Mike and Katie and Snails

This post is mainly dedicated to the lovely Mike and Katie our close friends who have just got married.

It's also dedicated to our new friends Brian and Tracey who are plastecine snails that we made a couple of days ago.

Katie and Mike are a totally brilliant couple, they were totally brilliant as individual people so it's only logical that they are brilliant together. My favourite thing about Katie is that she says yes to everything which means she's always up for fun times/ helping you grout a mosaic/ agreeing to have an armchair you're trying to get rid of. I asked Dan (who knows Mike a bit better) what his favourite thing about Mike was and he said "he's honest, he's funny and he cares about his friends a lot."So they are just a couple of the great things about Katie and Mike.

We wanted to get them a nice wedding present.  When we got married, Katie asked me 'if you could have anything in the world what would you want?' I thought about the time we had a lot of fun messing about on someone's canoe recently and without a lot of thought to practicalities said 'canoes' because I didn't think it would actually result in all our friends chipping in and breaking a van in the process of buying us two enormous canoes. This is them in our garden.

 There was no way we could top that, but I decided to make them a handmade present all the same, it took me a very long time to make this thing and I was still making it on the morning of their wedding day. I didn't leave myself much time to wrap it well. In fact it was just wrapped in cardboard with a mixture of gaffa and electrical tape. It looked a proper mess, and it wasn't as if I could hide it way behind the other presents as it was A1 sized. We took it to the reception venue, using it as an umbrella, only to discover that we were in charge of taking all the presents home, so actually I could have just left it at home and wrapped it better.

Dan was the best man, I was 'wag of best man and Grace sayer' which is a really important role. The grace sayer bit came about because just before we got married Katie said she loves saying grace (of course she does- she loves everything) So I said she could say grace at our wedding, and she decided to return the favour although it was only decided 5 minutes before grace.

 Will Evans introduced the grace and told everyone to bow their heads. It was then a bit embarrassing when the microphone didn't work, and I did what a lot of people do to test a microphone, which is say 'hello' in a slightly awkward way, at that point the microphone did work. Everyone who had bowed their heads looked up at me in an odd way. I think they thought that was the beginning of my prayer, but Katie said she thought I was about to start some impromtu stand up.

Anyway it was a super brilliant wedding, I wish them a lifetime of happiness and I hope we stay lifelong friends. 

But that's enough about Katie and Mike, what about Brian and Tracey our new plastecine snail friends with appalling midlands accents? Click Here to see a very short clip of them that we made using stop frame animation. We want to make a proper little film with them but we are looking for ideas. 

Happy New Year.

Low budget ways to entertain yourself

Hello friends and possibly stalkers.
Last time I blogged I was talking about all the things we could possibly do with our lives now that we're back from the big trip that even I am bored of mentioning now. We have not managed to achieve any of the big exciting things I mentioned yet but here are some of the lower budget weirder things we have been doing:

1) leaving all our skype friends video messages from 'Pablo' and 'Sandra'

2) T-rex tidying - doing normal everyday chores with our arms in the t-rex position i.e. tiny arms.  It makes the chores a lot more challenging but it's also a lot more fun.

3) Having date night which involved going to home bargains to spend a pound each. I got 500g of fake liquorice allsorts. The great thing about liquorice is that so many people hate it, so even though I've offered to share with a couple of people they've all said no.  (that's not the only thing we did on our date night we also had a meal in that new Lebanese place on bold St)

4) Singing 'Mancunian way' to the tune of 'arabian nights' (from Aladdin) last night whilst on  the mancunian way.

5)  Inventing a game that's already been invented. The game we invented, we called 'tilepix'

Everyone has 2 minutes to make one of the words on the cards from 25 tiles.

So for example this is quite clearly a giraffe. This game was born out of my rebellious way of playing bananagrams.  I can never win in spelling games so I just tried to make pictures from the letter tiles instead.

I decided to make 10 of them to start with to give away as presents or sell. But because it takes soooo long to make each game, particularly the box lid, I'm not going to make more than the 10 I've already made. If you want one I have only about 3 left to sell and they are £12. I emailed a games company with the idea and they told me a very similar game called 'squint' already exists. Mine's loads better though.

6) Making up jokes. I've just been in a comedy competition. I was the only girl out of 18 people, and I thought that might give me an extra edge but then a 13 year old entered and was actually really funny. The only way I can compete with that is if I was a dancing puppy or something. Dan helped me make up some new jokes about Movember for my set and I also had some new material on eskimo muslims. Here's me performing it:

Llama or Lodger?

Since coming back from our big trip we are not really sure what to do with our lives. Before going our goals for the next 5 years were to have a baby and move to a different country probably in that order. One of the places we were both quite excited about going to on our big trip was Lebanon. We wondered whether this might be the place for us because I really like arab culture, they speak French and Arabic and Dan speaks French and I speak a tiny bit of arabic. They have mountains and beaches and although it's majority muslim it's ok to be a christian, and as with most countries the weather is better than here. But we weren't that bothered about it after going. It was cool I'm glad we went but I won't be disappointed if I never go again.

Since getting back from our trip I've stared to feel a lot more settled in Liverpool, I'm appreciating all the great things about being here like all our friends that are here and we have electricity. (in Lebanon there were constant power cuts, there were 3 hours a day of timetabled power cuts and extra ones on top of that, and we were living in one of the best places in the country for electricity.)

So if we're going to stay here for the foreseeable future...(which I'm not saying we definitely are) What shall we do with our lives? Here are some options we have discussed in the month since getting back.

1) Buy a big house to and get 2 or 3 lodgers. There's this really great one that we've seen with 5 massive bedrooms, 2 big reception rooms 2 bathrooms a utility room and a study... really nicely done up and ready to move into for £135000. I doubt we'd be able to get a mortgage on that amount but we kind of nearly might be able to when Dan gets a job. This is the smaller of the 2 reception rooms:

One downside is we'd probably get shot living in that area. Check it out here

2) Have a baby, that old classic... it's a very popular choice for people at our kind of age and stage in life, a little mainstream but I'm sure we'll give it a go sooner or later.

3) Foster a child, I would like to do this one day probably not in the next 5 years but it's not the most crazy idea on this list.

4) Get into bee keeping. This is Dan's idea, our friend Jenn Haith has just been on a bee keeping course and now owns several thousand bees. Apparently you can do this course for free if you're on Jobseekers and Dan loves a freebie.

5) Get a kitten. It's hard to decide on this one. The pros are cuteness and the cons are cat hair, cat litter, the smell of cat food, vets bills, cat hairs, and our cat suffocating our future baby. We just need to decide how important cuteness is in our lives.

6) Join the circus. I'm not joking, we've been invited by Josh Simpson of Wild Goose arts to join him for however long we want next summer to teach circus stuff in eastern Europe. If you're interested check it out

This is me and Josh in our student days hanging out on stilts.

7) Become a comedienne...I'm going to try and do a few more gigs and see what happens. The main thing attracting me to this career is the fact that as I'm already self employed it would be no extra paperwork to become a comedian. I've written a few new jokes since getting back from my trip my favourite one is about eskimo-muslims.

8) Get a llama, probably the least serious of these suggestions but there are some second hand llamas for sale locally, if you want them don't let me stop you. They're here.

So there are some of the options, most of them require Dan to find some employment first. (he quit his job to do the trip) Maybe we should put it to a vote.

Our Movies

I recently said on facebook that I would stop chatting on about our trip.... I will after this one last post. I was planning to write 4 blogs about our trip one for each quarter...so far I've written 2 about the first quarter and then I started writing the second one but now I'm giving up. I've tried to do a bit too many method of documentation all at once: Photos, a postcard from each place, paper diaries, and a film in 4 parts. I'm sick of hearing about it! So here are the films and accompanying advert which I am quite proud of, and hence forth I shall blog about our life post trip which is a pretty confusing time right now.

The advert

Film 1 England to Switzerland

Film 2 Switzerland to Macedonia

Film 3 Macedonia to Lebanon

Film 4 Lebanon to Kuwait

Southampton to Geneva

Hello, if you have checked my blog thinking I might have written stuff about our 2 month trip to Kuwait, you will have been disappointed. Blame Google. I tried logging on to my blog in other countries and they had to send me a text with a code so I could confirm I am me, the problem was I choose to leave my phone in England.

Anyway I last blogged on day 4 of our trip just before I left England, so today I will blog about the first quarter of our trip using extracts from our diary. I'm also making a film about it which I will put on the internet soon.

Day 5 Sailing to the Isle of Wight in my Dad's boat

Day 6 

"at around 6.30am we saw some kind of cargo ship that came into the 'boats that might hit us' category  We woke Dad up (as we had been instructed to do) and we watched the boat with special binoculus that tell you what angle the boat is sailing at. Obviously it didn't hit us I probably would have mentioned that sooner." Han

Day 7

"The highlight of the day was quite possibly when we rode up the lock with a few bigger boats. We were alongside a trawler with a good sized catch and as they discarded some fish which were too small we snagged 6 for tea."  Dan

Day 8 - Dad dropped us off on the seine which was a tricky manoeuvre depicted below, and we began a 3 day cycle to Paris.

Day 9- The day we ate cereal without bowls, outside a shop. (and cycled 50 miles)

Day 10 -

"We are staying with Dan's Aunty Beatrice who lives in a very posh area right in the centre of Paris. When we arrived she got out some sandwich stuff for lunch and like a typical french person she had 5 different kinds of cheese and none of them were cheddar or cheese triangle. I aspire to be like that one day." Han

Day 11-

 I met up with my french exchange partner Morgane who I hadn't seen since I was 15. This time we were actually able to communicate with each other via Dan.

Day 12- 

We went up the Eiffel tower and then headed south to Dijon by train. The Eiffel tower is really only a half built tourist attraction in my opinion. All those stairs and no Helta- skelta what's that all about?

Day 13- 60 miles

Day 14 (crossing the swiss/ french boarder in the alps)

"The downhill was without a doubt the greatest hill I have ever been on. About 2km down there was a bend and the most incredible view. Massive Alps with snow on top towered behind the lake." - Dan

Day 15 (Lake Geneva)

"We also went on a pedalo and I swam, and by "Swam" I mean played around in the water jumping and twisting like a dolphin on crack" Han

And here ends the first Quarter of our trip I'll write more soon.

Setting Off

Hello.... you may think of today as Friday 2nd of August but Dan and I are have now set of on our adventure and are only referring to days by their numbers. Today is day 4 (a rest day) Here are a few things that have happened since day 1.

Here we are with our lovely 10 year old next door neighbour a minute before we set off. If you look carefully you might be able to see a banana attached precariously to my pannier. Unfortunately that banana fell off somewhere along Lawrence or Earl road.

We got the ferry across the Mersey something we have never done before in 8 years of living in Liverpool. We then cycled 35 miles south to Dans grandparents house in Malpas, Cheshire. On the way we passed the cutest poster ever!

Please everyone be vigilant for what I'm assuming is a a black cat. Here is Dan with his English Grandparents.

Impressive beard isn't it. 

So that was day 1, very pleasant....unlike day 2, when after 15 miles of cycling in the rain Dan said "and now we join the canal tow path so no more hills and a nice direct route all the way to Birmingham." He wasn't so jolly after a few miles of walking our bikes through this:

After hoping it would get better for a long time we eventually abandoned the canal route and cycled in the A41 towards Wolverhampton for ages and ages, and then joined a much better tow path that connected Wolverhampton with Birmingham. In total we cycled 69.2 miles that day at the absolutely rubbish average speed of 6 miles an hour. (we normally do about 10 mph) I can't say we were the best company when we arrived at my sister Jo's house. I won't scare you with a picture of my face but here are my feet.

Day 3 was a much more pleasant 22 miles to my parents house near Coventry although unfortunately my bum had not fully recovered from the day before, so instead of the first 10 miles being pain free like they normally are, my bum hurt immediately. Today we have been resting and tomorrow we're off to the isle of wight, by car and boat (car's are cheating I know)  By about midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning we'll be in France and Dan will have got through day 7 the day he's most worried about. 

10 Trip FAQs

Hello....lots of people are asking the us the same questions at the moment. We don't mind at all but I thought I'd write 10 FAQs as my last blog before we leave. (Sorry if you're bored of hearing about it)

1) When are you leaving?
Tomorrow!! by bike from our house. It will be 30th July 2013 exactly 60 years after my grandparents left for their trip. Here they are having a picnic in the desert:

2) Where are you going?
Kuwait (via England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan)

If you're not sure where Kuwait is it's here between Iraq and Saudi.

You may have noticed that 'Turkey-Lebanon-Jordan-Kuwait' isn't really a route. That's the annoying thing about the middle east too many countries that your mum (and the foreign office) won't let you go to. When my grandparents did the same trip in 1953 they happily drove through Iraq and Syria which is sort of the sensible way geographically. We have just picked the countries we wanted to go to and are flying over the bad ones...that's partly why we couldn't go by car like we wanted to originally.

So we're flying over Syria to Lebanon (which is totally not fair because we had this idea before Syria was a mess) and then we're annoying flying to Jordan because Lebanon and Jordan don't quite join up and although I would love to go through Israel and palestine to get there, the Lebanon/ Israel boarder
has been closed since 2006 and you can only go to one of those places on any one passport. The last bit Jordan to Kuwait...I kind of don't mind avoiding Iraq and Saudi. They're not the most welcoming of countries. In fact when we were considering going through Saudi we read on a Saudi website 'Saudi Arabia will remain a great nation as long as it is difficult for foreigners to enter'

That was a long answer sorry.

3) How far will you cycle in a day?
We decided 60 miles should be the maximum per day a  while ago, then I did a test ride that was 60 miles and I thought I was capable of doing it if I had a hour break after 30 miles and a minuets break every 10 miles. Until a few days ago I was thinking we'd have a few 60 mile days but mostly cycling days would be 40 or 50 miles. Last night Dan showed me the GPS computer program with the routes mapped and almost all of them were between 60 and 70 miles.....I'm not quite sure how that happened!

4) How long are you away for?
2 months I think we arrive back in Britain on 29th Sept. We won't really be functioning members of society until October.

5) What are you doing with your house?
2 guys Joe and Adam are living in it.

6) How much luggage will you take?
one pannier bag and one small ruck sack each. I'm not even taking conditioner : (

7) Where are you staying, are you camping?
We can't really camp because then we'd have to take a tent and a mattress and sleeping bags ect so we're staying in a mixture of friends and family's houses, my dad's boat, Couch surfing (staying with strangers from the internet) cheap hostels, and 2 nice hotels (in Venice and Kuwait)

8) What are you doing about work?
I'm self employed so I can kind of take time off, also because I wonk in school there isn't any work in August anyway so I'm only missing a month. Dan has quit his job....he hated it anyway partly because he spent 3 hours a day commuting. On Friday he qualified as a life guard so he'll be looking for work in local swimming pools whilst trying to do more creatively interesting things like writing a book with our friend Ian.

9) What are you most looking forward to?
I'm looking forward to all of it really, but particularly Macedonia, Lebanon and Jordan. But I'm mostly looking forward to the fact that I will be away from everyday life having an adventure with my best friend Dan. awww.

10) What are you most scared of/ worried about?
Day 15 -Lons-le Saunier to Geneva! 70 miles of cycling through the alps with a 7000 foot incline. (in case you didn't know we don't have super amazing bikes we have folding bikes with little wheels and mine doesn't work in gear 1.) At the end of that we have to find a couch surfers house and try and be polite guests in a stranger's home. I also worry about missing planes or not being allowed onto trains with bikes and stuff.

Dan is least looking forward to Day 7- Isle of wight to Le Havre it's 20 hours of wobbling around on a 7 meter long boat...if the winds in the wrong direction it will be longer. Last time we crossed the channel in that boat he was sick about 10 times. He said he's rather cycle for 20 hours than sail for 20 hours. These is our sailing faces:

Thanks for reading. xx

P.s if you want to keep in contact we will be using twitter, email and facebook, maybe skype, I will write a few blogs but mainly we're keeping a paper diary. We will not be using our phones.