Aesop makeup, which you can’t get in Montpellier, and some delicious food from their fantastic food hall.

Surprisingly, Montpellier is only 3 and a half hours from Paris by TGV. I thought it would take much longer considering the distance. It was a nice trip, especially seeing we went first class for only 40 euros each, although I wasn’t prepared for the bitterly cold weather when we arrived.

It’s a trip I could easily make more often, to go shopping or just for a change of scenery. Of course I won’t need to make that trip if Ferbent gets this job. It also looks like he’ll have another job interview in Paris next week, which I won’t be going to, so chances are we’ll be moving to Paris. I’d prefer to live in Paris, having loved living there for a year in 1999, and I don’t really enjoy living in little Montpellier, but I can’t really be bothered moving. I hate the thought of having to find a new apartment and then to move all our things. Not to mention we’ll probably pay twice the rent for half the size apartment there.

Anyway, the important thing is for Ferbent to get a job so I can get my carte de sejour and get a job myself.