For those of you who who haven’t heard yet, it looks like our assignment here in France is just about over.  I have been asked to take a new assignment back in Indianapolis that is planned to start in early September.

We were not totally surprised by this, but we obviously have a lot of stuff to do in a short amount of time.  On the other hand, we orchestrated our exit from Germany in three weeks.  So this shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Tuesday night, we called the company that Thomson hired to manage the needs of expats, including relocation.  They told us that we would be contacted by a moving company within 48 hours.

Well, guess what… we haven’t heard from anyone yet.  We weren’t too concerned about this until Sandi and I started talking about it yesterday after she came home from a shopping trip.

She noticed that most of the stores she went to were getting ready to close for summer vacation.

Another data point: on Thursday, I hit a concrete curb on the side of the road on the way home.  The damage was minor, but I did bend up the rim of the front right tire.  I spent a long time trying to get service arranged for the car on Friday, but Thomson’s service company finally picked up the car about 11 and told me that the car should be ready by 3.  I called the service company just before taking a taxi to go get the car– and they told me it wasn’t finished yet because they didn’t have the rim in stock.  To make matters worse, they estimate it will be one week before they get the rim, because, you guessed it, everyone is on vacation.

Suddenly, it seems clear why we haven’t heard from the moving company yet– they are probably all on vacation.  We forgot that nothing important happens in France in August.  We could get surprised with a call from the moving company next week, but I’m not holding my breath.  I suspect this means we won’t be moving home until sometime in September.

In the meantime, we are trying to make sure that we get to visit a few more places before we leave.  We went to the area around Quimper (out on the western coast of Brittany) last weekend, and we are planning to tour the Loire valley next weekend.  We’re even trying to see if we can sneak in a trip to Ireland on our way home.

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