Musings of Two Poor Girls Trying to Keep House on the Other Side of the World

As we thoroughly finish scrubbing our rental home in preparation for our departure, Savannah and I are pondering a number of lessons which we have learned while on our journey. At the moment we are running our final loads of laundry through the washer, which reminds us that after almost a week of being here we finally finished catching up on our laundry! This was indeed cause for celebration, as we started washing our clothes the night we arrived in Normandy. Why, you may the ask, did this task taken so long when there are only three of us and we didn't bring a clothing store along? The answer lies in the sad fact that our French washing machine is roughly the size of our bread bowl at home. Granted it's a big bread bowl, but still, that's a pitiful size for a washing machine. Unfortunately the same was true for Germany as well. All you people who have lived or traveled in Europe may laugh at us with a knowing smile, but we are learning and relearning these sad facts for ourselves. When you're used to America, where everything is designed to be huge - from our trucks to our homes to our commercial-sized kitchens - it can be challenging to adjust to a culture where everything is...shall we say...extremely conservative of space? Small cars, small parking areas, small homes, small dishwashers, small washing machines. Ahem. Enough said.

We've also decided that we can't wait to get back to America, where there's no currency conversion and our dollars will buy more and we can buy two apple pies at McDonald's for a dollar. And beans. Yes, refried beans are really nice as well. Being the thrifty shoppers that we are, us girls put together a "budget" menu plan for the week, part of which included pinto beans (since they're so cheap back in the States). Imagine our surprise when a two-cup bag of pinto beans turned out to be expensive (we switched gears at that point)!

Last but oh-so-not least, we have learned a very valuable lesson that we are more than happy to pass along. If you are shopping in France, pay careful heed to the fact that a one-euro sticker on a product is extremely likely to mean one euro off, not one euro total. Otherwise you can end up spending a lot more than you originally intended to. Not that we did anything like that, of course.

Travel is amazing, but ah, we are looking forward to home!