Voici nous sommes!

Finally...we are here in France! And finally, a blog about it.

So, we have been here for just over a week now. I thought I'd post a little tour of our new surroundings. Welcome to Ferme de la Fromagerie, Chailly-en-Bière, France!

Driving from village to village in our area is very different from driving in the northeast US. Where we came from, the towns all ran right into one another. When you left one town, you were entering another. Here, you pass through the main center of the village and soon after, you will see a sign like this one...

This means you have left Chailly. You are no longer in Chailly, but you aren't anywhere else either! Now let's pull a U-turn, and pop back into town. It is a very basic village. From what I can see, there are a couple of restaurants, a church, salon, post office, a small store that I would only want to go to if I needed something in a pinch, and farms, lots of farms. There is also a cemetery in town that holds the graves of two well-known artists, Jean-François Millet and Théodore Rousseau. These were two of the leaders of the Barbizon school of painters in the 1800s, which was part of a movement towards realism in art. I know nothing about art history, so I'll leave it at that. Thanks Wikipedia. Millet spent some time in Chailly-en-Bière, and according to our landlady, the farm we now live on appears in his well-known painting "The Gleaners", now housed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and shown at the top of this entry.

From the center of town, turn down Rue de la Fromagerie, and follow its tall, labyrinthine walls all the way to the very last gate on the left, and voilà! La Ferme de la Fromagerie! This is what it is like to drive into our courtyard:





Pretty magical! Here's a small sample of photos from our new place...
Inside:
And outside:

Coco is really enjoying her new domain. She has been catching and eating flies and moths daily, and escaped from the apartment via the balcony within the first three days. Of course, she was too timid to actually go anywhere once she got down, so she just hid in some bushes. We've since blocked her escape route.

All in all, we have a wonderful place here. It's just what we wanted. A taste of country life, but not too far from the conveniences we're used to. We're only 10 minutes drive from Fontainebleau, a small city/big town with loads of restaurants, salons, banks, etc. Speaking of driving...I am now at a 95% confidence level when it comes to driving our car. I had never driven a manual before. Now I am rocking it (thanks Sherry, Ian, and Tom). If you were to continue down our street, those romantic, yet somewhat claustrophobia-inducing walls suddenly disappear, and you're left with nearly two miles of empty, clear country roads before you get to the next village (Perthes). That is where I have been practicing driving. It's really beautiful. There are even scarecrows in the fields! You can make out a couple of them in the photo above.

I'll post again soon with some more info about what we've been doing so far!

A bientôt!