Money

I wonder where it gets the time for this post. I am writing this at 8:53 pm (French - 20h53)local time (GMT+1) and it posts it at some US time. Just don't think that I am doing all this at 6:00 in the morning. We have finally got our bank account open, although we have not put any money into it yet. The hard part about finances here is the exchange rate. It is about $1.50 for one Euro. The best exchange rate you get is through banks and credit cards. However some credit cards charge you a exchange rate fee of between 1-2%. The best option for us so far has been to use cash. Normally is would be just as expensive to withdraw cash from ATMs here. Thankfully there is a popular bank over here that has an agreement with our bank in the States for free ATM withdrawals. That means we still get the good, rather better, exchange rate (currently about $1.47 for 1 euro) and no ATM fees. The checking account we have over her is interesting. The account is free. Checks are free and automatically delivered once you run out. Internet banking is free as well. A debit card (carte bleu) however is not free. They withdraw about 6.50 euros from your account monthly to pay for it. We decided not to get one of those yet. It seems at little odd though when we withdraw 200 euros from our account and then see on our statement $297.52.  Many of the songs here are in English. In the stores I hear a lot of English songs playing. That's all for now. JASON