Arriving in Allez-et-Cazeneuve to begin our latest house-sit commitment.
We are now firmly ensconced in our second house sit of this French winter. We arrived here last Wednesday, near Villeneuve-sur-Lot, after sadly leaving the tranquil beauty of Barie and the easy company of Ozzie and Tilly, the two loving cats we were looking after. We spent the afternoon catching up with our hosts Monica & Ken then left them in peace to finalise their packing as we settled into our new accommodation. The following day we travelled with them to Toulouse airport, said our goodbyes and returned with their car to the rural calmness of their lovely home.
Since then, we have been quite disciplined with our anticipated learning, helped by the abundance of rain that has fallen. Whilst our hosts are enjoying the extreme heat of Australia, we are enjoying having very little we have to do, but so many available options for things we want to do. Every day we have been playing piano, practising our French, reading books and watching French movies. We had our first formal French lesson today with Rebecca, Ken and Monica’s friend and tutor. She kindly agreed to continue her weekly visits and language instruction although after hearing the abomination that is my spoken French she may well be regretting that decision. When the weather dries up we hope to practise archery in the garden along with fully exploring the rather hilly local area on our bikes.
We have had one exploratory cycle, where we quickly realised the heavy winter colds we’ve both been carrying were not fully cleared and our lungs did not enjoy the steepness of the local hills. We are off for a slow run this afternoon to see how we hold up, and this offers a chance to clear our heads, currently full to overflowing with new words, phrases and musical notes. We are settled here until the first week of March, so we have plenty of time to improve the aspects of our knowledge we wish to, and to rest in between in a comfortable and peaceful environment when we want to. We’ll hopefully be wiser, leaner and fitter by the time we leave, and living here should give us more insight into what we are looking for in own French property, the purchase of which is one of our key goals for 2018.
We’ll update more about the local region we’re in when our explorations have taken us a bit further afield.
A&N x
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