Kath

Well, I guess I won't be writing on this blog much anymore as any spare moment with a computer I should be working on our other, travel blog: www.ze-big-trip.com

I hope you'll come and visit me there as we make our way through South East Asia to Australia then hopefuly over to South America

So as I am not working much at the moment (seasonal quiet time, 'la crise', etc) I am spending my days getting ready for ze big trip. This involves way too much time "researching" our destinations, whether by trips to the library to find elusive Lonely Planets or browsing websites and travel forums to find out, for example, how one buys a car in Australia, whether or not parts of China are open to foreigners (which seems to change daily depending on how things are going in Tibet), the best way to get from a Thai island famous for diving to a national park where you can sleep in flaoting 'rustic' raft houses, etc.

I am also trying to get things done in the appartment (sorting, cleaning, finishing the painting I started 2 years ago) and am assessing our gear situation. In the goal of saving money I want to buy as little as possible in terms of gear (as much it pains me to forgo a potential trip to MEC). So, we're trying to determine if my old tent is still waterproof (it seems not) and if I can get the mouldy smell out of my old backpack. We will need to buy a few things, however, such as mosquito nets and lots of DEET it seems! (Malaria at the beginning of our trip might cramp things a little!)

Eeewww, I got my big backpack for hiking the West Coast trail when I was 15 and I'm not sure it's ever been washed! It seems the smell is still there, but then I'm used to being smelly when travelling!

Ok, so this is sort of a compilation of several trips to the market, but now that we are leaving (atleast temporarily) I have started thinking about things I'm going to miss in Lyon.

The cheese:

Look at this cheese! A St Felicien...

I think it's one of the most beautiful cheeses we've ever bought here. It was so soft and ripe that it had to be sold with a little wooden board just to support it.

(also note the fine homemade bread!)

Quenelles:

Another local specialty (and the only thing I can order when I go to a typical Lyonnais restaurant! Tripe in tomato sauce, sausages that smell like a large intestine, no thanks!)

These dumplings are traditionally made from pike and served in a crayfish (Nantua) sauce. The ones from the grocery store are always a disappointment, but when bought from the right person at the market, they puff up into perfection.

The chickens:

Ok, so I'm not sure I'm really going to miss this, but I have grown to like fact that the French have no problem associating the animal with the meat (unlike our totally sterilized versions). If you're going to eat it, you should atleast know what you're eating I guess.

Still I was a little shocked when I asked Roland to get me a chicken from the market and he came back with this beastie:

Clearly I made him cut the head off!

Sweet, do we get to choose the car? At the Carcassonne parking lot

Beautiful Carcassonne and delicious cassoulet!

Starting out on our bike ride dans le pays Minervois

Hmmm, checking the map...and we go back the way we came

A little rough after the surprising hills

Our destination: Minerve (yet another one of "the most beautiful villages in France", you can't go wrong really)

Minerve

Some sleeping vinyards

As part of our big trip, we're planning to spend a few months/half a year in Australia with a Working Holiday Visa which allows you to work for up to a year, but not more than 6 months, with the same employer. I was initially impressed with the system because you can apply online and it's only supposed to take a few days, a fact difficult to believe after spending so long in France with their nutsy administration. Needless to say I was pleasantly suprised to find that after answering a few questions online about whether or not I had tuberculosis or was a criminal and in only 4 hours I received an email this afternoon notifying my that my visa was granted! Roland's as well, so walalbies and Fosters here we come! Well, wallabies anyway as I have yet to meet an Australian that does drink Fosters.

Well, after months and months of talking, and pondering and going back and forth we have actually booked the first few legs of our round the world trip!

We were having some trouble with:

the 'wheres'

Argentina and Chile to go hiking in Patagonia, Australia to take advantage of the work holiday visa which we can only apply for until we turn 31 (and considering that happens for Roland in June, we don't have alot of time), and Hong Kong, because we have some friends living there, and well, it's a good excuse to go!

We also thought about India for a while, but decided that 45 degree dusty heat might not be how we want to kick things off. In fact, the only time I remember heat like that was in Australia and I believe I was completely non functioning and grumpy gruply grumpy....

the 'whens'

(weather: patagonia is best between november and march, australia in the summer is smokin' hot; jobs: Roland likes his, I am barely working now and would love to take off ASAP; financial crisis: obviously not the best time to quit jobs if we actually have them) '' the 'hows'''

Do we go for a short trip or a year? Do we buy a round the world ticket or do it ourselves?

The 'whos' and the 'whys' are ok, though I am trying to come to terms with not bringing the cat.

In the end it's going to look something like this:

We'll fly from London (giving us some time to visit with Katharina and Felix and hopefully Laurie and Chris) to Beijing. We'll spend a month travelling around China then head to Hong Kong to visit Maud and Yverain.

After a week or so in Hong Kong (including Roland's birthday) we'll fly to Bangkok and we'll have a couple of months to make our way down to Bali, passing through Malaysia.

We fly to Perth in the beginning of August and that's about all we know for sure right now. We'd like to travel for a bit in Australia (buying a car and driving over the top), hopefully work a little, then about Jan/Feb 2010 fly over to Argentina (perhaps with a stop in New Zealand)

Monday Feb 2nd was "La Chandeleur" here in France.

Thanks to my good friend Wikipedia I learned the following:

In France, crêpes were traditionally served on Candlemas (La Chandeleur), February 2. This day was originally Virgin Mary's Blessing Day but became known as Crêpe Day, referring to the tradition of offering crêpes. It is believed that if you could catch the crêpe with a frying pan after tossing it in the air with your left hand and holding a piece of gold on your right, you would become rich that year.

Roland was trying to get me to hold his big silver coin in my left hand, while also flipping the crêpes with my left hand... I think there's little chance we'll become rich...

Every time I told someone here that we were going back to Canada for Christmas, the response was always the same: Oh! It will be cold and snowy! Then I would politely explain that, no, in fact the rest of the country is usually cold, but the little area around Vancouver never really gets very cold. The average temperature? I don't know, maybe 8 or 5 or just around freezing, but one thing is sure, there's never snow for Christmas, just lots and lots of rain. My students were always shocked and I always a little smug for breaking their stereotypes about cold and barren Canada. Of course, I always hope for snow, but in truth I don't ever remember a white Christmas. Sometimes before (it once snowed around Halloween), sometimes after (the giant snowfall of I can't remember when but we missed, being in Mexico).

Boy, was I wrong! When we landed in Seattle it was FREEZING and there were accidents galore (well you only need 7 flakes to stick to the ground for this west coast phenomenon) - my parents had seen two city busses teetering on the edge of the highway, a story that seemed to make the top headlines in Seattle!

The highway was a mess, with parts of it totally uncleared. We crawled up to Bellingham, Roland and I dozing in and out of consciousness, though we happily woke up for a beer and some fish tacos at the brewpub.

This trip through the border was slightly more uneventful than last years fiasco with the ring and the contraband beer and hours of searching, but that's ok.

We caught the last ferry over to the island, pulling into the harbour around eleven or midnight... I can't quite recall. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground, and the amount only increased as we got closer to the house. The real challenge was getting the car up the hill on our little road. Now, Saltspring does have snow ploughs, but ingeniously when they resurfaced the roads they neglected to get the required rubber tips for the plough blade, so they can't scrape all the snow away, leaving a nice icy layer. Very clever. We did eventually get the car up the road, with the help of some dirt from the ditch and Roland sitting on the hood , but this was only a taste of things to come...

Colin came over for a few days and got so desperate they walked 2 hours into town and 2 hours back for some chips, chocolate and beer.

Attack!

Attacked.

A vegetabley friend.

December 23rd waiting for Bruce at the Victoria airport, with the obligatory (for Roland) box of Timmy's donuts. The colourful sprinkle one was avoided like the plague, naturally. Only a silly Frenchman would allow that to get in there. I think we made hime eat it.

Bruce arrived, but not his bags. Not Grandad either for that matter. Mom and Dad had to spend the night over in Saanich waiting, because, of course, he wouldn't make it in time for the last ferry back to the island.

Stocking by the fire.

Well, after much running around, we eventually all made it to the house (bags and all).

The tree.

When we were going through the garage at the appartment in Villeurbanne we came accross Roland's old bear from when he was a kid. It was looking a little worse for wear: completely flat with old stuffing (seemingly from the 1920s) coming out of his back. I put him through the wash, restuffed him and stuck him under the tree for Roland.

Roland and his bear, which strangely doesn't have a name. Maybe it wasn't really his bear.

Heading off for the annual Christmas afternoon walk.

Walking down to the beach. Autumn about to go into a snowbank/ditch.

On another walk by Fernwood.

Grandad and Bruce, Fernwood.

A serious afternoon of games. And puzzles.

Well, we haven't really had any snow in Lyon, but frost we have got!! I enjoyed my first monday not teaching at the university by going for a walk in Parc de la Tete D'Or. It was freezing (-5) but gorgeous!

Ever since being snowed in over Christmas and forced to make bread to save us from the disaster that would have been no bread for turkey sandwiches, I have been trying more and less successfully to cultivate my inner "boulanger". This would appear to be one of my more successful attempts with a "no knead" recipe courtesy of dear old dad.

It's a big sticky blob that sits for 24 hours then gets thrown into a dutch oven.

Since September, Roland and I have been taking scuba diving lessons at the diving club in Villeurbanne. Every Thursday we meet at the pool at 8pm to practice with the gear, swim some lengths, and 'apnea' or holding the breath while swimming, for which I have discovered a hidden talent!

At 9:30 we all meet up again at the pool for sandwiches, then the club meeting, then our theory class which finishes around 11:30.

Even though I have the PADI advanced open water license, I started from the beginning again as France has a different licensing body which doesn't quite match up with the other one and I thought it would be a good idea to review the basics again.

We wrote our theory exam in mid December then in order to be certified we need to do 4 dives.

To complete these dives we spent a weekend in La Ciotat, just west of Marseille. The first day was gorgoeous and sunny and fairly warm for December and we did our technical dive, basically just a few exercises of removing water from the mask and removing the regulator (mouthpiece) and putting it back in, and a pleasure dive.

A calm Saturday morning

Jacky Cousteau!

Unfortunately Sunday's dives were cancelled due to THIS!

Every year around December 8th in Lyon the city lights up for the light festival. Millions of people (literaly) descend on the city to wander the streets and drink vin chaud.

Place des Terreaux

Place des Terreaux

Place des Terreaux (city hall)

Fish Tank at Place des Jacobins

Biking around the Eiffel Tower, which was all dressed up for Europe

A flea market on Sunday

Having a coffee, pre-flea market, gazing at all the junk!

Roland crammed into the tiny elevator going up to his Aunt's appartment, where we spent Saturday night.

Even though we won't be here for again this year, we decided to get ourselves a little tree anyway.

Despite a few differences on the decoration of trees (garland versus no garland, for example), I am quite pleased with the result! Roland won on the garland issue by the way.

Only managed to break one of the shiny balls... who knew they were still made of glass?

Ta dah! Our first Christmas tree!

One of my students, a Japanese business man who talks about nothing but food and beer, gave me a couple of tickets to the "Salon des Vins" for independent wine makers. Having never been before, I didn't expect much, but walking into the big concert hall/former slaughterhouse, I was blown away by the hundreds of stands with wine from all over France. As we walked in, we exchanged our ticket for a wine glass and could just go to whichever stall we wanted, trying red wines, white wines, ice wines, champagne... We clearly were not organized enough and quickly faltered (I only saw one person making use of the spittoons!). Our limit of 6 bottles soon turned into 18 and we found ourselves lugging boxes of wine through the rain to the metro.

Everything is now carefully put away in a little corner of Roland's Dad's cellar.