A Visitor and an X-ray

Hey, I haven't written for a while, I've been putting more time into recording and editing our new podcast. We're doing 10 episodes (we might do more later on but for now we're just doing 10). They're out every Monday for the next 10 weeks, but the recording period was from February until October, because we wanted to make sure we had enough interesting things to say. If you follow my blog you will know lots about our move, but there are lots more funny stuff that I've included in the pod that I've held back from sharing on here. We talk about my french fails, times when I've said stupid stuff to the kids teachers because I can't remember the right word. A disastrous time when a french family knocked on my door and Dan was in the shower and I made a proper fool of myself. Every week we do a feature called "French for maniacs", where we teach you a completely mad French phrase and dare you to say it to a real French person. If you do know anyone moving countries please share it with them too because as well as the silliness we have tried to include some actual useful tips about the logistics of moving countries. It is here

Last week has been a super fun week for me, mainly because the lovely Esther came to visit just for a couple of days. Esther is actually the first visitor we've had that isn't a parent of me or Dan. (We were meant to see another family in August but that plan was ruined by chicken pox.) Esther is someone I've known since my early 20s and I respect a lot. She is an actor and director and works and lives all over the place including sometimes in a van with her adorable dog Robin. After a crazy and difficult lockdown time when she fled from London like everyone I know did, she is on a kind of pilgrimage to find out about herself and life and God. Doing a lot of walking and thinking and stuff. You should really follow her instead of read this secondhand nonsense from me.

We were in a nearby park when we saw this: Esther's plane arriving 15 mins early, we raced off and managed to beat her to arrivals.

We picked her up and went straight to the sea. It's still warm enough to swim, but it was a bit windy and it wasn't burning hot, but it is burning hot today (about 30). On the way back home we picked Percy up from his first ever French birthday party. It's so sweet to see how his classmates really love him. I'm very proud of how he's doing in school. He had to read the poem below out loud in front of his class last week and he did really well.

This is how he has to write now. The French are very particular about handwriting and so, alongside learning that letters make slightly different sounds in French, he also has to learn this curvy writing that I can hardly read.

On Monday and Tuesday the boys were in school and Dan was working which meant that me and Esther got to go on some little adventures by ourselves. On Monday we set off to a gorge, stopping on the way to check out the view from the big hill you can see from our house. Driving on a tiny very steep road is not my favourite thing but it was worth it for the views. 

The difficult drive continued as we made our way to the the gorge. I've only been there once on a very hot August Saturday when it was rammed. This time I followed the sat nav, and it took me not the way I really wanted to go. I ended up on little windy path in a vineyard with a parked tractor blocking the way. There was a small gap but neither me nor Esther thought I could squeeze through without hitting a big rock. Then a guy appeared and waved me through. If I had better language skills I might have tried to argue that it was a bad idea, but I thought it was better to just try and I made it! 

I then discovered that the road lead to nowhere because the car park I was trying to get to had been blocked off with a giant rock, and you can't just park in a vineyard. I mean I was going to, but Esther said I shouldn't and then I saw "we'll tow away your car" signs. So I had to try and 3 point turn and squeeze past the tractor again and find a different way then. (Luckily the tractor had actually moved.) Eventually we got to the gorge a different way, but the entrance was all fenced off as if it just shuts in September. But as I said as a child, you can't pray the bit in the Lord's prayer that says "forgive us our trespasses" if you haven't been trespassing.

It was totally worth it to have this whole absolutely gorgeous gorge all to ourselves. There's like a long interesting rock corridor that you can swim down and then 2 places where you can swim and jump into a pool and the water is the most beautiful colour ever, and still warm enough to be ok at this time of year. After a lovely swim we climbed up the hill to try and find some caves, unsuccessfully, but we got some ace views.

The best colour in the world

The view from our climb

The next day we went on a long walk to a very cool waterfall. We had some deep chats about life, reminiscing about our 20's and the fine line we walked between having a genuine Christian faith and accidentally being in bit of a cult and how we make sense of all that now. (I've got no plans to unpack all that in this blog anytime, but happy to have real life chats with anyone who wants to.) At the end of the walk we reached this beautiful waterfall and some surprising things happened. But what happened at the waterfall stays at the waterfall (Its really Esther's story so I'll let her share it on her blog.)

I'm writing this now on the coach back from Montpellier, where I went for a meeting with the immigration and integration board. Before going I read a blog from someone who has been to this meeting (which also includes a medical examination and a french test) and she said it was incredibly stressful and disorganised, no one spoke English and she cried afterwards. But I've actually had a pretty good day, and yeah there were moments where I thought if they had translated the word "breastfeeding" then it would have meant a middle aged guy with man boobs wouldn't have had to mime breastfeeding to me. But then where would I get all my blog and podcast content from? HE CUPPED HIS MAN BOOB AND SUCKED HIS THUMB - honestly it was hilarious! And I will be doing a full in depth analysis of the many humorous moments of the whole day on the podcast, but not till episode 10.

Would you let me have a long stay visa based on this picture of my boobs? Well the French think it's good enough. Whoop whoop!

This week we're having a couple that I met online over for tea, just because they're from Warrington. Imagine doing that in the UK. Imagine going to Ikea for example (I really can't think of another reason you would go to Warrington) and imagine you got chatting to someone in the queue and then you just invited them over for tea. That's weird right?

C'est tout. Bisous.