life, by me

Friday, September 28, 2012 | Posted by Hazel

So we've had a busy few days in the land of the French, mostly spent peeling wallpaper off the walls.  

On Sunday we went to Fougeres, a local town, and did a bit of exploring.  We saw a Chateau and 'tromp l'oeil' (an optical illusion of some buildings, painted on a building).

Chateau de Fougeres

Tromp l'oeil - Fougeres

Alex at her dream house

Public gardens (behind St. Leonards Church, Fougeres)

Whilst in Fougeres, we stumbled (not quite literally) across a dead bat on the pavement, here is a picture.

After finishing stripping one room, we have now moved on to another, stripped the wallpaper and prepped it for its first coat of colour next week.  (I am assuming you are interested in our decorating progress!)

Before we touched it...

Midway through the stripping...

The first coat of paint

The weather this week has been very random, switching from bright sunlight, to big grey clouds, heavy rain and violent hail stones.

We've also done a bit of outside work, clearing out a wood shed - where we found our friend, Mr. Toad.

Got a bonus dinner from Jon (whose house we're decorating) this week and booked to come to Paris, where we are now!  

We arrived last night and spent today in Versailles, mainly at the Palace - where we saw lots of gold things, some lovely gardens and a room with lots of mirrors.  

French teapot

Fountain in the Palace gardens

Lacey lion in the Palace (part of a contemporary exhibition)

Loving the lavender

Marie-Antoinette's pig (and Alex)

Chateau de Versailles

We now have the weekend to explore Paris!  I'm excited as I have never really been to Paris before (bar a couple of trips to Disneyland Paris) and Alex is excited to show me around as she is a big Paris fan!

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Saturday, September 22, 2012 | Posted by Hazel

It is now Saturday, and our French adventure began on Monday.  Leaving Essex/Stafford behind, we headed for Dover, and for more 'French' pastures.  After a rather uneventful ferry crossing, we arrived in Calais.  

I drew the short straw of being the first driver on French soil (neither of us had driven on the wrong/right side of the road before) and started to follow our Aussie speaking sat nav west across France.

There were no major incidents during the road trip, we both successfully drove on the right side of the road with no mishaps.  At one point in the journey Alex accidentally posted her bank card through a gap in the car so it was stuck behind the radio, and I had to reverse 400 yards into a petrol station, but that is by the by, nothing major to report.

We eventually arrived at our lovely residence, La Plissonnais, about 5 hours later.  We were greeted by Jon and Henry (Henry is a dog) and shown our home for the next few weeks, Maison la Cidrerie.  It is lovely here.

La Cidrerie

Whilst we are here, we are going to be doing some DIY, gardening and decorating, in return for our accommodation.  We didn't start this until Thursday, so had a couple of days exploring our surrounding area before we got stuck in to the work.

The local market at Saint Hilaire du Harcouet was a bit of excitement on Wednesday, Alex loved the caged animals, whilst I was constantly tempted by the delicious smelling crepes.

Jellyfish at the beach, Alex enjoyed poking them with sticks

Land surfers on the beach

We bought some garlic from a lady at the side of the road.  Alex has been teaching me the health benefits of garlic and we have pretty much eaten it every day.  Neither of us know how much we stink as we are now immune to it.  Luckily we haven't seen many people yet...or maybe this is the reason why...

Work has now begun.  Our first job was digging out the weeds around the cider press in the garden...

Before we started digging (well, technically, just after we'd started)

After we'd worked our magic...

...followed by weeding around the crazy paving on the patio.

We have now moved on to the house, where we are doing some redecorating.  Our first task being wallpaper stripping.  Alex taught me a new, much more delicate approach, giving me the ability to now strip an entire piece of paper, whilst keeping it intact.  Amazing.

Before we started

The special 'Alex technique'

One wall down...

We have already experienced 'baguette mouth' (the sensation you get from eating too many baguettes/mild jaw ache) and excess consumption of cheese.  Hoping to visit Paris in the next couple of weeks, do some more exploring and crack on with the decorating!

Incase you're interested, the weather is pretty similar to the UK right now.  We've had a few sunny days and a bit of rain.

Au revoir.

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Tuesday, September 11, 2012 | Posted by Hazel

So my blog has been on the back burner recently, but I have decided to try and revive it, so I can write about my forthcoming adventures!

I'll start by filling in the space that has been left since April.  I haven't actually stayed in any one place for more than a couple of weeks and have spent quite a bit of time touring the country - living the nomadic dream!

At the beginning of April I travelled to Tijuana, Mexico with a group of young people from Stafford, with a charity called 'Urban Saints'.  It was awesome.  Between the 20 of us, we made a house from scratch, it was an amazing achievement.  The family we were building the house for were so cute, Miguel and Esperenza and their 2 dogs.  This is the house which we built...

Miguel and Esperenza outside their new house

After my Mexican trip, I spent a couple of weeks back at Bivouac helping to get the next set of shacks ready for when guests arrived, and spent a bit of time working as a joiners assistant which I really enjoyed, got to test my practical skills out.

Getting the shacks ready for their first guests

I helped to make the reception desk...

...these railings...

...and collect wood for making a bench.

In May my friends, Alex, Joseph and I went to Scotland to stay with my granny on the Isle of Arran.  We celebrated Alex's birthday at the Distillery, with copious amounts of cheese.  It was, as Alex would say, amazeballs.  The weather wasn't great whilst Alex and Joseph were with me, but we didn't let that ruin our fun, having fires on the beach and trips around the Island.  The weather did however perk up when they had left and I stayed a bit longer to hang out with Granny.

Chilling out on Holy Isle

Granny with her crab which arrived in the post

June was spent doing various bits of DIY in both my house in Lincoln and my dads house in Lincoln  - I got to practice some of my joinery skills when building some shelves.  I was pretty impressed with myself.

I decided in July that I wanted to do an intensive TEFL course, so promptly booked on one which lasted the majority of August - it was definitely 'intense', possibly one of the hardest things I have ever done...mainly due to the sheer volume of work that was required in a short period of time.  I went from never having stood in front of a class of students, to teaching hour long lessons to non native English speakers, including grammar points I had learnt merely hours before the students.  Despite the hard work, I actually enjoyed the course, and slightly missed it when it ended...I think I had become institutionalised by it all! I passed and am now a qualified TESOL teacher, qualified to teach in a language school or abroad.  Exciting times.

Also during August, my sister Leah got married to Lorenzo, and I got to be Bridesmaid again.  I also learnt 'bacho', when shouted at an Italian wedding, means the Bride and Groom have to kiss, every time it is shouted.

Bancho!

So that brings me on to my current impending adventure...when in Scotland in May, Alex and I decided we quite liked the idea of going to France and came across the idea of house sitting.  Fast forward a few months and a few Facebook encounters later, we have lined up 3 months worth of accommodation in France from September to December.  Our first host will be Jon, who lives in Normandy.  In return for some of our painting and decorating skills we are going to be staying at his B&B for a few weeks.  After that, we are moving south to a small village, La Chambre, east of Lyon.  Here we will be house sitting another John's house, and hopefully improving our French.  We also have an offer of a house in the Pyrenees which we are currently organising.  We are doing our complete trip on a budget, and in my newly acquired Ford Escort Estate.

We leave in a week.

Let the good times roll.

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