After a rough night of partying. Easter Party Bunny.

Traveling with Baby

2 weeks ago we took our first weekend road trip with Mathieu. It was a 4 hour trip up to Metz (In the north of France) to visit family for Easter. Mathieu decided not to sleep the first night which basically killed me and Valerie. He woke up crying every hour or so and we didn’t get any sleep that night. We aren’t sure what caused it but something was bothering him. Maybe he had a slight ear ache. The following night he was back to normal.

We did get a break on Saturday. Valerie’s godchild babysat while we spent the afternoon in Luxembourg with her cousin. Luxembourg is a beautiful city. I wasn’t expecting it to be so nice. There was even some sort of American festival going on. They were selling hotdogs (not real beer steamed hotdogs which I miss eating at Weiner Works), buffalo wings and baked potatoes with live country and blues music for entertainment. We didn’t partake in the festival though; instead we went to an American eatery and order some fish n chips and a few beers. It was pretty good but they served us way too much food and we couldn’t finish. There were no Americans eating there but there were plenty of British.

Overall, the weekend went well. Mathieu seemed to handle the trip pretty well. But the real traveling test will come this weekend when we head to Venice. The plane fight is only 1 hour 30 mins which is short in comparison to the flight we are going to take at the end of the month to the US. Hopefully, we will all pass with flying colors and not piss off too many passengers due to a crying kid.

Good news and Bad news

Well, what do you want to hear first? I guess I will start with the bad news. After all the work I did to exchange my driving license to a French license my application has been denied!!! Apparently, my temporary carte de séjour (immigration equivalent of the green card) that I received to live in France was considered to be my original carte de séjour. In order to freely exchange a US license with a French license you must apply in time of your first carte de séjour which by the way is valid for one year. Anyway, I only had mine for 6 months because when I found a job in Lyon, we moved from Marseille to Lyon. At that time I had to hand over my original carte de séjour and wait for the new one to be made since I moved to a new region in France. In this waiting period they give you a piece of paper that states you are "waiting". Well, of course you cannot use that to apply for the license. I finally received the new carte de séjour 6 months later after the 1 year period was over. OF COURSE...

So after Valerie wrote a couple of letters complaining about the fact that I didn’t have a fair amount of time to do the exchange since we had moved during the period I got the chance to fight my case in front of the Tribunal d’Administration (similar to the courthouse). I went to the Tribunal and in front of the judge I pleaded my case asking that I could have the final 6 months to apply for the exchange. Well apparently, it didn’t make a different. What a waste of time and a day of vacation but at least I got to experience firsthand how the French judicial system works. It is very similar to the US system actually.

Now, after 20 years of driving, of which 3 of those years have been in France, I have to go take driving school and take the written test which apparently is very difficult and very expensive. I am not looking forward to this. I think I will keep driving with my US license for a little longer.

On the other hand, we did win one of our fights with the French administration in which once again, Valerie had used her superior letter writing skills to help me get my 10 year residency card. As of today, I have it!!

This means, no more taking a half day of vacation to go to the Prefecture (Immigration Building) every 3 months to renew a stupid piece of paper that allows me to stay in the country while you wait for your real card to be prepared. “Inevitably they tell you that they are behind schedule and you must come back again 3 months later”. You typically repeat this process around 3 times.

No more standing in the cattle line an hour before the doors opens with 100s of others in the freezing cold.

No more spending 3 hours pushed up against a wall trying to avoid the incredibly packed little office in hopes your number is called before they close at 3:30pm and no more battling a bitter administration worker who has already been yelled at around 50 times by pissed off people who forgot to copy 1 piece of paper in their application so she tells them to come back when it is complete.

I have been living in France for almost 4 years now. I am married to a French citizen, have a child who was born in France, a job and pay French taxes but it still has taken near 4 years to get this stupid card. Well, the next step is dual-citizenship so I will probably have to go put up with the same hell again next year.

You can see it was just a light case of the chicken pox. Lucky him and us!!

Varicelle "chicken pox"

Well it has been a fun couple of weeks for Mathieu and his parents. 2 weeks ago he had a cold and following that he came down with the chicken pox. To start, a little background. His Nanny has 3 kids. 1 two year old, 1 ten month old and Mathieu. Well, the 2 year old had chicken pox in which the Nanny conveniently forgot to tell us about. Val found out when the 2 year came up to her and said “boutons, boutons”, which means zits or in this case chicken pox. Anyway 2 weeks later Mathieu and the 10 month year old came down with it. Overall, it didn’t affect Mathieu too much. He still has a lot of bumps but he didn’t really seem to suffer too much other than being a bit lethargic. I saw the other kid yesterday and she looked liked hell. Her face was covered. Her mother said she had had a fever for 3 days and wasn’t sleeping. I guess Mathieu got lucky and got Val’s immune system and not mine. She never gets sick. I will post a pic as soon as I get a chance.

I am bored with all these pics but since Mommy and I look so cute I will endure one last pic.

My name is Coolican....... Mathieu Coolican.
No more comment needed.

Just look at this face. I am too cute for my own good.

American sports

I had to have a pic of Mathieu and me in our Raiders gear (I have the Kings gear as well). This is one thing that worries me about living in France. He will probably be a soccer fan which I am not. Hopefully one day he will share some of the passion I have for watching the Sac Kings and the Oakland Raiders.

Parents just over 3 months

Well we have been parents for over 3 months. I can’t say that it has been easy but it hasn’t been too difficult yet either. Overall Mathieu is very quiet. He doesn’t cry too often and he sleeps through the night (sometimes 13 hours) which he has done since Xmas. One of the hardest things for us is to leave him at the Nanny all day. I feel like we are going to miss all his progress by doing this but we both need to work. I find it is nice to have a bit of a break but I also feel that I am missing him during the day. In fact the best part of my day is to go pick him up at the Nanny and to watch his face light up with a big smile when he sees me.

In the last month he has become really talkative and he is trying to grab everything around him. We have been trying to get him to say “hello” in coo language. Val made a video the other night and he said it. It was really cute.

Both of us are dying to show him things. We took him to the zoo the other day and showed him all the animals. Not sure if he really enjoyed it or not but he definitely was staring at them and probably wondering what they are. Anyway I am going to post a few pics to go with this so everyone can see how much he has grown.

Mathieu Benjamin has arrived

On October 22, 2007 Mathieu decided to make his appearance in the world. Although, at first he wasn't sure about it, which made his mother have to have an emergency c-section. After all was said and done both Valerie and Mathieu were in perfect health. Mathieu weighed in at an astounding 4150g (9.1pounds) and 55cm (21.7in).

First, like all parents probably say, he is beautiful. Now we have entered his 6th day of life and at the moment he is sleeping allowing his parents to rest for a few hours. Here are a couple of pics.

Valerie at 8 Months

It looks like she is already ready to pop but she still has to wait until mid October.

8th Month of Pregnancy

I always do the same thing. I wait a couple months before publishing new stuff and then I write to blogs in the same day. Well, at least I am writing.

We have almost completed the baby’s room. I repainted it and added some curtains to make it darker. We are getting the crib, stroller, high chair, car seat, and some other things from Val’s friend so we are pretty much ready aside from some odds and ends. Valerie has bought a ton of stuff on eBay recently. Gotta love this site, at first we didn’t want to have used things but after we saw that most of the prices are practically double what you might pay in the US, Valerie decided it was best to do our shopping on eBay. In fact I am thinking about calling the kid eBay…

Everyday has been getting a bit more difficult for Valerie to climb the stairs up to our 3rd story apartment. She is going to stop working in 2 weeks though. She is, of course, extremely excited not to work for the next 4 months. She thinks that she is going to get a bit bored but I am sure that will all change once our baby arrives.

Short Summer Vacation

We just came back from Toulouse which is unfortunately, the last vacation we are going to take for the year with our soon to be arriving son. More about that later.

Toulouse is a beautiful city. It is a bit smaller than Lyon but with lots of charm. It is called the Rose city since all the buildings are built in red brick incorporating old and new architecture. In fact it reminds me a lot of Sacramento. There are beautiful canals that flow through the city that add to its charm. To me, it seems a bit more modern than Lyon, but than Lyon is supposed to be one of the most traditional cities in all of France.

The city is the headquarters for Airbus so you can imagine a large percentage of the people living there work for Airbus or one of its affiliates. Everywhere you look there is an Airbus office. In fact our friend works for Airbus and she lives 2 minutes from her office.

When we landed at the airport we even got to see the A380 for the first time (the biggest commercial airline in the world). Actually both Val and I thought it looked small, but apparently it is shorter in length than most long haul airplanes and wider in the body.

Anyway, we didn’t spend all our time in Toulouse. We spent some time in The Lot. This is a region north of Toulouse. We stayed at a bed and breakfast with a pool (a necessity since it was hot) and then we visited a couple of medieval villages in the area, one being Figeac, the birth place of Jean-François Champollion who was the first to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs as well as a part of the Rosetta Stone.

After our trip in the Lot we traveled by train over to Carcassonne to visit some of Valerie’s family. In Carcassonne we rented a small electric boat and took a trip down the river. What is interesting here is that they have these gates in the river called Ecluses (or Locks). They are sections, usually 2 gates, in the river that raise and lower boats between stretches of water that are at different levels. It is really cool to watch. One stretch of the river maybe 20 feet higher than the other so if the boat is on the lower part they open the gate in front of the boat and the boat enters the gated section. The gate closes behind it and then the gate on the far end opens a slight bit to let the water rise within the gated area. It is similar to filling a bathtub. Once the gated area has risen to the level of the new stretch of river the boat can travel through. I believe this is the way the Panama Canal works.

Overall, the vacation was short as they always seem to be and now we stuck at home for a while. At least it is for a good a reason. The baby is due in 2 months!

Worst Flight Ever - Morocco

We recently traveled to Morocco where we spent several days in Marrakech and a few in Agadir. It was my first steps on the African continent so that was rather interesting for me. The country is well worth a visit and we really enjoyed our stay. But the true point of this blog is to speak about Atlas Blue Airlines which we will never fly again.

Atlas Blue is one of those normally good low-cost airlines and they offer direct flights from Lyon, France to Marrakech. Well, to start, going over to Marrakech wasn’t so bad. We had a flight at 10 pm which was projected to land in Marrakech at 11pm. (It is a 3 hour flight, and Marrakech is 2 hours behind France.) So the first leg of the trip we took off a little over 2 hours late arriving at around 1 am in the morning. Luckily we had a person from the bed and breakfast there to pick us up. I am sure he wasn’t too happy but we were happy to be there and to get some sleep.

Waiting in hell….

On the return we had a flight at 4 pm so we arrived at 2pm which is normal for an international flight. After checking our baggage and heading through security it was about 3 pm so we had plenty of time to relax. There wasn’t much to look at, only a Duty Free shop and a small cafeteria. Around 4pm we notice that our flight had been pushed back to 6pm on the Departure screen. No big deal we can handle a small delay. Then, when 6pm came, there was still no plane and the flight had been pushed back to 10pm on the departure screen. Now it was getting a bit frustrating. No announcement had been made so we had no information on why we were being delayed. Around 8pm the flight completely disappeared from the screen and once again, no announcement was made. The passengers were starting to get pissed off so a group of them demanded that the airport personnel give us food and tell us what was going on. We were able to get food consisting of a piece of bread and bologna but no information on the flight. In fact many at this time, passengers were heading over to duty free and buying alcohol to drink since the cafeteria was near dry of food and drink. Finally, at just after midnight, a plane was prepared to take us home. Once we boarded the captain announced, in fact he was the first person to give us any information, that he had been called 2 hours prior to come to work to fly us home. He followed that statement by telling us that we would be making a detour to Madrid, Spain to drop off 50 passengers. So 2 hours later we arrived in Madrid and dropped off the passengers. An hour after the passengers were dropped off we were still sitting on the tarmac. The captain came on again and said, “I believe you all have the right to know the truth. We are supposed to pick up 50 more passengers here, but they will not board the plane.” Personally, I can understand this since they were supposed to be going to Marrakech but were going to be going first to Lyon 2 hours in the wrong direction and then to Marrakech. By 5 am after sitting on the tarmac for over 2 hours, the passengers finally boarded. We arrived in Lyon at 7:30am. Only 15 hours late!!!! Oh and I forgot to mention, there is no beverage or food on this flight. NEVER, NEVER FLY ATLAS BLUE!!