Campanile Lille Sud Seclin

... had a sketching guest teacher for the weekend who was an amazing sketcher/artist/architect. The first place we went was an old fortified palace up on a hilltop. It was mostly remains, but very beautiful in its own way. The next place we went was the village of Laon, a little bit more hoppin' then the last because there ere more than 2000 citizens. There was a very elaborate Notre Dame Cathedral here which we toured and sketched.
After we visited these two places ...

... a street stall and took a walk around Vieux Lille up to the Catédral Notre Dame de la Treille which is an incredible building. It was built during two different centuries and the modern front of the building has only been finished for ten years, having been completed in 1999.
Monday eventually arrived and it was back to work for both of us; I was up at seven to catch the metro and eight to be at school by nine. This week I have only been observing classes, however not only English ...

... There are also French, Spanish, German and Americans so we won't be short of company!
We had Annabelle with us to help with the language and she definitely knows what we have to do, so it has been very useful, but we took some time to ourselves to explore the areas where we will be teaching and the area around which we will be living.
We have also visited both of our schools to meet the teachers and test out transport, Erin is teaching in a school in a town called ...

Before heading back to Ann's house, we decided to make a pit-stop in Ieper (Ypres) on our way back to Herentals. We were told there was a famous museum called "In Flanders Field Museum".

The museum was not big at all, but it was interactive which made it interesting. They had the famous Canadian poem "In Flanders Fields" projecting on the wall. We think it was a copy of the original ...

... work in Arras/Vimy as a tour guide. Wonderful experience for them if you ask me.

We visited also the trenches but didn't have time to take the 50 minute guided tour unfortunately. So we just walked around it ourselves. Around the entire site, there were areas that were off limits because of undetenated explosives from the war. Those areas were closed off with ...

... Bullecourt. The town is quite small, and conscious of the time, we did not stop to take photos of the bronzed slouch hat outside of the Bullecourt church. We did not see the Hotel Canberra that was in the town. We followed the signs along a small rural road (or track) that led to the Australian War Memorial. As we arrived, a big white tour coach pulled up behind us. As we walked towards the bronzed ...

... poop. Utterly disgusted, and providing everyone else with memories to last a lifetime, I proceeded to douse my hands with hand sanitizer. Thankfully, none got on my clothes, but trust me when I say I washed my hands about 782 times at the first sink I found, and my shirt with grass stains is currently in the wash. Yuck. Ironically, the park had a sign that said "No Dogs." Yea, so much for that. Thanks, random Lillian (not sure if that's right) dog owner.


Lille, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France cmvanacker

Arrived off ferry that we almost missed b/c of accident on m20. also, jason forgot his sweatshirt at Abra's so had to go back there to get it. Then got to ferry where I got told, I think its P & O, but not really sure which ferry company I booked with......ok, this will be a new adventure. Got to Lille, had a great dinner, and now about to head to normandy.....

With only the very briefest of stops at Lille we charged across the WW1
battlefields of Flanders, towards Brussels. This was countryside which
would have still been more familiar to my Grandfather than myself. My
one or two visits to Antwerp on the ships I had captained did not avail
me of very much sightseeing! The trip we made in 1973 took us south
very quickly across the flat lands towards Luxembourg.

... yet another cherry beer for desert. Still pulling little spiders from our hair and clothes, we finally pried ourselves away from the sun and the beautiful green countryside and walked back to the car. We drove to a place called Pool of Peace. The name sounded out of the ordinary and I was instantly intrigued. David and Lucy took off immediately and sped off behind some trees which turned out to be ...