Getting set up. . .in French

The Grocery Store:



Our first trip to the grocery store was quite the event. Here in Montreux, the stores close at 6:00 except in one shopping center, a bit out of town, that closes at 7:00. Seriously, how do people get any errands run before 6:00pm? Anyway, on Tuesday, we headed straight there after work. Our list included groceries, of course, as well as the essential appliances (vacuum, hair drier, shaver etc). This means we needed a large cart and had only 40 minutes to shop. The only problem was that the carts were chained together with this strange little key attached. It took us awhile to figure out that you had to "rent" the cart. Hum, I guess they've seen the slums in the US and didn't want us walking away with their cart. The other issue was that we had no idea how much to pay and it was not listed. We stood there for a moment shoving money in and taking it out until it took a 5 Franc piece.

After we got the cart figured out, it was supermarket sweep to fulfil all of our needs in 40 minutes. There were two appliance stores right next door to each other so Scott and I quickly attempted to compare prices and functions of the needed items. We did not recognize any of the brands and were unsure of what we were looking at so just had to make our best guess. This killed Scott since he is used to researching for months before a purchase. I thought it was fun :) Next was onto the grocery store next door. Besides the 7 CHF box of brownies, 9 CHF for two small chicken breasts and no baby carrots, it all went well.  Mission was accomplished in 40 minutes and we had a basket full of goods.

We conquered the grocery store earlier this week. We have also successfully opened a bank account, filled up the gas and run the washing machine in French. The 7 CHF box of brownies I attempted to cook on the other hand didn’t turn out so well. I will really need to get used to the metric system. Other than that, we have been thoroughly enjoying the weather and our views. Our neighbors/landlord are incredibly nice and very welcoming, as well are all of the people we work with. We also wanted to pass along a special thanks to Nick and Jessica for sending us the beautiful flowers that have helped make our house a home.

There are little things each day that are tough to understand with our lack of knowledge of the culture and the language. We are learning as we go and very excited to start French lessons on Wednesday!