Dreaming of France -- Dreams Coming True

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

I'm excited to share the latest news with you all about our plans for moving to France in 2018.
I already had shared that we were picked for our first housesit -- only for a week and with a menagerie of animals, but it was a start.
Now, we have housesits for the first three months of 2018!
We'll begin in January staying a week in the Loire, near Normandy. It will be a good transition for us, although we'll be pretty busy taking care of animals that week. The house, in addition to dogs and cats, has a donkey, a mule and chickens.
After that, we'll head to southern France to a charming village where we visited in May. When I found out we had this housesit, I yelped in joy. Three dogs and a few chickens in the beautiful village of Uzès for a month.

Here's the overlook in the village. Somewhere in the hills below is the Pont du Gard. 

Here's the village square where we sat for coffee. A group of children gathered by the
fountain after school before they were led off by some kind of teacher. 

Here's a beautiful cobblestone passage. The village was built up around a dukedom, or duchy. So a tower sits in the middle and much of the rest of the village served as stables or other outbuildings for the castle. 

I call this an arcade. It is lined with shops, like weavers and artists and children's clothing. 

 Uzès is the village just north of the Pont du Gard roman aqueduct. The water from Uzès ran across the Pont du Gard to provide Provence with a steady supply. 

See why I squealed with delight? I'm so excited.

Then at the end of February, after a few months of practicing our French, we'll travel to Surrey, England to housesit for a month for three dogs, including a new puppy named Spud.
It's all working out just as we'd hoped.
Thanks for sharing my joy. Your support and encouragement means so much to me.

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your link below and visit each other's blogs to share your love for France.

Down Time is For Dreaming

My days off this semester are Thursdays and Sundays. I know I don't work a full 40 hours in the office kind of job, but there is just something absolutely freeing about a day without work requirements. (I'll probably do some lesson planning anyway, but the idea that I don't have to is marvelous.)
And today has some lovely things in it already.

Sheila and I re-visited American Girls
 with our grown up daughters last year. 

The first was a two-hour walk with my friend Sheila. I will miss her when we move. We became friends when our kids were little and we both homeschooled. Now, she is the only one of my homeschool mom friends that I see regularly. We try to walk two or three times a week. We generally stop and get coffee to carry with us (another thing I'll miss in France, but being forced to sit down and drink it has its benefits, too). I would say that I have very few secrets from Sheila. She doesn't judge
when my kids have wandered off the proper path to being grown ups, and I don't judge her three kids either, although we are both quick to point out how stupid some of our children's actions are.
The only thing on my schedule for the day was a phone call with someone in France who is looking for a housesitter, so I looked forward to that. I'm sitting here now waiting for her call. Four cats in the Loire Valley.
I also have another interview -- Facetime, so I need to look respectable -- with a couple outside London who need a housesitter for their two dogs and dachshund puppy! Yes, I know that London isn't in France, but one of the benefits of living in France is being able to explore other countries as well. Earl has never been to the U.K., so I thought it would be a good chance to explore.
My day is filled with dreams and searches for airlines and hotels and house sitting opportunities. I love it because I can dream about the endless possibilities.
On the visa front, a friend in Aix en Provence has said we can use her address as our permanent address while we are in France. That means we have to spend time in Aix en Provence to present our papers to the local government. I do love Aix.

The beautiful Cours Mirabeau in Aix en Provence

An attempt at an artsy photo on a morning run in Aix. The telephone wire kind of ruins it. 

So slowly, we are getting all of our necessary documents and we'll keep working toward that visa. As my friend in Aix said, "You go get that visa, girl!"

Dreaming of France -- Firming Up Plans for Our Move

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

There's no turning back now. We have committed to housesitting for someone in France in January. That helps to cement our plans to move. We'll be staying in the Charentes area and taking care of a whole menagerie of animals while the other family goes on vacation. It should definitely be a goo immersion in France.
My husband should retire in December, we'll celebrate Christmas here with our families and then fly to France.
Of course, we still need some dominoes to fall into place -- like selling the house -- but the closer we get to actually moving to France, the more excited I am.
We plan to housesit and rent in some different places to make sure the move is a good fit for us.

It can start with a single housesit, but will hopefully snowball. 

Now we're really dreaming of France. 

How bout you? 

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your link below and visit each other's blogs to share your love for France.