November's News

As I glance at the last entry which opened with a comment on the chilly weather, I realise that we have been lucky with the amount of sunshine and the mildness of November. We even had a day out one Saturday in early November to the market in Revel, a small town whose market had been widely recommended to us, and indeed lived up to its promise. There we bought cheese and saucisson to go with our baguette, and then went for a picnic by the Lac St.Ferreol in the sunshine, where the upside-down photo of Edie was taken.


The last month has also brought Halloween and a traditional English Bonfire party, complete with pumpkin soup, hot-dogs and sparklers. Yes, we really are in France, but we still have to develop a bit of cultural background for the girls!

Half term at the end of October which was a week and a half long, brought lots of creativity at home as well as a great day out to the Cité d'Espace in Toulouse where Cassi learnt about gravity and Edie sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star a lot!

The girls are both getting into the swing of things at school. Edie still loves the creche and tonight she tried to attract my attention by calling me 'Maman'. More amusingly though she has taken to calling Steve Pipi, instead of Papa!! Cassi has had a tough ride at school but seems finally to be getting a little more settled, and is doing great -she even got 19.5  out of 20 in a controle recently, frequently comes home with 'Bon Points' and seems to be gaining a bit of confidence. As you can see, she is generally very happy!

Other than that, the house has progressed, and we now have  a completed roof, sanded beams, and will soon have new windows and new shutters in place on the top floor, which means that the house should be weather-proof ready for whatever winter throws at it. (For anyone interested- see Steve's latest account of the building progress at http://standachanceinfrance.com/french-house-renovation-pt3/ )
We have also had our planning permission passed for our extension, which as well as being a relief, feels like a feat over French bureaucracy!

Autumn life kicks in.

Although as I write I am looking out onto blue sky and sunshine, it is decidedly colder here, and this morning there was even a bit of a frost!! When we first arrived in the Aude exactly 2 years ago last week (13th October 2008) we spent the first weekend at the beach in Narbonne and even swam in the sea. When we visited last year on a house-hunting trip in October half term, it was in the high 20s, even though friends had warned us that it had been cold, so we are still holding out for a bit more nice weather before the autumn takes hold completely.

So with the coming of Autumn, comes the Apple festival in Mirepoix, and avid readers from 2008 will remember our very enjoyable visit to our first festival of this kind. So it was with some excitement that we headed off to the Fete de la Pomme last Sunday, reflecting on how much things have changed in our lives in 2 years, and how much bigger the girls have got! It was a similar affair to last time but with a Spanish theme. Other than that, merry-go round, candy floss, apples in all shapes and sizes as far as the eye could see, the vintage tractor parade and hot chocolates all round in a cafe to warm ourselves up. The girls were truly in their element- la fete de la pomme comes up trumps again!

Another highlight for Cassi was the cake and cookie making with Inga (who owns the gite we are living in) and some of Cassi's English friends. There was more cake mix eaten than made it into cakes, and even more blanquette and red wine drunk by the adults, but at least nobody was sick, and a good time was had by all!!

Autumn has also brought with it our second mammoth visit to the doctors. Cassi has been bunged up and snotty since we got to France and has had an ear infection (the first visit), and as the whole thing had still not cleared up after 6 weeks, I decided to take her back. The outcome is that it looks like she may have some kind of allergy (hopefully not to France in general!) possibly dust related, but the thing of note was the colossal amount of medication required to treat a runny nose. I got home about 60 Euros worse off  but am glad to say that she is better now! Pictured is the result of 2 visits to the chemist.

The renovation project

Apart from a picture of the house in the last post and talk of demolition and the delivery of roofing materials, there was not much mention made of the work at the house and as this week, it has truly turned into a building site, I thought that a quick resume and some pictures would not go amiss. So here you are:


As you can see the old roof has been removed and the new one is going on, all of which has happened within 5 days! I don't want to speak too soon, but the French workmen have so far made a myth of the picture usually painted of them, and apart from the fact that they started about 4 days late (well, this is France after all) have been grafting away. There is something very endearing as well about the image of the four of them sitting round at lunchtime, making picnic tables and benches out of beams as they tuck into their baguette!

I am also sticking in a link to Steve's site which has a video of the house before any (well, much) work had been done, for anyone who wants to see the "before" pictures to compare.



http://standachanceinfrance.com/ and click on house renovation


As you can see, we are not quite ready for guests, but we will keep you posted!

Oh and couldn't resist sticking in this one of the Pyrenees, looking rather lovely!

The Sequel- 2010

The Story so far

Incredibly, it is now more than a month since we arrived back in Montréal. It has however been less settled and idyllic than that sounds, but I have to admit that there have been some pretty nice bits amongst the chaos! It does feel great to see the progress (however slow it may seem) of our new house. Steve has been working really hard, and has now pretty much demolished all the internal walls and the new roof is currently sat in the garden waiting to go on next week. It is also a real buzz to be back amongst the beautiful countryside and particularly the backdrop of the Pyrenees, which still take my breath away every time!


So a month in and the blog is still lying dormant waiting for life to be breathed back into it!! So, as there are so many people I feel guilty about not yet e-mailing, I am going for the easy option of a one size fits all blog entry!!

The journey

Anyone who read the last blog will remember that within the first 24 hours of leaving home, it had seemed that something was trying to stand in our way of even getting to France!! I am pleased to report that although it makes for much less entertaining reading, the journey down was pretty uneventful. The worst thing that happened was that Cassi’s beloved Pandy was mislaid at a motorway services. When there are camels to ride and bouncy castles in the shape of cows, (oh yes, it's a far cry from Membury!) is it any wonder that poor Pandy was forgotten? But even that story has a happy ending, as after a few embarrassing phone calls and a 15 euro postal charge he was located and the happy pair were reunited!

Arrival
On our arrival on 20th August we were lucky enough to have some very kind friends who were away on holiday and let us have the use of their house, which meant that for the time before our stuff arrived from England, we had the comfort of a fully furnished house (including toys and even a trampoline which proved particularly popular with Edie). They even had a cat which needed looking after so we were able to convince ourselves that in some small way we were doing them a favour!!! Having said that, Edie harassed poor Patch to such an incredible extent, that if cats could talk I am sure that when we left, she would have said “thank God for that!!”
During our time at Martin and Wendy’s the weather was fab, and although I could barely keep Steve away from getting stuck in at the new house, we did manage to have a couple of days out, myself and the girls became regular visitors to the Montréal outdoor pool and we really enjoyed catching up with friends.

We also set about ordering roofing materials as well as seeking permission from the Mairie to erect scaffolding to do the job. This was when we discovered that all the streets around our house were imminently to be closed for the water board to dig up the roads to replace the lead pipes with new ones, and that the delivery of our materials as well as accessing the house to put the roof on may not be possible. It was the first major test of my French (or more specifically my confidence in speaking French in a public arena) to attend a meeting at the Mairie about ”les travaux”, where having arrived late, I had to explain in front of about 20-30 people who I was and what our plans were, fortunately to be told that the bit of road by our house would be unaffected and the delivery and work would be able to go ahead. What a relief!

The Move to the Gite
On the 1st Sept, we moved to the place where we will now be staying until our house is ready or until Mick and Inga get fed up of us (whichever happens first)!! They had worked fantastically hard over the summer to get their gite - which they had lived in for 3 years whilst doing up their house but has been uninhabited (apart from chickens) for the last 2 years - into a suitable home for us. They did a brilliant job and we feel very lucky (in spite of the teething problems with the plumbing!!) to be here. They even have a pool but we are hoping that Cassi and Edie don’t get too used to getting in from school and going for a swim!

Cassi and Edie
The next big event between moving in and getting our stuff was Cassi’s first day at school and Edie’s first day at the crèche on the 2nd Sept. Cassi’s arrival at school summed up why I was so keen to move back to Montréal rather than another village and that was because of both the reception we got from other parents who recognised us, (not to mention a handshake from the Maire to welcome us,) and most importantly the fact that a little girl called Laura (who had looked after Cassi at the école maternelle) padded up to Cassi, held her hand and off they trotted to the whole school photo and then to their classroom, with big smiles!! Edie’s start at crèche was a slower affair, taking her a week or so to stop crying as I left, but I realised we had made it when last Sunday she asked if she could go to school! She now has an agreement with the ladies there that she will teach them English as they teach her French.
The truck with all our stuff in it from England actually turned up unexpectedly 24 hours early, also on the 2nd, so it was lucky that we were already at the gite, and that we bumped into a friend at school when we were picking Cassi up for lunch, who said that our truck was parked at her house!! It was a mad afternoon but apart from there being one side of our L shaped sofa missing, all was well and it was good to be able to begin getting things settled.
Since then, it has really been business as usual, with the girls settling into school, having good and bad days, and with Cassi having lots of homework to do. Our biggest issue there has been that whilst we thought that she would have a big head start by the fact that she can read pretty well already and has done really well with her writing over her year at school in England, the different French handwriting and their insistence on forming each letter in exactly the right way, is a real challenge- for me as well as Cassi! But we will get there and although the language issue generally is tough for Cassi, she is doing really well and already says “aie” instead of “ouch” when she hurts herself and Edie welcomes Steve home in the evening with “bonjour papa” and goes to the loo to do a “pipi-weewee”!!

Our first visitors
No prizes for guessing who our first visitors were! It was actually a real coincidence because my Mum and Dad had already booked ferry crossings to France and back from Bilbao, before we even knew we were moving out here, but they couldn’t pass by so close without popping in for a visit, well not if they wanted to be invited back anyway!! So first of all, we took a day trip to the Camargue and to Aigues-Mortes where they were camping, one glorious Sunday in early September and then the following Tuesday they came over to stay for a few nights in Carcassonne and were able to see the house in its ‘before’ state and managed to show a reasonable level of enthusiasm for it, not seeming to think that we had just made the craziest move of our lives! We spent a lovely evening at the Cité and a Wednesday with the children off school around Montréal and in Mick and Inga’s pool. It was brief but much valued time with Nanma and Dats.

Employment
My prospects took a major turn in the right direction last week, when I started working at Icam –a private university for engineering students in Toulouse. It is only one morning a week at the moment, (and it’s an 8.00 start and an hour’s drive away, which I actually managed for any doubting Thomases out there!) I am still looking for more work, but it is a start and all good experience. I really enjoyed my first session, so with a bit of luck it may lead to more hours. Watch this space.