Mon mois d'août épuisant | Français COURANT + sous-titres et transcription PDF.

Hello and welcome to episode 135 of the Fluidités podcast. By the way, you don't have to listen to the episodes in the order they come out. The numbers are just for my personal organization. There you go. Well, it's currently early September. Some children or teenagers who like holidays hate this period because it's the return, in other words, the resumption of classes. But for my part, it took me a long time to be in September, I was looking forward to it. And I'll tell you why in this episode. I'm offering you this little story of a big event, of a big change that happened in my life during the month of August and that tired me out, that exhausted me. And I'll tell you why. So you're going to hear a lot of words from everyday life in this little story of my life. But for that, stay tuned. Dialogues or learning tips. Welcome to the Fluidités podcast. Before I start, I would like to talk to you about our VIP club. 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So it's early September, it's the beginning of a new academic or professional year for a lot of people since July and August are the months of holidays in a lot of countries and this is the case in France and we call this period the return. And for those who work, the beginning of September can be a sign of renewal if they decide to change jobs, for example. Others will have a lot to do since businesses are closed at the end of August, so lots of tasks await them. So this period evokes the resumption of work or school and many would have liked to stay on vacation. For my part, it's a bit the opposite. This month of August was not at all relaxing for my wife and me and it took me a long time to finish it. You will understand why in detail. It all starts in mid-July. Indeed, in my episode 131, I told you that my wife and I were going to visit a house a few days later because we were in a temporary accommodation and that we wanted to move to a larger accommodation. And that's very good news since we signed the rental of this house. This is where I am currently filming. So in early July, we signed the BAI, the rental contract that we have with the real estate agency. We could have gone through a private owner but none wanted a tenant with my profile, that is to say someone who is in a liberal profession, who is not an employee, in a contract for an indefinite period, in CDI. In short, we came across a super nice agency who found us a nice house and we signed around July 10. As soon as we visited it, we liked it and we immediately accepted it. The problem is that we were living until now in a furnished house that we had found on Airbnb. So nothing belonged to us. We rented all the furniture, the kitchen stuff, the TV, the gardening tools, the bed, etc. Which means that for this new house, we had to buy absolutely everything since we started from scratch. And I'll let you imagine that it represents a lot of things, a lot of business. So in July, we started buying things for the new house to be able to anticipate a little and have the minimum vital on the day of the move. Since the old house was furnished, there was no room to store our purchases from our new house. So we had to pack everything. To pack means to put things in piles, one on top of the other. Because a pile is a pile of things. Which means that for two or three weeks, we had furniture and things everywhere at home. We could barely move around in the house. But renting a house is expensive, especially since the cost of living has recently increased here in France. So we tried to find as many things as possible to pay less than the new one, but without degrading the quality. Because for a low price, either you have mid-range things, but used, or you have low-end things, but new. And to find used things in France, so objects or furniture that have already been used, there are several solutions. The best known way is to go to the website Le Bon Quoi. All French people know it and have already used it at least once. It is a site of small ads between individuals where you can sell and buy everything that exists and that is legal, of course. Usually, it's the first reflex. If you want to find something on occasion, you go to Le Bon Quoi. We found a lot of things on this site, like our living room table that a gentleman was selling. And on another ad, the chairs for this table that another person had put up for sale. For bulky objects like furniture, we look on the site for ads around our home. But for small objects, you can buy from someone everywhere in France and pay for the delivery. There are also Facebook groups of the city where we live and those around. In fact, I only use this social network for that or for the marketplace. Another possibility to find items on occasion are the brokers. Here in the countryside, this is something that is still done a lot. These are shops or warehouses that are intermediaries between sellers and buyers. You can find a lot of old things there, especially furniture, and you can buy different items there. These brokers are usually quite large, so it took us several hours to search and find what we wanted. In France, there is also a chain of stores for sale that is called Easy Cash and that reconditions items. The store tests them, restores them or repairs them, and gives them a 2-year warranty. For example, we bought a recent television there at 40% of its new price, when it was in perfect condition. So we did a great deal. Another way to buy second-hand objects in France, these are empty attics and empty houses. I'll explain a little. An attic is a furnished space, a room that is under the roof in the houses, and where we store all the things that we no longer use. An empty attic is like a market in the open air, where individuals will display their spare goods to sell them. So people put tables and put their stuff on it, and the passers-by who want to buy search the different shelves to find their happiness. Here in the countryside, there are empty attics every weekend in a different village, so it's very practical. We found gardening tools there, or a waffle maker, etc. And an empty attic is a sale organized in a house when people have to empty it entirely or partially. These are private events, and in general, individuals who will sell their spare goods publish an ad on Facebook groups or in local shops. And last Saturday, we went to an empty attic whose ad I had seen in a bakery. These are the main means to find and buy spare goods, but it takes time because you have to analyze things before taking them, to be sure that the objects are in good condition, functional, and that it's not a scam. Despite everything, we think it's fun to do, so it's a kind of leisure in the end. Well, we didn't take everything for granted. We also bought new furniture, like our sofa, but also appliances, like our fridge or washing machine. In fact, few people say a refrigerator, everyone says a fridge. As for moving, it was pretty simple since we didn't have much to move, and by chance, our new house is 300 meters from the previous one. So we were able to transport a lot of things on foot, which is frankly great, good for health and ecological. But of course, we still used cars and a truck to transport our mattress, for example. It was the only thing we had that needed a truck, by the way. We spread out the move in two days and my parents came to help us. We had to go back and forth, set up furniture, but also clean the old house completely before handing over the keys to the owner and the state of the place. In fact, when you rent an apartment, the owner or the agency and you go around the apartment to note everything that is degraded or damaged. This is called the state of the place. And in this way, when you leave the apartment a few months or a few years later, you go around the apartment together to make the state of the place of exit and compare it to the state of the place of entry. And the owner or the agency will see if they have to charge you for any degradation. So on August 10th, we returned the keys to our old apartment without a hitch, since we had nothing degraded or dirty. And since that date on July 10th, the date of the move, we keep going right and left to buy the items we need. In fact, we have already bought the main things to live with, but there are still a lot of things to buy and we realize as we live in the house. The problem is that we have a city car, that is to say a very small city car, and it is not at all practical to transport furniture, but really not. So one day we had to rent another truck to buy a large garden table. But we can't afford to rent a truck every time, so we find alternative solutions. For example, recently I bought a click-clack to put it here in my studio office. A click-clack is the name we give to a sofa in the form of a bench that can convert into a bed. To transform it, you have to lower or raise the folder and the mechanism makes a noise of the click or clack type, hence its name, click-clack. In short, to transport it, I found a seller on Le Bon Coin who had a trailer that he kindly delivered to me. And what a chance to come across super nice people like that. So a trailer is this vehicle like a cart that you attach behind a car to transport things in it. In addition, when you buy things, there are a lot of big boxes. These boxes, you have to go and carry them, bring them to the city's waste disposal. The waste disposal is this place where we throw away the big waste, the metal, the wood, all that, everything that does not fit in the domestic bin. But to enter the waste disposal, you need a special card to ask the town hall. So I asked for the card, but as it was in August, the officials were almost all on vacation. So I had to ask for a temporary certificate while waiting to have my waste disposal card, which I still don't have, by the way. And yes, administrative work is always a bit complicated in France, especially during the holidays, in August or Christmas, for example. All of this takes time and energy, and on top of that, it was very hot in August, so it made us a little more tired. Besides, I had to buy everything at the same time, so it's a lot of expenses in a very short period of time. In any case, it's great because now in our new house, I have my own office, which will also be my recording studio, which I will be able to furnish and equip as I go along, and I'm super happy about it. And yes, it was my dream to have my own office, since until now I didn't have any, and I didn't have enough space to put big lamps, for example. So since mid-July, we've been super busy furnishing our house, so we couldn't go on the weekend, since we spend it looking for things to buy. But we plan to re-do camping in the Pyrenees in September, since it's not too cold yet, we'll still be able to take advantage of it a bit. And you, what did you do in July and August? Were these two months relaxing or tiring for you? Write a little sentence in the comments, and I will read it with pleasure. Thank you all for watching or listening to this episode. I hope you learned a lot of French and a lot of culture as usual. If you've stayed until now, the episode has interested you, so give it a little like. There was a lot of vocabulary, so don't hesitate to download the free transcript in PDF in the description. And don't hesitate to subscribe to my YouTube channel and my podcast. And I'll see you soon!