Starting From Scratch: Confessions of a Neurotic Couple

This is not my first time living away from home. It is not my first time living in another country. It is not even my first time making a home with Kris. But something about this time is different, and even if the lack of meaningful possessions and moving at least once every three weeks out of the last twelve are what are different, they aren't why it is different. This time is different because, as children, Kris and I both hoarded sticker sheets.

When I was a child, I loved the office supply aisle. All the notebooks and pens, all of the legal pads still unused with unbroken bindings. They were all little treasures of untapped potential, waiting to be used in the perfect moment. I still stare longingly at packs of legal pads at the grocery store, thinking about the mix of practicality and inspiration they hold. More often than not, I buy them. How can I not? Blank legal pads are like the future. The problem starts once you get the legal pads home. You want to use one, but you have all of those partial legal pads waiting to be used. Shouldn't you use those first, and save that new one for that novel you were going to start? Or use it only for letters? Or make it a secret collection of letters that you will never send? Oh, even better. Use it for that novel about a secret collection of letters that you write but never send?

In the end you decide it is better just to use the old legal pads and save the blank one for that new idea. Just make sure you carry it with you, in case inspiration strikes. (I have at least one blank notebook in every bag I carry. At least one.)

I had never met anyone else who suffered from this mix of being obsessively prepared but constantly compelled to wait for some future perfect moment. Then, one day I opened a drawer in Kris's childhood bedroom and found stacks of unused sticker sheets. I couldn't believe it. Could it be true? I had to be sure. So I dug and, yes, there beneath the sticker sheets with piles of coloring books, uncolored! Kris found me with a lapful of sticker sheets and, after looking at me like I had discovered some dark secret, said, "You never know when the perfect moment for a sticker will come. And once you use a sticker it's, you know... stuck."

Yes. I did know.

So now Kris and I have been together for eight years and married for five, and there are great things to be said about similarities within couple. Neither of us think the other is crazy for arriving twenty minutes before a scheduled meeting. We don't even think the other is crazy for arriving twenty minutes before a scheduled meeting and, when it is eighteen minutes before the scheduled meeting and no one else is there, becoming completely convinced that the meeting has been cancelled or moved to a new location. As a couple, we go early to meetings and panic that about them being cancelled together.

This brings us back to the issue of the new apartment. As obsessively-prepared/slightly-paranoid people, we are terrible shoppers. It takes us many attempts and much convincing to buy anything longer-lasting than cereal or soap. Clothing or shoes - those are items of commitment. So, as you can imagine, once we do convince ourselves to buy something, we are committed. Stuck, if you will.

When we moved into our last apartment, we brought those items along. We had our old desks and dressers. We had the cupboard and nightstand I bought myself when I was thirteen. We'd each had our bookshelves since childhood. Even the couch and futon were from college. There were a few new items - dining room table, etc, - but the general feel of the place was familiar. Ours.

Now, with the exception of a few suitcases and a guitar, we are facing the challenge of starting from scratch. Our first trip to Ikea took over four hours, and we didn't even buy anything. We discussed the merits of various dish sets and silverware. We avoided bowls that were too plate-like and forks that weren't the desired level of pointy. We tried all of the mattresses. We wanted things that were nice enough to make a home, but not too expensive for a expiration date of two years. We longed to find the section of cheaply priced but well-made items that would make the prefect home and then combust into dust when we left. We agreed on a clock. And and extension cord. Clearly things had to change. Our apartment looked like this.

We both knew we needed internet, so after a day of logistics so wonderfully swiss they merit their own post, it went about like this.

Then, after much waiting and obsessing that something had gone wrong, it worked. Which went more like this. 

Note: The apartment has no light fixtures.

By our next trip we had scheduled a move-in-date and hired a move-in-man as a means of forcing ourselves to take action. We could not leave the curtain section without curtains. Nor the bed section without a bed. After much turmoil and extensive decision making, we had everything picked out. This time it took us four hours. In the days since we have only had to stop each other a couple of times from speculating about the potential merits of a slightly different bed frame. Today, after carrying all of the boxes up four flights of stairs, we cannot question anymore. Thankfully, we are stuck.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of furnishing a household from Ikea, it provides an array of emotions. First is "Hooray, I have chosen the possessions of my future life. Just look at them!" It looks something like this.

Of course you should feel accomplished; look at all of those things! Items, that you bought and hired a man to drive across town and carried up four flights of stairs. Well done you.

But then you start to feel tired from all of those stairs and long for a place to sit down, and you start to really look at all of your shiny new possessions. Even though you know you purchased a couch, bed, table, and chairs; you don't see a couch, bed, table, or chairs anywhere. Everything needs to be assembled, and it needs to be assembled from directions like this.

I particularly like the bottom of the second set of directions, which seems to convey, "Don't kneel by broken items; it will make you sad and someone will tie your hands behind your back. Instead, stroke unbroken items while kneeling on a grey rug."

Eventually we decided to put together the couch we both so desired to sit on. It went something like this. Here is the couch. It is made up of two major components:

large brown pieces...

...and small silver pieces

Use the silver pieces to put together the big brown pieces. But, make sure you don't do it wrong, or the little man who strokes unbroken furniture while kneeling on grey rugs will be sad with you.

Be sure to upholster the bottom of the couch on the correct side. You wouldn't have to do this if the couch didn't have two options for how it could be assembled. Oh, who are we kidding, we would have made you do it anyway.

Be sure to use all three sizes of alan key and a screwdriver. Any design not requiring all four clearly wasn't made with the Ikea customer in mind.

Don't decapitate yourself, or the kneeling man will be most unhappy. 

Now be sure to admire your sofa-bed and brag about it to everyone from your blog who said they would come visit you in Switzerland as soon as you had a couch. Be sure to use pictures and sarcasm to highlight the time you took setting up this enormous piece of furniture for all of those people who swore they would come visit you.

Demonstrate for those potential visitors how easily this wonderful and roomy sleeping surface can be turned back into a couch. It's practically no effort at all. Kris can do it, and he's really skinny. 

Use Kris's skinny-ness to show off how large the couch is, and how comfortable. Make sure he looks relaxed and not at all sweaty. 

Actually, use Amanda, because she is smaller and sits with her feet up on the couch. Some people do that, you know. 

Take picture of the only completed corner of your new apartment. The kneeling-grey-carpet-man is most proud. 

All sarcasm aside, I must take a few sentences to thank Andronik, the wonderful and kind Italian man we hired to help us move. He was punctual and courteous and probably the least-sketchy-looking man we have met in a long time. He helped carry genuinely heavy boxes up the stairs while I stood by the illegally parked van looking pathetic to keep any neighbors from calling the cops. Andronik is also a highly educated spouse in Lausanne who cannot find employment, because he does not speak fluent French. So, instead of getting to do what he studied to do and had done for years in Italy, he drove us across town and helped us carry boxes up the stairs. He was wonderful, and anyone in Lausanne who needs help could not do better. Even if my foot were not a disturbing mix of bruised and cut open, today would have been a much worse day without you. Not that you will ever read this, but thank you.

I have another full day of cartoon-guided assembly ahead of me tomorrow, so I must go to bed. Thanks for reading. Friends and family please come visit.

Au revoir.

You Sank My Battle$#!&

Yesterday marked a milestone in our time in Lausanne. We got the keys to our new place, moved in the first load, and went to our first sparring class. I also got my first real injury. This injury was not the result of trekking heavy bags across town or fighting Swiss people. No. I knocked over a mug. I didn't even realize that the shards had cut me; I was so focused on the fact that we were going to have to pay the hotel back for the mug. But when I bent down to start picking up the pieces I noticed a disturbing 3/4 inch gash on the inside of my right ankle. It wasn't bleeding so much as becoming a more-defined red line, so I sat down to see how deep it was. I remember from first-aid classes seeing pictures of cuts that went down to that yellow goopy part beneath the skin, but I was not expecting to see one on my own body. Unfortunately Kris was looking over my shoulder as I opened the wound up, and he made a few shuddering noises and then promptly freaked out.

Having grown up in the Schroeder household I have both witnessed and experienced an array of interesting injuries. Dusty's head catching on fire, Mom slicing her hand open on a mandoline, Dusty sanding the tip of his finger off, Mom dislocating her shoulder, Dusty lighting his hand on fire, Dad's numerous work-related wounds, Dad and I falling off the motorcycle, Dusty cracking his head open the third time ... you know, life things. The Baker household apparently did not share the same flare for excitement.

Thus Kris's initial reaction and concern that we needed to go to the emergency room. Not that we knew how to get there, or if public transportation was running that late, or how to call an ambulance. These are things we should probably figure out.

I was trying to do the basic "Do I need stitches" routine of "Can I stop the bleeding?" and "Can I close the wound?" The answers to both were yes, but the question of "Do we have a bandaid?" was proving more difficult to answer. After digging through every piece of luggage we had and turning up a single, Harry-Potter-themed bandaid, we eventually found our first-aid kit in Kris's backpack. The bleeding had effectively stopped, but until we could go buy butterfly bandages the next morning, I wasn't going to be moving around much. Opening it up to that goopy yellow stuff was too unnerving.

As of today I have the wound closed up and the bleeding stopped, but walking is both painful and impractical for a little longer. So instead of moving another load of our possessions across town as planned, we played Battleship.

More specifically, we played Bataille Navale, the 13-franc knock-off version of the original.

The pieces are the same, the gameplay is the same, but the manufacturing quality left us longing for versions we grew up with - with those letters and numbers you could read and pegs that actually fit into the holes. The instructions do provide some extra entertainment, with points like "Set up the game board by centre to 90 degrees position," and "Players will actually take turn to shout the shot."

Determined to enjoy my mandatory immobility, we sat down to play. The first hint of trouble came when a few of the ships would not fit neatly into the board. After some creative shoving, our Sea Battle (as the game board itself is labeled) was underway. At first we were trying to be clever and were calling out the coordinates, hits, and misses in French. But, since E is said A, and I is said E, and J is said G, our desire to know what was going on eclipsed our desire to feel like we were doing something productive.

Then, Kris started having the luckiest game of his life. Here is where things stood after the first 5 turns.

And here is the standing after 9 turns.

Clearly, this was not starting out as my game. It turns out, however, that the shoddy quality of the board adds a few new components to the game. First, since the top piece of the board is wobbly and the pieces don't quite fit, marking your attempts is no longer a trivial step but rather something more like pick-up sticks or operation. Here is Kris on one of this turns.

The double-sided nature of the center piece makes this level of care particularly necessary, because if you shove one of the ill-fitting pegs in too aggressively, the pegs on your opponent's side are likely to pop out and scatter. So it becomes Battleship-Pick-up-Sticks-Operation-and-Don't-Break-the-Ice.

Added bonus, some of the pegs won't stay in at all, so it is also part Memory.

Somewhere in among all of these complications, and because battleship isn't based on luck whatsoever, I started to make my comeback. Finally, after reseting the pegs that either shot or fell off the center board a dozen times, I prevailed.

Yes, note for those who actually bothered to look. One of my red pegs would not stick, so it is down on the bottom instead of marking its victory.

My foot is feeling better, though it probably still won't go into a shoe, so I can at least make a hobbling attempt at being more useful tomorrow. Or, at least, to accompany Kris as he is useful. Otherwise, you might end up with another post about Battleship.

Au revoir!

I don't need to speak French to fight you.

Back in 2008 Kris and I found ourselves in desperate need of some regular exercise and, both having always wanted to try a martial art, signed up for a trial run at CW Taekwondo. Now, a little over four years later, we find it hard not to alienate ourselves from conversations by bringing taekwondo up too often. There are other people who understand, other people who have fallen in love with a sport to the point that bruises and sore muscles don't even register anymore. It doesn't matter if you are a climber, soccer player, runner, or martial artist. There are just some people who mesh with a sport to the point that the only thing that upsets you about an injury is that it will prevent you from training. It didn't take us four years to become those people; it took about a month. Then, after four years of spending 4-5 days a week at 2-hour practices with people who made you bleed, laugh, and push yourself harder than you knew you could, we moved. I know that we will never replace our CW family, but finding a new dojang was very high on our list.

That brings us to this week and the middle of a trial period at a new gym. I mentioned in the last post why, after a lot of time on the internet, we started with the gym we did. There is an active children's program, men and women in the photos, a range of ages in the adult class, traditional taekwondo mixed with self-defense, and a charismatic and very welcoming group of members. After some entertaining, mixed-language emails Kris and I headed out for our first class in more than two months. The gym was easy enough to find and Bruno, the instructor, welcomed us almost the moment we walked through the door. I say almost, because he had to peel an exuberant 10-year-old green belt off of himself first.

Bruno was extremely friendly and, based on the number of accented "hellos" we received, had told people who we were and that we were coming. Considering how nervous we were, this counted for a lot. The rest of my nerves melted away as I got to put on my uniform and step back on to a blue floor with mirrored walls.  I could tell Kris felt the same way by the way he jumped around on the padded floor like a giddy child. Though nothing was quite the same, enough of it felt familiar - the stretches, the warm-ups, the Korean flag on the wall, the poomsae, the technique - that it felt a little bit like coming home.

That isn't to say the transition has been completely smooth. The flag next to the Korean one is a red and white cross instead of the stars and stripes, so all of the instruction takes place in French. Yes, the commands and counts are in Korean, which is helpful, but anything regarding the specifics of what we are doing is in French. Every so often Bruno would toss some English our way, but we miss any of the banter that can't be conveyed in numbers and pantomime. At one point a green belt came up and put her arms around Kris and I and said something to Bruno that made everyone laugh. They sent a few more verbal jabs around, everyone laughed again, and she went on her way. Kris and I just looked at each other and shrugged. Apparently nothing about the exchange had been deemed important enough to translate.

 It also became clear pretty early that Bruno was trying to see what we were made of. I imagine that any two hour practice covers a range of content, but it seemed that we were getting a tasting menu. When it became clear that we could keep up during basic kicking drills, he added partner drills. Then rolling. Then jumping over people and rolling. Then kicks with targets. Then speed kicks with targets. Then self-defense against an unarmed opponent. Then self-defense against someone armed with a knife. Based on the subsequent practice, I can attest that it is not normal to do one round of an exercise and move on. He was testing us out. When it finally came to take-downs as part of the self-defense, he seemed quite pleased with the abandon Kris and I use when hurling each other at the floor. To be doing such work again, we were quite pleased ourselves.

The work with the rubber knives was the most memorable, largely because it was something completely new. In the past any grappling we have done has been a lot of body contact, patience, and using what your opponents actions to guide your own. At CW a grappling match could easily last half an hour. With a more self-defense mentality against a weapon, things change.

"First of all," Bruno tried to explain to us, "anyone who attacks you with a weapon is a chord." After some confusion and a lot of help, we discovered that he had been trying for "coward."

So rather then spooking the attacker and taking a defensive stance, our first move was to put up our hands and look terrified. Just looking around the room at everyone thrusting fake knives up against the throats of their sniveling friends was pretty entertaining. Then we learned to deflect the knife hand, twist the arm to drive it back towards the attacker's own body in the process of hurling them to the ground. Then begins the fun exchange of both people trying to aim the knife towards their opponent's body and away from their own by twisting limbs and rolling around. Of course, all of us got fake stabbed. No one is perfect.

At the end of class as we all cooled down, Bruno started to give a small speech. As I could understand nothing he said, it gave me time to think about all of the little speeches I had heard from Sabumnim over the years during sit-ups and push-ups. Everything from the lessons learned by losing to how everything that matters happens in the second half of a match to lunch being good. Afterwards Bruno solicited the help of one of his students to try to pass his little lesson for the day on to us. It was about instincts. Everyone has instincts, he explained, and those instincts are what dictate our actions when something dramatic like an attack happens to us. You can never get anything to react more quickly than your instincts, but with practice and training, you can change what those instincts are. That being said, he laughed, no one should go out looking for fights or anything like that. It was a variant of something Sabumnim had said to us at one point, but it was nice that Bruno went through the effort of making sure we could understand.

At the end of that practice and throughout the next one we have started to bond with some of the other students. The bonding is slow and depends a lot more on facial expressions and pantomime than we are used to, but it is encouraging. A bond also formed when Kris and I got grouped with a six-foot-tall red belt for take-downs and he was extremely slow and careful about the way he threw me. Kris gave me a look and I took the guy so off guard that I almost hurled him into a wall. After that, the three of us had an understanding. In the end it seemed like he enjoyed working with people who knew how to fall and how to throw with enough intent and control to really grow. A lot of communication can happen even without the ability to form complete sentences. 

Sparring class is tomorrow, and we are excited to see how it goes. I am allowing myself some cautious amount of optimism that this will work out. As an added bonus, the dojang is a 10-minute walk from our new apartment. With how much trouble we have had with everything else we have tried in Switzerland, we are truly thankful that this has been encouraging. It feels good to be sore. It feels good to yell. It feels good in a way we had yet to in this unfamiliar place.

Au revoir.  

Knife Fights and Spilled Paint

Yesterday was supposed to be a good day. Kris was going to go to work, I was going to turn in a job application, and then we were going to go to the apartment and pick up our keys. That was the plan. Plans are linear. Plans are smooth. Switzerland is not linear; it is not smooth. In the words of my beloved husband, it is made up of rays of hope and pits of despair.

Yesterday's first pit came in the form of a paystub that did not list the amount we thought it would. As planners who budget down to the point of keeping receipts for every loaf of bread we buy, this presented a problem. Budgeting is especially important when you are paid monthly, spreading things a little thin at the beginning of your time in a new country. Apparently, in addition to being paid monthly, Kris is paid 1/13 of his salary each month, not 1/12. The extra 13th is paid in December, but only for the number of full months you have worked in the previous calendar year. That means that this December Kris will receive 1/3 of the 1/13 that would make up his whole salary. Eventually the math evens out, but it meant some creative budgeting to start the day.

This pit was followed by a welcome ray of hope in the form of EPFL's Human Resources Department. After waiting patiently while another international employee fought with the HR rep about taxes and paystubs, and ultimately insulting the HR rep's country to his face, I had my chance to smile and turn in a job application that was two months past due. Thankfully, even though applications were supposed to be in by August 10th and the job started on October 1st, the position was actually still open. I handed over my application and felt a little better about the day.

Then we went to the apartment.

In retrospect, things really aren't that bad. But after a month of floating between residences and ultimately visiting 28 apartments around Lausanne in 22 days, we were ready for a win. We got to the apartment early, as us planning-budgeting-types do, and found a foyer filled with bags of trash, dirt smeared on the front door, and two men traipsing fresh paint all over the hardwood floors. My immediate reaction was denial. I became convinced that I was once again confused by the strange, European floor-numbering system, and decided that our apartment was one floor down. I refused to even wait in the apartment and went back into the stairwell. Kris tells me that that decision deprived me of the pleasure of watching the men peel the thin plastic tarp on the floor for painting the living room and hearing it tear off of all of the sections of paint that had dried to the floor underneath. After that, Kris joined me in the stairwell.

After a few minutes, the smartly dressed man from the agency arrived with his leather briefcase and polite smile and introduced himself to us in the stairwell. Sadly I followed him up the stairs to what, apparently, was our apartment. Stepping over the trash and glancing into the living room, the man from the agency managed to contain his noise of disgust. The look, however, came right through. He went into the kitchen and began to put out his neat little stacks of papers and his neat little clipboard, talking all the while in rapid French and gesturing around. He stopped after noticing the lost expressions on our faces. We asked if he spoke any English, he said no, and we started farther into our pit of despair.

Resigned Kris and I began our systematic testing of everything in the apartment. The man from the agency watched us for a while, then grabbed his neat little clipboard and headed into the rest of the apartment. The porch was full of trash bags. The tub was filled with paint. White footprints tracked all the way form the front entrance to the back bedroom. The doors were dirty and light switches were just missing. By the time we ran into the agent again, his demeanor had shifted significantly and he was in the middle of a rather animated phone call in the bedroom. He hung up, gently told us his English-speaking colleague was on his way, and then went to tear into the guys in the living room. Kris and I had no desire or ability to interfere, so we retreated to the bedrooms.

At this point I had no idea what to do, but I wanted the apartment to feel like ours. We haven't had a home since July, and I needed to do something. So I grabbed a sponge and started washing the dirt and stains off of the doors. I didn't care that it wasn't my dirt or that someone else was supposed to clean it, that was my bedroom door. I didn't even notice when the agent walked up and started watching me. When I finally did, he had a confused and kind of sad look on his face. I put down the sponge and he told me again that the man who spoke English was on his way.

When we came back out of the bedrooms, the men who had been painting (the younger of whom was apparently the previous tenant) were frantically removing the trash from the apartment and stashing it at the top of the stairwell. I ignored the liquid that had leaked from the trash bags and went out on the porch to take this picture. Everything was going to be ok.

After that Greg, the English-speaking rep from the agency arrived and met us on the porch. The original rep introduced us and started firing off in a stream of French that Greg did his best to translate. He apologized that we would not be able to move in today, but it was clear that the apartment was not ready. They needed to do a "deep cleaning" and would like to meet us again on Friday. At that point, we would also have access to a contractor for all of the little things that were clearly wrong, but would not be ready by Friday. Greg explained that he would be there with us to make the list. I asked if we would be responsible for paying the contractor, Greg passed the question along, and after a scathing look back into the apartment, the original agent said no. After a longer discussion of terms and exchanging information, we set up a time for Friday and went on our way.

Here are a few pictures before the story continues.

 Tub full of wet and dry paint.

Trash-filled porch

After the trash was removed

A reenactment of first arriving at the apartment

Some of the paint from under the tarp

The only picture I have of the angry man from the agency who rescued us.

Also shows damage to the doorframe...

And now for some of the good ones (ignore any paint and such)

Entry way after all of the trash was removed. 

Kitchen

Living room and balcony

View out from the living room

Bedroom

Second bedroom (actually taekwondo room...)

I plan on being excited on Friday. We will see what Switzerland does to those plans. 

After grasping on to the Friday ray of hope as a response to the spilled-paint pit of despair, we came home and readied ourselves for the next adventure: taekwondo. For any of you who know us well, you know that finding a new dojang is almost as important to us as finding a new home. Numerous internet searches and phone calls had led us to the one we thought was the best bet. It had programs for multiple age groups, photos of both men and women in their classes, poomsae and sparring, additional curriculum in self defense, and a mission statement about the non-profit status of the program. 

Our initial contact with Bruno, the head of the school, was promising. His English, while leagues better than our French, was still in the realm of adorable. Statements like "It is with pleasure!" and "We have places to change you." hinted that communication would be exciting. 

Though the story is exciting, and involves the knife fighting mentioned in the title, I am going to call it a night and leave most of the telling for tomorrow. I will leave you with the knowledge that our time there was an enormous ray of hope, and I hope will continue to be one throughout our time in this notably un-smooth country. 

Au revoir. 

The Prix Is Right

Walking around downtown Lausanne is never straight forward. The streets are curved and intersect at odd angles, both vertically and horizontally. Most of downtown is bi-level, with buildings having an entrance at ground level and then again on the fifth floor at the other ground level. At the Bessiers metro stop I can ride the elevator either two floors down or four floors up to street level. On two occasions I have found places where streets intersect themselves. Getting around has required a lot of map work and a little finesse.

Once you know where you are going and start walking around with direction and purpose, you start to notice another obstacle: the people. The first issue is that I am American. By that I mean that once I have a destination I walk with purpose, taking large strides that go quickly but still would be identified as "walking." Compared to me, the people of Lausanne mosey. But, as I am a guest in this city and its people should be the cultural standard, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that compared to the Swiss, I charge around like a maniac.

Walking at this slower speed changes everything. The lines of who is walking which direction become less defined, people don't get out of each others' way as quickly, and most people don't really need to look at the people walking around them. This has resulted in the weird, power-walking American weaving in and out of pedestrians like a motorcycle on the highway. A few times I have run into people because they simply stopped, midstride. No warning. I thought maybe they were texting, but no (though there is an issue with that in the younger generations of seemingly every western country). The people who stopped weren't checking their watches or answering phones; they were window shopping.

Perhaps its because I have never really lived downtown, but window shopping was something I only associated with Christmas. When you have to drive to go shopping, the window display seldom has anything to do with whether you go in. In the pedestrian center of downtown Lausanne, with Rolex and Cartier around the corner from Louis Vuitton, the window displays are everything. It doesn't seem to matter what you sell. When the goal is to get pedestrians to stop in their tracks, its no wonder that the displays are changed every few days.

Even grocery stores and pharmacies have displays. Here are the windows from places that sell perfume and specialty purses. 

Some stores have displays that are more abstract, expecting the brand name to be enough to lure you in. Take, for example the widows at Louis Vuitton. Nothing says fashion like terrifying, 3-foot eye-flowers and polka-dotted tentacles. I know they put me in the mood for shopping. 

Once I slowed down and started to enjoy the displays I found myself playing some version of "The Price is Right." Otherwise window shopping in an area where most of the items cost more than my monthly food budget could have gotten depressing. At times I have been off by an order of magnitude. Apparently I cannot tell a 200 franc purse from a 2000 franc purse. I can just tell that I cannot afford either of them. I have come to enjoy this game so much, I thought I would share with you. If you feel like playing along, keep track of how many answers you get correct and put the number in the comments. Here we go!

NO CHEATING!

The Answers are:
1.  D. 13, 000
2.  B. 225
3.  A. 3,300
4.  F. 14, 000
5.  G or I. 649
6.  H. 389
7.  C. 5,480
8.  G or I. 649
9.  E. 17,800

10. B. 249
11.  C. 299
12.  A. 225

13. B. 1,750
14. D. 428
15. E. 1,100
16. C. 1,170
17. A. 588

18. E. 699
19. A. 2,980
20. B. 189
21. H. 288
22. C. 159
23. F. 239
24. G. 228
25. D. 580

26. F. 7,900
27. D. 200
28. I. 13,900
29. B. 19,500
30. G. 9,300
31. C. 7,500
32. E. 320
33. A. 6,700
34. H. 8,900

As a reward to those of you who have scrolled all the way down, I give you the most fashionable maternity dresses ever conceived by man.

Thanks for playing. Remember to post your scores!
Au Revoir!