On friendly Canadians & getting on

listening to  "Get it on" by T-Rex



walking towards some church in Angers - a little tipsy and about to get lost

A new trainee has arrived - Sarah Sophie from Canada! God, I adore her. She is just so straightforward and active and a very honest person. You cannot help but love her to bits. We immediately hit it off, although she is very different from me. Actually, she reminds me a bit of my Mum, because she has the same habit of blurting out exactly what she is thinking or about to do at the moment.

You cannot help but admire that she works as a paysagiste (landscape gardener), a job were there are few women, because it is so physically demanding. You have to be a tough cookie and I think she is just that ♡

We used up the first weekend after meeting just doing a lot of walking and jogging (pant pant) and looking at the city. We got ourselves a Heineken each (which does not taste nearly as good as bavarian beer or Guiness, sad but true) and talked and talked...About differences in culture, the things we like about our home countries and so on. And then we went discovering again. After the second beer we were a bit tipsy, so we were just strollling along, laughing our heads off. Getting hungry, we saw a pizza deliverer on a roller! We called out : PIZZA!!! WAIT, WE WANT SOME!!! But roller-guy just waved coolly and sped off.

Then we actually chased him for a while; giggling and panting. So we got lost, which made us laugh even more. And just when I thought I couldn't go on, we turned a street and found our bycicles, just waiting for us! HURRAY FOR INBUILT GPS!!!

cute tiny Perrier bottle - I am definately keeping those

caught in the act - of descending stairs!

I vaguely remember singing some stupid song along the lines of "I can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handlebars " on repeat. Oh dear, Sarah...☺



Inspiration : floral blouses

listening to Chris Cornell - Long Gone



have been having a look around. Today is a friday and nearly all of my french collegues were wearing these breezy floral blouses, which look so refreshing and feminine if you combine them right, with uni pants and skirts.

I found it pretty hard to find any that I could imagine looking good on myself, though.

By now I have mastered the art of knowing what will make me look good and which colours dont suit me at all. Yes! I came across Sheinside.com while perusing the web and thought - why not? These are my picks:

Love the interesting clash of textures ✩

the mix of seethrough and lace is superb!

admittedly very girly - but you can always dress it down



the sleeves are not too long and the flowers not too overbearing

Congéconce continued

We didn't only look at chateaus and the sea and go shopping in the city center - which were all things I wanted to do - we also took a tour of the renown Cointreau factory as a request by the boyfriend.

As we only ever used GrandMarnier and Cointreau for parfaits and cakes, I was pretty curious. And it certainly turned out to be interesting. I know now that Cointrau is a Triple Sec, how it is distilled and theat they buy the bottles at a local artisan. And that Dita van Teese is the spokesperson and model
and before it was the Pierrot character.

They are apparently the most copied alcoholic beverage on the planet - as was showcased in a long glass cabin - there must have been hundreds of bottles! Good thing they managed to have the design of the bottle copyrighted.

And the nice perk at the end was that you got to sip on some delicious Cointreau cocktails - I'm definately trying some of these recepies at home <3


 

Distillery - of course in orange

Yummy lemon juice & cointreau cocktail

Fairy Godmother-like

>> Fairy Clothes at *Etsuna Otsuka*

Holy M, are they gorgeous!!!

Congécance!

(Getting creative - a mix of the words vacance & congé I thought up - both mean holiday)

 

Boy, have I been active lately!!! Didn't even find the time to write anything - the evenings I would just slump into my pillow and drift off to dreamland. 

The reason for that was mainly because mon homme came to visit me for a whole week and I was in bliss. We did so many things, like visiting

 >> Batz sur Mer , which was beautiful and calm, with lots of old houses along the cliffs and lots of old people taking a walk or jogging along the coast. 

Retirement here we come!!! ☺

Near~ Far~ Whereeever you....oops, getting a bit corny here

and I just had to stop for some "Moules en frites" because my friends kept telling me how good they were...God, it was delicious! But just too much, how can one girl eat a whole pot of mussels by herself?

Saltcrusted fat crispy chips and boiled nutty mussels with ample parsley...hmm

We also went to Chateau Brissac, which had a beautfiul park and is still inhabitated by its owners today.
It is also apparently the highest castle in the Loire Valley. I was very proud of myself, because I understood most of what the pretty guide was saying ❤ The ancestors were all very different characters, one room was stacked with a hundred antlers, because one of the Marquises of Brissac had been a fervent huntress. I loved hearing about the Marquise Jeanne Say, she enjoyed singing and entertaining people so much, she even built her own theatre. Wish I had that money...

❤ Chateau Brissac ❤

My boyfriend was being rather shy, because he can't speak french at all, but I thought it was cute and I liked playing his own personal guide.

Burning Bridges

 

London's burnin, London's burnin, fetch the engines, fetch the engines, Fire! Fire!

Called my mother yesterday – mostly out of a bad conscience, cause she is all alone and has to cope with her stuff. I hereby vow to visit her more, sorry Mum!

Anyway, she seemed kind of preoccupied, so I asked her what she was doing. She replied: “Oh you know, just getting rid of my stuff, I’m BURNING some papers right now…Ouch, that was my finger!”

Is this some kind of spiritual zen thing again?

Seriously, the women in my family…

She then told me about what happened to her the other day and I must say  - it made me laugh A LOT. Apparently she took a metal bin and her papers, letters and such and drove to a field to burn them. When she was almost done, it started raining heavily. She got into her car but the motor wouldn’t start and when she tried to call the ADAC her mobile ran out of battery. 

By then it was hailing. She stopped a women (probably told her all about her lifelong problems) and asked her to call the towing service. The women replied “Oh, my phone's run out of battery as well. Sorry there.” So when the service people finally arrived, she was practically drenched – even the blanket over her head was soaked...

She is one strange character, but I just love her to bits :-D

(btw, thanks for the image RB-design :-) )

It's alive!

Managed to solve the issue - I hope.
Thanks so much to Daniel and bf for suggesting stuff ❤
Anyway - I guess there was a matter with images, my Google+ Account (fat dislike) or 
whatever. There is literally no help available online, all you can do is check with the forums.

Good thing I can call some nice computer nerdy people my friends. Thank you once more.

This blog will not go down without a fight!

Good Times, Conversations

 feat. The Preatures - Take a Card

Ahhh~ I had heaps and heaps of fun today!!! 

I went to town again and discovered some really nice places ❤♥  and of course nice things: at the cool teashop, where the clerk was wearing a darkgreen yukata robe and a japanese store where they had Pocky & other stuff...

I am so happy!

as I am in need of presents for all my girlfriends in Germany, I bought some lotion at the local

☆click☆ >> Yves Rocher : I bought two different lotions to try out - Muguet/Lily of the Valley and Lila/Lilac which are both scents I love.

 Despite looking at many blogs I have yet to find a good Lily of the Valley perfume. The Yves Rocher one made my nose burn, so I hope I dont get any rashes from the lotion...it is a poisonous plant after all...☠ 

dum da dum dum!

Bento leaf dividers



japanese Washi tin with beautiful maple print

Post Scriptum: learned about the word "Weeabo" today.

I am not one of them, luckily, because I enjoy every culture there is, but I am still proud of being british/german. 

I would be terrified to be on the same level as Venus Palermo..brrr

                                            

 

Iconic Cows & other ramblings

Hello! Ca va? ♥
 

It seems to me that a lot of french expressions include cows - such as:

Oh ! La vache = my oh my/ Oh my God!
Être une vache à lait = to be easily exploited (a cow easily milked)
Bouffer/Manger de la vache enragée = to live in poverty (eat an enraged cow)
Période de vaches maigres = times of need (a time in which cows are rare)
Une vraie peau de vache = a cow/bitch/mean person (a true cow's hide)
Parler français comme une vache espagnole = to speak gibberish (speak french like a spanish cow) ... seriously??? ☺☺☺

Le plancher des vaches = solid ground/earth/floor
Pleuvoir comme vache qui pisse = to be pissing down/rain heavily (to rain like a cow...urinating. (¬‿¬)
Grosse vache = fat cow. literally.
Mort aux vaches ! = Death to the cops (Death to Cows - originates in Franco-Prussian war and relates to german cops = the cows)

 Are there any more? - it sure is funny. I know as a matter of fact that through history   

 there have been a lot of farmers in France - as I have been prying at the old actes de naissances et  
 marriages = birth and marriage certificates in the town hall I am working at ✰ hee hee

 There still is a lot of agriculture going on, with apple orchards, vineyards, lavender fields, dairy farms etc.

 So it is not that surprising. 

 A lot of names seem really weird to me too, I write them down to make my german friends chuckle:

 such as Tinkerbell aka Clochette, the Smurfs aka Les Shtroumpfs (which is the original title by the way)
 and most importantly Bilbo Baggins, who goes by the name of Bilbon Saquet. This is most amusing for 
 people who speak german, as a "Sack" means something...entirely different... \ (•◡•) /  Yay!

I tried to explain to a collegue, Hélène, that there was going to be a new film about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on telly. She tilted her head slightly and went: "Hein?" (pronounced Hahnnn) which is the equivalent to "What?". I mulled it over and repeated: "Il y aura un film sur Eelisabett Teillorr et Rishart Beurton sur le Télé ce soir." She looked at me and went "Ahhhh!". Is it really that difficult to understand   
the english pronunciation? :-D

The funny thing is - when you travel around Europe, people understand you when you speak english. Well, most of them. But not so in France. It is for this reason that fellow Europeans think of them as arrogant, when they are not. They just don't need it. There are enough francophone countries around the world to get around. And if they do learn a language for working abroad, its mostly spanish. Because the french love Spain. Or german, for finding work. Or even japanese. But english? Nope.




 

Bonjour!

Je suis la stagiaire anglaise!

is probably THE sentence I have been repeating over and over. Hello, I'm the english trainee.

How do you do? ça va? 

I have run through a lot of compartments in the Lycee by now - the Compta, which means accounting,

CDI, which is the school library, the Accueil - reception and others. 

Don't get me wrong - I love my collegues and the petit pause where I can have some tea, while the others sip on their espressos. I like helping people out at the reception, sorting and registering freshly bought books etc. But I'm not cut out for such boring work as accounting. I do it because I have to, but calculating has never been my forte and it takes me a while, which makes me frustrated, which is clearly visible, because by then I'll be frowning. Period. 

Why am I studying languages? Because I'm good at it and I like it. Why am I not studying maths? - Because I suck at it  and it makes my head a dratted > Gordian Knot <!

As I have inherited one half of german work ethics, I just get on with my job though. End of complaint. 

It's pretty cool, I got to visit the theatre in Pont-de-Cé. I hadn't noticed I missed acting so much - but when I entered the room and smelled the slightly dusty air, it got me really excited. Hm, that sounds slightly off. XD

It was fantastic anyway ♡♡♡

River Maine at dusk