First French Exam

Lydia — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:11:15 +0000

Last week I sat my first French exam. I really struggled with conjugating some of the verbs (I forgot that connaître “to know” conjugates to nous connaissons “we know”), and it is still hard for me to remember that often something special is required if the next word begins with a vowel. Still, I have learned a lot in the past few months, and I have really enjoyed my classes. The lessons themselves are mostly spoken role-playing, while the homework involves memorisation of vocabulary. I have a great teacher, and I really enjoy the company of the other students. It is a very fun environment, full of laughter whenever I tell them I am wearing a hen “Je porte une poule” instead of pullover “Je porte un pull“, or I try to pronounce the word like happy (“heureux“) that doesn’t contain any phonemes found in the English language.

Homeowners

Lydia — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:54:39 +0000

Yesterday was a big day. We met in Ghent to sign the final deeds on our mortgage and the deeds for our apartment. We were there with our notary, the seller was there with his notary, there was a representative from the bank, and a legal secretary. They really like conducting business in person here in Belgium. The documents were in French, but verbally translated to us by our notary. The seller and his notary could read French but held their discussions in Flemish. It took two hours for the notary to go through every article and ensure that we understood and agreed to what we were signing. They were very thorough. He even gave us the document that we would need to submit to the government to protect €900/month of our income if the rest was seized by the bank for non-payment of the loan. Each page had a lovely big red stamp that read “Belgische Notaris – Notaire belgique – Belgische Notar”, and was initialed by all parties present. Finally, with a handshake an exchange of the keys, the home was ours.

After that we went to Ikea to order a dining table, chairs, bed, mattress, sofas, desk, and coffee table. It is a big deal to get things delivered to our apartment. The elevator is too small for most items. Thus, we need to register with the police to block off part of the road, and then hire a 15th floor external crane/lift to move everything through the windows. So we need to get everything delivered from our old place and from Ikea on the same day – July 10th.

Finally, it was time to walk through our very own apartment. Adrian hadn’t seen the place for four months, so I hoped that he still liked it. You can see the entrance to the metro from the front door of the apartment complex:

Eleven stories later, we saw our front door:

And our entrance, with a bucket of paint to redo the outside windowsills, if we wish:

The guest bedroom:

The day was glorious, we opened up the windows, and Adrian discovered that we can see six of the Atomium atoms from the lounge-room if we stick our heads out. We could also see people picnicking in the park below:

Twice Mice » language

First French Exam

Homeowners