Wednesday night, a few hours after arriving in Montpellier, I took my shopping bags to the Monoprix in the Polygone shopping mall, and grabbed a few essentials to get me through at least breakfast on Thursday: bread, coffee, soy milk, strawberries, packaged prepared salad bowl.

Thursday morning I met up with Dennelle in front of the Free store in the Triangle building next to the Polygone. No, nothing in the store is actually “free,” that’s the name of the cell phone (‘portable’) service. I brought the dual-SIM GSM phone I had used earlier this year (a Motorola Moto e4, international edition). Although one of the plans was offered at a substantial discount for the first year, I opted for the 20€ a month plan, which includes calls to the U.S.

If you think you need my phone number, email me at fred.sampson@gmail.com. My old number will continue to work for a while, but not forever.

Next, we went to La Poste (post office) to mail my OFII form to the local authorities, telling them that I’m here and how to contact me.

Then Dennelle introduced me to one of the local organic food stores, Rayons Verts. I returned later in the day to pick up a few more edibles, and one of their nice shopping bags.

For lunch, I intended to visit L’Atelier, at the other end of the Place du Millenaire. . . But it was closed, and not at all clear if it was a permanent or temporary situation. So I tried the next closest restaurant, La Table d’Alexandre, and was rewarded with a nice chunk of salmon, with rice and a side-salad.

For dinner, I checked out the pizza place just next door, A L’R du Gout, and dined on a demi vegetarian pizza. It came with a remarkably thin and crispy crust and finely-chopped vegetables (not the big chunks of peppers and onions that pass as vegetarian pizza elsewhere). I introduced myself to the proprietors, Claude et Richard, who welcomed me to the neighborhood.