Kyle Sara Abigail Andrew

Well the luxury of hot water is no longer one that we can lay claim to. It’s been out for almost a week now, and so it’s a real joy to try and take a shower. We will have to call our landlord about this tonight, but unfortunately there are also about five other things broken in the apartment. So it could be a pretty long conversation. Among the highlights: Only one of our electrical outlets currently functions, so we can no longer cook food and be on the internet at the same time. In fact, we can’t do anything having to do with electricity while we cook food. The ceiling is starting to peel in the bathroom, much like what was happening to our wall when we first moved in. The end result of the wall being in this condition was that half of it fell off and the dry paint stained a lot of our clothing. The shower now pumps out about a fraction of the water it should. Instead of shutting off the flow of water to the bathtub, it does about half and half. So if you want to take a shower, you end up about ankle-deep in recycled water. Finally, the vacumm that we “found” downstairs decided to blow up the other night, and, had Sara not seen the large glowing light forming inside, probably would have taken off more than one of my limbs. But we do at least still have the burnt rubber smell to hang onto. There’s nothing the landlord can do about this one, but it might be fun to let him know about it. Well, that’s it for the weekly apartment update. Early bets are being taken for the next catastrophe; so far the heater going out is at 5:1 odds.

The photos of our trip last week to the Musée d’Orsay are now up. You can see them by going to the Photo Albums.

We are both very glad that the weekend is finally here. Sara’s new job has been tiring her out and mine never seems to get any easier, so we are both going to enjoy the rest and time to sleep in. Hopefully the weather will get a little bit better at least. Today it was not only cold but pouring down rain. If that keeps up, it might be a long indoor weekend of online CSPAN viewing for us. Everyone think sun! We are working hard on grad schools for Sara next year. We have some leads that look promising. After I got some good news this week, we are hoping that we can both get through next year without going into too much debt. It’s very exciting even thinking about being home again. Neither of us can wait.

Good news is on the way! It’s still colder than heck here though. This makes our trip to Stockholm look like paradise. Punishing cold it is. Oh well, less than three weeks left of work now. I’m looking forward to doing nothing from April 1 to April 8 when my parents arrive. Nothing includes not going to work. Yeah! Well, like I said, good news to come.

The weather here is absolutely freezing. Especially with my long hair all gone, the wind is a killer. Listening to the warm reports from Oregon, I remember those first days of spring last year in Eugene when the temperature hit 70 degrees. Wish that was happening here! And I hope it lasts the whole spring this time, so we can enjoy it when we are back in May. Last year I remember it rained through June. Oh well, anything warmer than this will be great.

First day of new job today. It feels good to be busy again. Being home 2 days a week was making me start feeling like a bored housewife. It’s fun teaching in English again. Although I’m teaching a groups of students where some speak Spanish, some French, some I don’t know. My question is how do you manage 20 first graders at a time in a computer lab? Especially when only about half can understand English!

Well, we decided to change things around a bit here on kyleandsara.com. First of all, we have incorporated a little journal or weblog (blog to the layperson) for us to put down our thoughts each day (or as often as we can). We think this will be cool for many reasons: to help our friends and family see what we are doing, to force us to keep a record of our experiences, and to have fun with writing. You can see our daily blatherings just by coming to this main page of the site (the address will never change). All of the new blog entries are listed chronologically. You can also go back and look at old entries by going to the “Blog Archives” section on the left side of the page. So now you’ll never miss a second of new kyleandsara.com material, no matter how exciting these stories may get (see the plumbing tale that Sara wrote about below!). All of the old content is still available from the menu on the left side. There’s even some new stuff to look at on that side as well (keep up with our reading if you are bored). You can also comment on any blog entries we make just by clicking on the “comments” link at the end of each entry. Well, we hope you like it here. We’ll keep adding stuff because it’s fun. Thanks for coming by!

Well Saturday we went to Saint-Germain-en-Laye which is west of Paris. We saw the chateau there and walked through the big park next to it. Then we went and got Kyle a haircut. He needed one bad! He was having to wear a hat constantly to keep his hair out his face. Then we went and found the Hertz rental car office so we would know where to pick up the rental car we’re getting in April. Today (Sunday) we went to the Musée d’Orsay finally! We’ve tried to go there several other times but the line was always blocks long. Every first Sunday of the month is free museum day- so that’s the only reason we went. We’ll post our pictures up soon. There are so many Americans in town right now! It’s nuts, we hear more English than French. I start my new job tomorrow! Ahh! I’m kinda nervous. I’m sure it will be fine though. I’m substituting as an Information Technology teacher for 1st-5th grade at an international school in Paris.

It’s always nice to wake up on Saturday mornings to the sound of hundreds of screaming school children. They make the poor kids go to school on the weekends here and, lucky for us, we happen to live right next to one. At least it is sunny today, however, and I think we will try to go out to St. Germain En Laye to see the chateau and look at where we will be picking up our rental car for our trip to Normandy. Only about a month left until then- we can’t wait.

Well, it’s good to know that at least the authorities here gave it their all when scouring the 32,000 km of rail track for bombs, including putting the public into a panic by leaking the story. Although I’m a little more worried about the fact that we both take this train station to work everyday.