La Vie en Foussais is a record of the trials and tribulations of us, the Barley family, as we make a new life for ourselves here in the Vendée region of western France.
Please take the time to look around and feel free to comment on anything you see here. Its always good to hear from you.
This is set to be a big month - even bigger than normal. Not only is is Christmas, which we will be spending with our family in England (more of that in another post), but we also have Joe’s birthday and the first anniversary of us living here in Foussais-Payre.
So there is lots to organise and lots to do, with not really very much time left to do it in. However, in this week I shall try to write every day in the run-up to our one-year anniversary. So much has changed over the last twelve months and we have achieved such a lot, it’s a good time to look back and reflect over our time here and how different things are.
On another note, you will now find each post has a “Listen now” button. Clicking this will allow you to sit back and listen to a nice american man reading that post to you. It’s not perfect but I thought I’d give it a try as an alternate way for folks to consume my ramblings. If you want to subscribe to the blog as a podcast using this feature, just click the “Odiogo” button in the right-hand column and follow the instruction there.
Any thoughts on this or anything else, as usual, just leave a comment!
Posted on October 3, 2008 by Richard in General news
Today is my birthday, so I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has sent me messages - they are very much appreciated. I’m looking forward to enjoying the start of the party tonight when the children return from school and I have finished my work. It’s my first birthday since living in France and I look forward to spending every other one here too!
You may have noticed that the “Visitors” stats shot past 5000 for La Vie en Foussais recently. This is really amazing and I am so glad that people are enjoying the site enough to keep coming back and reading what I have to say. Please don’t be shy about leaving comments - I really do love to receive them and its great to develop a community around a site like this.
Anyway, thanks to everyone for reading, I think I will leave you with a chuckle. On this day in 2005 Ronnie Barker, British comedy genius, sadly gave his last laugh. So here for a bit of Friday Fun is “Swedish Made Simple”, one of my favourite Two Ronnies sketches.
Today the BBC are featuring a story [here] which reveals that half of all UK adults have forgotten the languages they learned at school. Luckily for me this wasn’t the case as my schoolboy French had to get me through many tricky situations when we first arrived!
What is hopeful for our kids is the following:
more than two thirds (69%) said they were jealous of people who were able to speak another language fluently.
Of those who can speak another language, 61% said it had been of benefit to their career, with a third (34%) saying their language skills have given them opportunities to travel and work abroad.
This bodes well for the future of our 3, who will leave school being fluent in at least 2 languages, possibly even 3.
Happy Birthday Craig
Craig McGinty runs the superb ThisFrenchLife web site [here], which is on my daily read list. It’s a great read, always full of interesting articles and news about all things French.
Well today is Craig’s birthday (age not revealed!) so what better time to head on over to www.thisfrenchlife.com and wish Craig a joyeaux anniversaire!
Front-page news toady includes Nicolas Sarkozy and his extra leg (!), news about banned Chinese milk products in France and a pointer to some free travel guides.
A busy weekend coming up
I will fill you in on the details next week, but this wil be another busy weekend!
On Saturday we are heading next-door to the apple-pressing barn where we will hopefully see the whole process from picking to pressing to bottling. With a bit of luck we will walk away with a nice collection of freshly-squeezed apple juice, which should keep us going for a while.
Then on Sunday we will be testing our French again as we meet up with some families who have links with Lisa’s nephew through school exchanges. So a trip to Montaigu near Nantes, then over to the beach to La Tranche-sur-Mer.
On the road again
(Photo under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic by krejcirkmira)
Due to some changes at work, I’ll be hitting the road to England quite a bit this month. This is a real pain and not something I really wanted to happen, but the situation is rather unavoidable at the moment.
Hopefully it will only be a very temporary measure and I can return to my rural hideaway very soon
In the meantime, if you’re anywhere near La Rochelle, Stansted or Maidenhead, feel free to get in touch and we can have a coffee.
And finally…
Next Friday I will be the ripe old age of 37. I’m looking forward to a majorly-fun-time-friday, and an especially fun weekend with great friends.
Anyway, that’s what’s going on with us. Keep a look out for updates. Or why not subscribe to my email newsletter [by clicking here]? Every time I add something new to La Vie en Foussais you will receive it in your inbox - what could be easier?
Well, we survived our first birthday party in France!
It was a blisteringly hot day and we were very concerned that the kids would all get collapse under the heat, so we erected the gazebo and the parasol on the field to provide some shade. We filled the cool bag up with lots of bottles of cold water and planned games that were not too energetic.
Yes, thats right, games. I know Molly was 11 and, had she been in England, the idea of organising party games would have been laughed at. But here it’s the done thing, and how nice it is too. There’s none of the competition that there was in England about who can provide the most spectacular party, with the most incredible activities and the most wonderful party bags. Here there is just the child, their friends and some good old fashioned games. Throw in a bit of cake and brioche to keep their energy levels up and you’re good to go.
So we got sorted out for some of our favourite old party games, including:
Drawing a person by folding the paper into 4, someone draws the head, then passes it on to the next person to draw the body…and so on
The balloon race - stand in a line and pass the balloon alternately over your head & between your legs. First team to go through the line 5 times wins
Carry a penny between your knees and try to drop it in a bowl. First team to get all their pennies in the bowl wins
Spoon & string - tie a spoon to a length of string. The first person passes the spoon down inside their clothes, then the next passes it up inside theirs, then the next one down and so on. First team to get the spoon all the way through wins. Then another race to see who can pull the string back again the fastest.
The chocolate game - roll a die, if you get a 6 you have to put on a hat, scarf and gloves and start eating a big bar of chocolate with a knife and fork. Meanwhile the die is still being passed round so if someone else gets a 6 they immediately take over. Much fun with this one as everyone is desperate to start eating the chocolate so, when they get a 6 they jump up and start donning the gear, only to have to give it up before they start eating as the next person has rolled a 6!
We also came up with a little anglo-french game which involved the kids being given an english word, then having to go find all the letters, which were hanging from the trees in the garden, to spell the same word in french. This worked well until we found that the wind had blown some letters away, and we had spelt one of the french words wrong. But hey ho, it kept them amused for a while!
In between games they were all content to eat, drink and jump on the trampoline. It was so hot that they didn’t really want to charge about too much, which was nice, as neither did we.
Molly really impressed us with her spoken french. We haven’t really heard her speak very much french, so it was lovely to hear her explaining the rules of the games to her friends in a super french accent. Very impressive and quite reassuring - we were beginning to think that she was having difficulties with it, but clearly not.
If there was one problem then I think it was that the party was a fraction too long. If it had been half an hour shorter I think it would have been perfect. We just felt it took a bit of a dip at the mid-point, although that may well have been due to the heat.
After everyone had left, our friends took pity on us once again and invited us for drinks, eats and a dip in their pool. A very welcome end to a great day.
Posted on June 27, 2008 by Richard in Events, People
Aujourd’hui est le 11ème anniversaire de Molly. Elle a beaucoup de très beaux cadeaux et nous avons un bon repas d’anniversaire ce soir.
Demain nous fêtons son anniversaire. Le premier depuis notre arrivée en France. On espère que tout le monde va bien s’amuser et que nous comprendrons tout le monde!
Au moins le temps est toujours aussi beau et ils pourront jouer dehors s’ils le veulent.
This is set to be a big month - even bigger than normal. Not only is is Christmas, which we will be spending with our family in England (more of that in another post), but we also have Joe’s birthday and the first anniversary of us living here in Foussais-Payre.
