Hello and welcome to 2009 at La Vie en Foussais.
I lost my blogging mojo a little toward the end of the year and ended up somewhat neglecting you, my faithful readers. But fear not, for I am back and ready to update you all on our comings and goings over the last few weeks.
We have been busy preparing for Christmas…
Joe had his concert (”Arbre de Noel”)…
we trecked back to Grimsby in the car for Christmas…
spent some great times with our family…
and friends…
returned home to Foussais to some very happy cats,
enjoyed a fun (and very long) new year party with our great friends The Dixies…
And to top it all, today saw our first proper snowfall
So that’s brought you all up to date. Now lets get on with enjoying what 2009 has to offer!
One-year anniversary
I have always enjoyed speaking french. When I was a child we enjoyed many holidays over here and I certainly seemed to have a natural aptitude for the language. Lisa too had learned french at school and so we both had a basic level of language when we arrived.
But nothing I learned at school, nor in Lisa’s adult education classes, prepared us for the shear stress of having to hold conversations with people day-in-day-out. From the moment we arrived it was clear that my schoolboy french (”Where is the post-office?”…”"Do you have any brothers or sisters?” etc) was going to be no use to me at all. Suddenly we were thrust into the realms of speaking about getting oil deliveries for the heating, arranging telephone and internet services, enrolling children at school, opening bank accounts and arranging for the bins to be emptied.
For the first few months we both stumbled through these encounters with a dazzling array of pigeon-french, gesticulations and blind panic. But we made it through all this without too many mishaps due to mis-translations, and gradually began to grow in confidence.
We can now hold decent conversations with people without breaking out in hot sweats, and actually feel comfortable initiating a chat, which is major progress. Some folks still flummox us with their speed or heavy accent however, and in these situations there is still a lot of shrugs, nods and “Bah oui, c’est bien”s. Especially from me! 
While our progress has been steady over the last year, the children have progressed at an incredible pace. I will focus more on their story in another post, but suffice it to say now that our three are now extremely comfortable in french comapny and can hold far better conversations than us in most cases!
Lisa has struck up a great friendship with Nathalie, a teacher at the local school, and they email each other pretty much every day in their non-mother tongue. This has been a great experience for them both and is certainly starting to make a difference to Lisa’s written French.
My task for the next year is to find ways to improve my spoken french, as it is now me who is starting to lag behind. I have no real exposure to much french conversation on a day-to-day basis, so I have to make myself get out and do more things in the village. There is a badminton club on a Monday night which may be a good option for me, although it goes against all my beliefs to do any form of exercise voluntarily, obviously
I think we are all very proud of how much our french has improved over the last 12 months, but we know there is still a long way to go before we can say we are fluent. But hopefully we now have a good solid foundation upon which to build in the year ahead.
One-year anniversary
Back in the summer of 2007 when we announced our move, one of the biggest worries for us was leaving our friends behind. We had some great relationships formed over many years with poeple that were very close to us. The news that we had finally sold our house and were emigrating was met with pretty much universal upset.
Many tears were shed on both sides and the last weeks together in the UK were spent saying long, sad goodbyes. Moving to a quiet rural village in the west of France, we envisaged our lives being very lonely, never again to recapture the sort of bonds that we had left behind in england.
But how wrong we were.
Within weeks of arriving in our home we had friendships with several english families, the same-language bonds being quickest and easiest to make at this time. Before too long, through the school, we started to get to know more french families and form strong friendships with some of them. Meals were cooked for each other, afternoons were enjoyed drinking aperitifs round the pool. Events were attended together and good times had by all.
Perhaps its the more relaxed way of life here, or maybe we’ve just become “better” at meeting people, but we certainly seem to have had little trouble in building up an embryonic network here, which can only grow as we get more and more confident with our french speaking.
And it’s not just new friends that are part of our network. Some of our old friends from the UK have kept in touch and this reveals to us the strength of our relationships with them. There are others who have not kept in touch and that’s up to them. We all move on and make choices in life which make things difficult, so these things happen. Those friends who remain in touch have become very dear to us and we are thankful to the power of Skype, email and MSN for allowing us to keep that relationship alive easily and cheaply. We eagerly await the visits from these folk and have so far had some wonderful times with all who have joined us here.
Even you, my loyal readers, have made an impact. When I started this site back in March I saw it as just another way to keep the folks at home up to date with our news, but from that humble beginning has grown a real community. Through the conversations on La Vie en Foussais we have had the pleasure of communicating with so many great people who have all been very supportive and some of whom have become very special friends.
We would all really like to say a huge “thank you” and “merci beaucoup” to you all. We do feel very lucky to be one year in and already surrounded, both physically and virtually, by such lovely people. You have all helped in so many ways to make our first 12 months in Foussais the success it has been and we hope that you will all continue on this journey with us for many more years to come.
We were recently invited for dinner with the family of one of Molly’s school friends. They are a lovely family and we are really thrilled that Molly and Jeanne are friends. Jeanne’s mother had suggested that the two girls go to their house and spend the afternoon preparing a meal for the two families, which was a very sweet idea.
So Molly and Jeanne spent the day slaving in the kitchen (with a bit of playing thrown in as well I imagine ) and the rest of us turned up in the evening. It was a wonderful evening - the girls had prepared a starter of goats cheese on toasted baguette, followed by baked fish with rice, all topped off with some delicious apple tarts.
Jeanne’s dad makes his own wine from the grapes at one of the Vendee vinyards, so the vins de la maison were flowing freely all night. Lisa kindly offered to drive home as it would have been way too rude for me to refuse the top-ups to my glass 
All-in-all the meal was beautiful and the company thoroughly enjoyable. Jeanne’s family speak no english at all, so this was a night of us speaking 100% french all night. Quite a big challenge for us, but we rose to the occasion and the conversation never dried up.
I think we are all starting to realise just how far we have come over the last year in terms of the language. This time last year we could never have even considered having a dinner party with only french being spoken but now we are quite happy in that situation, and the kids even more so. They are all doing so well now that I think they have well and truly overtaken Lisa and I in their ability to communicate.
This is great news to us, as giving the kids a second language was one of the big reasons for coming here and we can already see how glad they are to have it. Now, if only they could start giving us lessons so we can keep up with them, that would be even better!
As we approached November, we were asked one question more and more by our friends and family back home…”Do they have Guy Fawkes night in France?” [what's "Guy Fawkes night"?]
Now, think about it folks…
Clearly, there is no reason for the French people to want to celebrate a group of persecuted Catholics trying to blow up the Houses of parliament. Although, given the violent and revolutionary history of France, it could well have been a chapter in early French history rather than English.
But no, sadly there is no bonfire night in France. We have other excuses for a feu d’artifice throughout the year (Bastille Day anyone?) and tonight there will be no fireworks, no sparklers, no rockets streaking across the sky until the early hours of the morning….
If you are in the UK and are enjoying these things tonight, have fun and stay safe.
