Le Chateau de Beaulieu Busnes

Hé hé !

L'Amérique latine, nous voici nous voilà très très bientôt !!!
Plus que quelques heures avant le décollage...
L'excitation et l'appréhension sont 2 émotions qui se battent en duel en ce moment.

Le départ est prévu à 20h ce lundi 7 décembre de Paris CDG et l'atterrisage le mardi 8 décembre à Buenos Aires.
Nous en avons rêvé et ce projet va enfin devenir réalité.

Nous partons tout équipés : les 2 v ...

... in Paris. I really had so much luck with the weather and the city itself was beautiful. The last few days I visited Montmartre, the picturesque artsy part of town on a hill, where I visited the gorgeous Church of Sacree Coeur, as well as the cafe where one of my favorite movies, Amelie, was filmed. I took lots of pictures and arrived there as I listened to it's amazing soundtrack.

I also ...

... huge damage during the war and required significant reconstruction. Some parts of the original buildings still stand, and show shrapnel damage, and some of the statues in the church walls are badly damaged.

Next stop after Ypres was at the Hooge Crater Cemetary. This cemetary contains the graves of nearly 6000 soldiers, many of whom were younger than I am, and a lot were only engraved with 'A British/Australian/New ...

Or at least, the Lille metro.

Lille's metro system was the first one in the world without a driver, which is pretty clever really. It does make the journeys interesting, however!
As there is no driver, sitting right at the front of the train you can look at the tracks straight ahead of you, which is quite good fun really and reminds me of being on a rollercoaster! Of course I don't sit there screaming and shouting. At least not all the time.
Getting on the metro early ...

... anyone going to Belgium, the food is insanely expensive! Even fast food can run you 10 Euros and a decent meal will cost you 30 Euros easy. It was so difficult finding any inexpensive restaurants we almost went crazy.

Well that’s Ypres. Quite the learning experience for us both but we weren’t done yet. We decided to make our way along the French Flanders/Normandy coast before making our way back to my Aunt and Uncles for a rest.

... towns, but if that's true then they must be ghost towns!
Dunkirk does have a few art museums, but we were told that the closest one didn't have anything interesting at the moment and the others were more expensive. So we took a walk down to the beach, had a stroll along the sea-front and ate "Moules-Frites" in a sea-side brasserie, and wandered around the shops. It was a nice day out and at least I can now say that I have been to Dunkirk!

As busy as a beaver

The last two weeks seem to be a bit of a blur to be honest, it feels like I've accomplished very little in a rather large space of time but as I look back, a lot has been crammed in!

First of all, work! Last week I was still observing classes. Fortunately I was able to meet more of the English classes and only went to one French class which I did find quite useful.

Students at Sévigné don't see English as ...

... 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 ...

... video screens showing the devestation of the surrounding area. There are over 44000 people buried there. St Juliaan Another Canadian memorial for the victims of a gas attack. Yes it's large, but as I told you yesterday why the Canadians build these things. It is impressive as well. Everytime I come here, I stop and look. I will be the first to say that I am not a great lover of Canadians (other than you Sandy!!!), but I am always impressed by their ...

... voor de weersvoorspelling van de Belgische omroep. Van een stralende zonnige dag is niets te zien, als we om ca. 8.00 uur ons hooft in de kuip steken. De wind komt nog steeds uit een Noordelijke richting en lijkt wat afgenomen. Na wat boodschappen te hebben gedaan, maken we ons en het schip vaarklaar. We steken een stevig rif in het grootzeil, zodat we ons niet kunnen laten verrassen door een opstekende wind. We zitten immers aan lagerwal als ...