France Deuxième Partie

France Deuxième Partie

OK... So I guess we are officially a part of the village now. The night of January second, we were invited to a "Welcome 2016" house party at Jean-Pierre and Katarine's house. Well... this is no exaggeration, the entire village of Vaux was there, along with friends of the hosts and some people from a few of the surrounding villages!!! About 50-60 people with all the kids too!!! It started at 7pm, we left at 1:30am and it was still raging! Of course it started with cremant, the local sparkling wine, when you walked in the door. The hosts and a few friends had been cooking all day so at about 8pm the announcement was made to grab a plate and step up to the finger food table… deviled eggs, pâtes, sausages, pickles of all sorts, white endive salad, cheeses, olives… At this point we had moved on from cremant to our choice of the local white or red wine. The Bourguignon people are very, very passionate about their wine, very, very passionate. When I mentioned to the little group we were sitting with that I bought and enjoyed the inexpensive “Bag in the Box”, Vin du France… Boy did I get the business! Natalie, the neighbour across the street, upon hearing the translation of my wine find, leaned over and assailed me for quite some time with the superiority of all things Bourguignon, especially the wine. I made a feeble attempt to redeem myself citing it was decent, inexpensive “French” wine which was dismissed with a wave of the hand a French version of “Harumph”. The conversation was thusly closed.

About ten or so, we progressed from finger food to frankfurters served with warm Alsatian potato salad, a mountain of it and a huge pot of frankfurters. Of course, served with lashings of moutarde du Dijon. Ma oui! The conversation was lively and interesting, a number of people translated both to us and for us. The folks here in Vaux and surrounds are extremely friendly and hospitable. We came to learn that not all the villages share the camaraderie of Vaux and it would be strange to see a similar gathering in any of the surrounding ones. And the wine flowed!

Eleven thirty or so the dessert came out, or should I say the plates and plates and plates of galettes and tarte tatins arrived. The tarte tatins were from people around the village and were fantastic! The galettes on the other hand, came from a number of different bakeries and there is an interesting history to them this time of year as they are linked to Twelfth Night and Epiphany. Here is a great article on Wikipedia on it…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galette_des_Rois

Galette des rois, king cake, is baked with a small ceramic king, bear or something in it (in the days of old, it was a bean or a pea) and if you get it, then you the king or the queen of the evening. Katarine almost broke a molar on the one she found and was named reine for the night!

Then we started cooking, by this time as you might have surmised I had nosed into the kitchen, the onions for French onion soup. Yes… It's almost midnight and the final course of the night is just being started. There was a huge pot of beef stock going and lots of emmental cheese and home made croutons. I showed the guys how to flip the onions in the pan without a spat, which led a rousing rendition of a Burgundean traditional song of exclamation (it gets sung at dishes broken, glasses dropped, a faux pas, or anything out of the ordinary LOL) It is quite fun! As soon as the onions were nice and brown, everyone was given a bowl which was then filled with a few croutons, then some cheese, then a pile of cooked onions and finally the beef stock. It was really, really good! We have come to find out that this was a very early time for the onion soup. At many other soirées, they did not start cooking the onions until at least 3am!!! And yes, the wine flowed.

Next came the mistletoe hats, one for a man and one for a woman that were randomly placed on peoples heads. Oolala!!! What a hoot! And cameras to boot! Nope, ya ain't getting any of those stories or pics...

WOW! what a beautiful slice of Burgundian life. The hospitality, the friendliness, the camaraderie, it was all amazing!!! Thanks to all our new friends here in Vaux for a grand time!

Next time… more on food, not just food but gastronomy! Get them taste buds cleansed...

Reflections so far…

Reflections so far…

(This was written about 6 weeks ago and I have edited a bit)

We left Canada over a month ago, the first few weeks of our “outing” were a blur, like walking through life with a clear plastic veg bag from the supermarket over your head but able to breath. Well, kinda, getting just enough oxygen that your brain functions, just. The first two weeks over here in the UK were a “soft landing” for us, not taxing really and we acclimatized to the time change well. Spain, well, Spain was very much mañana, chill and slow paced, friendly people, warm and sunny. We were able to get our game back on and really started to enjoy the trip. All of the sudden, it was time to leave for France; we both looked at each other, “WTF, where did the time go so far!!??!!” Yes, it's astounding, time is fleeting. Madness takes it's toll! Whoa!!! Where the heck did that come from!!??!! Must resist the inner Tim Curry… ;)

OK, where was I, yes, time, definitely not warping!!!! No, no warps here! Yep, here in France :)

Time, is flee… going by quickly :) and we are a bit stunned at the fact. So here we are in France, more correctly, Vaux, St. Ythiare, Burgungy, France, in an old farm house that sits on rue du Anciennces Fermes. One of about 13 or 14 anciennes fermes in a working farm hamlet. The first morning we woke in bed, we both pinched ourselves to see if we were really here! You see, this house sit is the one we have been really looking forward to as it is a long one, almost 3 ½ months (all due respect to Sam & Rick and Wendy). A place where we can (and have) really settle in and start to respond to, as opposed to react to, this little venture we are on. I have mentioned once or twice that this trip is not so much a vacation but a sabbatical, a time off from “normal” life (I know, it is somewhat difficult to attach the word normal to me) and reflect, reconnect with life, not the “rat race” but life, the deep, rich adventure we are meant to live. To nurture our connection with God, the universe and everything. A time to focus on just what exactly is important in our lives and then set our sails on that course because as we all know, time is flee… No… must… not… go… there… Time is flowing and carrying us along as it does so, at the pace it deems proper, this fact reared it's head in the past few days for us and now it is time for Penny and I to start to do the “work” we have come here to do.

Penny and I are on a journey to find not happiness or fulfillment but where Father wants us to be and/or what He wants us to do next. Back almost 5 years ago, when we had our fateful discussion with our financial guy, 'John' there was this idea of taking a period of time off from work/life and to go and “listen”, however, we had a house to sell, blah, blah blah… Then my shoulder got hurt, blah, blah, blah… Now here we are! We have almost 6 months to “listen”, to discern, to engage in the process going on, a process called life. There has been prayer, mostly in the form of “HELP!!!!” as we have been through the ringer a number of times, moments of quiet reflection, journaling, etc. In the midst of all the stuff going on, smack right in the middle of the “process” (as grueling as it has been at times), a faint but clear voice can be heard… “Trust me.” In hindsight, through all the crap times and the great times we have had preparing and then “doing” this trip, He has come through time and again, many of which have been really quite imaginative! You see, the lesson to be learned is trusting Him, even when the flies are on you, even when you have a house full of stuff that needs to be sold and gone by 30 September, even when you are going from bank to bank to change Canadian currency to Euros and they all say no. The list goes on and on and on; and will continue to for the rest of this adventure, the rest of our lives.

Trust Me.

Simple but not easy.

Reflecting back on the past 2 to 3 months or so, this is what the whole process (as we have come to call it) is all about. What happens in March? Dunno! Not yet anyway, but I can tell you, by then, there will be a bit more trusting going on, well, hopefully.

Pics and travel stuff next time and trust me ;) the wine and cheese in France… Tres Magnifique! Oh yeah, inexpensive too :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Till next time…

“With a bit of a mind flip
You're there in the time slip
And nothing can ever be the same”

Now how does that go?

Just a step to the…

Au revoir!

The 'P' Part, I hate flies!

I hate flies!

God is pushing at the seams of my envelope right now.  I love to be outside but I really do hate flies.  You could say I'm manic about them.  (When they get in the house I hunt them down with a swatter until they are all dead)! But here in Rubite there are flies everywhere and I mean everywhere. This is a rural farming village with at least two herds of sheep/goats at about 100 head each that live right here.  One flock is just a few doors away from where we are.  They are driven past the house daily and where there are sheep there is sheep S...! Lots of it, plus all the mule, cat and dog S... from around the village and you get the picture.  That is my reckoning on why there are so many flies.  So each time I sit outside I'm literally covered in flies and the less I have on, it been in the 20's, the more flies are on me, not my clothing, me, Yuk!

What is the meaning of this? Who knows, what could I possibly be being prepared for? I don't know, I don't think I want to know. I do know I still hate flies but I am able to function in a place where they rule the roost, which I think is a good thing.

Thanks God :)

PS, it's a rather windy day today, so mercifully there are far fewer flies than normal as I sit out here and write.  It's a good day in Rubite.

UK 3

We made some new friends in Fetcham and were invited back to cook for them anytime, kinda cool really. I left Fetcham on Sunday and Rick dropped me dropped off in Horley, just north of Gatwick airport at a Best Western there. I met Penny at the train station early evening, she came down from Holmes Chapel after visiting the other part of the family up there. I didn't go because of all the baggage and the transfers we would have had to make including one leg on the London Tube, not fun! Anyway, we had a couple of days in Horley and went up to London on one of them. I love to walk London, one of my favourite places on the planet to walk around, so much to see, the history and all the activity!!! We walked from Victoria station past Parliament and Big Ben,

10 Downing Street, just missed Mr. Cameron, Horse Guards

and then by Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.

Down The Strand past the Savoy Hotel and took the scenic route (the wrong way) to the British Museum. We did stop at the New London Theatre and picked up some decent seats for Warhorse that night. Tough day :)

Now the The British Museum... Most of us have seen the old movies of mummies and the Egyptologists and all, well this is where is all comes from. That and more!!! Penny and I walked up to the a great stone edifice that is “The British Museum” (which is free to enter by the way), left the backpack at the coat check, walked into the main gallery and were immediately blown away by its sheer size, a great round “inner edifice” inside a huge inside space (sorry no pic here). A quick “biffy” stop and we were off to the rooms on the left. We did not get a map and only used the tall standing map in the room, so we knew we were off to Egyptland LOL. The first thing we beheld as we entered the room was the Rosetta Stone!

I was completely over come with emotion as I was seeing with my own eyes one of the “wonders” of archeology, the means of deciphering hieroglyphics to Greek via an intermediary of Demotic text. You know, you read about things and see pictures but nothing prepares you for when you see the “thing” with your own eyes. I just stood there for several minutes and took it in. It was the highlight of the entire museum for me! Then off we walked through all the Egyptian and Assyrian rooms on the ground floor of the museum seeing things 3000-5000 years old. We think in North America we have history at 300-500 years maybe back 1000-1500 but nothing like this…

We wandered the museum for about 5 hours seeing artifacts from 7000 to a few hundred years old. Bone and stone tools, 2000 year old glass, a clock from the mid 16^th century that was still running and playing beautiful tunes with bells.

You could easily spend days in the museum reading all the placards and pouring over all the displays but we only had a few hours and throughly enjoyed it all!

Time to leave the museum and head for the show, “Warhorse”, but first a little pizza and pasta with some red wine at a close by restaurant, it was grand! “Warhorse” is the stage production of the movie from a few years back where the actors are mostly human (some mannequins) and the animals are all puppets with human puppeteers “running” them. The adult horse, Joey, had three men wearing, cabling and poling the legs and all but after a few minutes, it was just as some other friends of ours who had seen it earlier this year said, all you see is the horse. Amazing! The show was superb. The goose puppet pretty much stole the show! Back to Horley late and an early start, 5am, for the airport and a flight to Spain...

The 'P' part, chance encounter ?

Chance encounter ?

So there we were heading out for a day in London. We walk to the train station in Horley, the short way that we know now, as we've done it a time or two at this point.

We leave time to pick up our pre-booked and paid for tickets via V. Trains as we've also learned that can get tricky sometimes too.

As we get close to the station we notice a couple rolling up the hill with a large red suitcase.  We bump into them a few minutes later at the ticket machine as the four of us jockey back and forth in the tight corner with the suitcase, our lattes and confirmation numbers.  Tickets are dispensed and each of us become absorbed in our own worlds as we tuck return tickets away and prepare for the trains arrival.

Now standing in the middle of the station there's a rail employee letting passengers know the 9.41 to Victoria station will be delayed about 10 minutes. No problem, it won't make much of a difference. This will now give us a few minutes breathing space. We make our way down the stairs and out to the platform.  There is a young lady out there wearing way too much perfume, so I quickly lead us down the platform a ways.  Yep, you guessed it, the couple with the red suitcase arrive at the same time and we're just about shoulder to shoulder.  In my usual outgoing manner I ask the woman where they are off to and a whole conversation follows.

They are on a one year sabbatical!  He's from Australia and she's Canadian. Their home is rented out to a family of recent Russian immigrants to 'down under'. Their belongings are spread out amongst family, a storage unit and supportive friends.  He's in IT, she's a nurse.  Just on their way to store the camping equipment they have been using for the past 90 days all around Europe, with another friend in Redhill, then off to Canada where they'll stay through Christmas.

They have been going on faith for much of this journey, not knowing where or how they are going next. Monique gave an example of them disembarking a ship with the question where now God? Harry and I couldn't help but smile.

So until the train arrived and for the one stop down the line until they got off we went back and forth with bits of our stories, managed to share each other's email addresses and were both encouraged to meet another couple on a similar adventure.

If the train had not been delayed we probably wouldn't have had such the depth of conversation and the chance to hear about their journey.  Sorry to the rest of the train load of passengers who had to wait for us!  Life is like that sometimes, chance encounters that are really not random at all, but for us, preordained.

Harry will share his thoughts on our day in the city, so stay tuned for that.

UK 2

UK 2

We have been at the house in Fetcham for a week now and the people we are sitting for have been in southern Portugal for about 5 days. We walked to Leatherhead for a wander around and a shop at Lidl's (a Germany supermarket chain). 

We have met up with Penny's school friend Hilary and her husband David and have gone out on some drives around the Surrey Hills, quintessentially English!

We also had a very nice pub meal at The Stephan Langton Inn, thanks Hilary and David!!!

http://www.stephanlangton.pub/

The Langton is owned by friends of the people we are house sitting for and they graciously reserved a table for the four of us on Sunday afternoon (no mean feat!) where we had a wonderful Sunday roast dinner and a few pints of the local Tillingbourne Brewery beers. The people that own the pub also own the brewery! 

http://www.tillybeer.co.uk/

On Tuesday, Hillary picked us up and we went to the top of Leigh Hill (D'Oh, guess who forgot the camera) and climbed Leigh Tower, a 250 year old foley, the highest point in southern England. We looked north to London, east to Gatwick Airport and unfortunately, it was hazy so we could not see the sea. 

This was followed by more great pub grub at The Plough Inn in Cold Harbour along with more local beers, yum!

http://www.ploughinn.com/

Lots of walks from Fetcham to Leatherhead and Bookham. The walk from Bookham goes through the Bookham Close which is National Trust land laced with paths and lanes and all covered in golden leaves (yep, no camera again LOL). The weather has been sunny and 17 or 18 to cloudy, rainy and cool about 8 or 9.

Now a few pics of our charges, lets see there is Max, Molly and Tigs the dogs.

Then there is Gus the cat, not doing too bad at 21 :)

Oh yes, the nine chickens that lay very yummy eggs! Um... You know what chickens and eggs look like ;)

The First European House Sit

The First European House Sit

Surrey, UK

Sorry for not posting for a bit, it has been a very stressful and tiring time, which allowed me to actually catch a touch of flu and get over it and catch it again, blah, blah, blah... With the sleep clock off a bit and all the processing going on in my head about what we have just done… Well it took a bit to get back to “normal” but here I am and here is the first bit of our UK house sit.

I will digress a bit to when we landed in the UK at London Heathrow, all well and with out any drama. We caught a coach (bus to you Norte Americanos) to Bristol and taxied to Penny's dad's place in St. George in the east of Bristol. They provided us with a very soft landing indeed! We pretty much slept and ate and Penny went for walks with them as I mostly slept myself through some flu. We had a very fun night out at a local church, St. Aidens, where the Vicar and his troops of thespians put on a amusing panto (pantomime: a very, very British form of theatre) about the bishop's visit. It was cute and funny, and hey, you got a free glass of wine in the deal, woot!

Back to the the National Express (the UK's verions of Greyhound) station for a coach to Leatherhead, well kinda… You see there is a great transportation system in the UK with the Tube, public buses, trains, coachs and all. However, not all of them come together in an easy fashion in some places. You guessed it, Leatherhead is not one of those places that is easy to get to without a number of transfers (on the train) or just one on the coach. As you read from Penny's last post, we are NOT traveling light. I imagine that we look quite comical actually to other travelers with our big bags all linked together in a “train” and trying to move from one place to another leapfrog style as we are working very hard to not have any of our stuff “nicked”. Yes, we are in the UK, land of the very high property crime rate and it is not unusual at all to have your belonging “nicked” if you so much as turn your head for a minute (personal family experience here). You, yourself are mostly quite safe, your stuff not quite so (hmm… there's that stuff thing again!) As the coach made it's way from Victoria Coach Station in London (yes, we had to go all the way into London on the coach then transfer to another to head south) south, we went through central London through Clapham and Tooting (where Penny is from) and as we got further and further from the city centre, well the buildings and the houses started looking, well rather nice and in good repair and kept getting more so. We get dropped at the side of Brighton Road in Banstead about 100 metres down from a very, very nice European sports car mart. We noticed immediately all the very, very nice cars whizzing past us and the looks we were getting. Can you see where I am going with this? “We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!” I have to admit, I felt oddly uncomfortable not being in my usual social element, we were/are at least 2 or 3 rungs up from “normal” (Oak Bay ain't got anything on this neighborhood!)

As I was walking back to the “bus stop” after a futile attempt to find a completely nonexistent pay phone, a large black SUV pulled up next to Penny and our pile of rubble. I trotted up just in time to hear, “Well I knew I would find the lost travelers with the pile of bags...” We were saved! Our house sit person was right there and recalled the description I had sent in an email from the coach (yes they have WIFI on the buses here!!! And yes Peter, the iPad has come in very handy indeed!) We plopped all our baggage into the back of said black SUV and were off on a drive down country lanes, small village high streets over a century old bridge that spans a rail line, sharp right and down a very narrow dirt lane and turn left and up a very nice driveway and viola! We are “home”. WOW! Did we ever land on our feet here. Very nice! Not too many details, privacy and all, but the cooker, WOW! It is an Everhot,

what a pleasure it is to cook on and I am savouring every second that I do as I will probably not ever own one.