A NEW BEGINNING!
Bonne année...the start of a new year, new experiences, new acquaintances...a new beginning! This will be my first full year in a ‘foreign’ country and therefore many more new things to cope with: new challenges, new French vocabulary and expressions, new cultural discoveries, new places to explore, new rules, new boundaries...a renaissance!
In 2014, when I bought a house in rural France, I never realised what this new beginning, this nouveau départ, would have in store for me. Thank goodness!!!
I bought the house on the internet, without seeing it in real life. Why France? I have no clear idea but it all started after attending the annual national arts festival, the KKNK, in Oudtshoorn, South Africa. My ex-lecturer Louis Jansen van Vuuren, the main festival artist, mentioned the reasonable house prices in France. And so I started surfing the internet. For four months! Until I found the 'house with the look' in rural France...in Châlus.
Now, more than two years later, I have had multiple new beginnings: a new language to learn, a new culture to embrace, a new way of driving on the 'wrong side of the road', a new daily routine to get used to as shops close from 12h00 to 14h30 and Mondays are Sundays with everything closed, a new bed, a new currency and bank manager, a new diet without Mrs Ball's Chutney, Bovril, Nesquick Strawberry and koeksisters, new surroundings, new neighbours and of course a new house! My renaissance!
Too much? Will I do it again? Absolument! Non je ne regrette rien!
