And now we wait

You're looking at a picture of our morning. A huge piece of our morning in fact. Do you have any idea what it takes to buy a house in France? Ok, initialling every page, I can understand. Even initialling every page of four original copies. That's fine. And the signatures of course, I expected, even on four copies. The fact that I had to write "lu et approuvé" next to each signature, even that was fine. Those funny French. And writing "vu" on the map pages. Not so much work there, even in quadruplicate. But the real kicker came on page 11. There was a long paragraph on page 11, stating, essesntially, that I am not taking out a mortgage for this house, nor using it for collateral. A very long paragraph. And I had to copy it, in my own hand, word for word, and sign it. On four original copies. Why? Because we're in France.

And then? Sarah's turn. She had to repeat the entire process. Amazing. And all this of course after reading the whole thing, and examining all the reports regarding lead asbestos and termites. It took quite a long time.

As we were finishing, the sellers showed up to do their part, which, more or less, involved just signing and initialling. Easy-peasy for them. Easy physically, perhaps, but maybe more difficult in a way. We still have seven days to pull out, and even after that the notaire may find information for us that would allow us to escape the contract. But these nice people, they were locking themselves in. They signed and initialled, and poof! They'd promised to sell their house, without escape, without control. They were letting go of their home.

And we did like them. They were very cool when we visited the house, they had a really nice vibe about them, and they played with Kepler so well that he cried when it came time to say goodbye. We are of the opinion that one of the reasons they accepted our offer over whatever other offer the town doctor may have made was that they wanted a family in their house, who would love it and fill it with creative life. They confirmed this impression.

"If you want to see the house any more before you move in, you're welcome to come anytime," she said. We explained that we were leaving for the UK that afternoon. And then she told us, "I'm really happy that you are buying our house." Very nice. Sarah echoed the sentiment, "we really love your house."

And we all shook hands, and took leave, they to organize their lives, and we to head northward, only pausing to buy a celebratory bottle of wine from our future hometown.

We're in Poitiers now, London maybe Friday. And while the notaire does his research on our future home, we'll be going all over the place, back and forth across the UK and the Atlantic and the US, organizing, visiting, and preparing ourselves. We can't wait to move in.