Posts Tagged ‘France’
{ May 16, 2009 @ 2:01 PM }
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{ Deja Moi Comme Ca, photography }
{ Tags: =], Bianca, birthday, cake, cat, caterpillar cake, chocolate, dead bird, expat, France, Gadget, how to bake, killer, mom, oh my god my cat killed a bird, sunshine, Venetia }
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Hellooo people out there 
!
I never wrote about this and seeing as I had intended to I shall just write about it now… Even if it was over a month ago…
Venetia and I (And by “and I” I mean… mostly Venetia) baked The World’s Most Awesome Home-Made Cake
In The History Of All Awesome Cakes for our mom’s birthday which was on the first of April. It was absolutely incredible! The most part of it was spent decorating and wow… Once we were finally finished I was just speechless… So here’s the pictures!
Caterpillar Cake
For anybody who wants to bake a cake like this, simply make a chocolate cake mixture and bake it in a rectangular tin (for banana bread), carefully round off the edges with a knife and then just get creative with whatever is colourful (and edible :/) in your cupboards! I think we may have gone slightly overboard but it tasted sooo good!
And for decoration, we had little flowers made out of a gloop of coloured butter icing with a smartie in the middle… Unsurprisingly these weren’t favourited but they looked pretty ^.^!
On other topics.. Gadget killed a bird :/… It was horrible! The first time he ever brought any little “presents” home for us I was racing down the stairs of the basement…
Suddenly this… this… thing sprawled across the carpet at the bottom of the steep stairway came into view as I rounded the corner but because I was going at such speeds I could hardly stop at the bottom of the
steps and I DID NOT want to land in that … unidentified something so I jumped.
And then came the squealing and girl-ish cries of “GADGET HAS KILLED SOMETHING! THERE’S A HALF-EATEN SOMETHING DOWN HEREEEE!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!”. Covering my face with both hands and silently whimpering for the dead creature I waiting for my mom to come downstairs…
Gadget is a murderer…
There were several other inciddents of these types and the worst one was truely the worst… I heard Gadget’s bell that hangs around his neck so the birds have more of a chance of noticing him jingling madly in the basement and just knew. I whipped the door open to find my very own kitty, jump back startled from this intrusion as he was silencing his prey but looking up at me with the most angelic kitty-puppy-dog eyes in the world… I screamed for my mom.
Two of Gadget’s cat friends were still hanging around by the windowsill… The bird was still alive when we got to him. He was so tiny and as my mom cradled him in the warmth of her hands, he was looking up at me and his eye was blinking… It was BLINKING… like a person! My mom chased the cats away and set the defenseless bird to rest outside under a bush. I cried.
Now I’m upset again -.-! Although a shrew caught by Gadget got away ^.^! Anyway, it’s an absolutely stunning day and I need to go soak up the sun a bit… I’m going to the beach tomorrow and my legs will be
blinding if I don’t start tanning now!
Hoping to hear from you guys soon!
- Bianca =]
{ December 22, 2008 @ 10:59 PM }
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{ Deja Moi Comme Ca }
{ Tags: beauty, Bianca, Christmas, dad, December, flawless, flew, France, hooks, lock, might, mind boggled, morning, palms, paragraph, Scrubs, short, shutters, socks, Spring, sweet, Venetia, vwoomp, weather, window, wood }
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Hey people!
Only going to be a couple of paragraphs today. This morning I woke up and was absolutely mind-boggled! Apparently today’s date is the 22nd of December… I woke up and looked outside, the weather was like a blooming spring day… SPRING, people!!!
The sky was a flawless blue, the sun was shining and there wasn’t even a breeze in the air! Absolutely stunning! I love living in France ^_^… Like I made a v-log a little while ago because I couldn’t get over the beauty of a day at the end of November… And then THIS… Woah!
Although… I didn’t actually see the weather out of my window this morning… See, I haven’t seen the weather from my bedroom window for quite a while now… I’ve been on the lazy side with having to open my French shutters… It was mainly to keep the heat in my room but when Venetia went to push open my shutters there was a little problem… They just wouldn’t budge! Venetia came and found me to ask how long it had been since they had last been opened : P. I replied with a simple “I don’t know.”, and off we went on our little excursion to open the stubborn shutters!
I flipped the middle lock up and around and took out the hooks from the side – Talk about security ^_^. Afterwards I pressed upon the cold wood… Then I pushed with my palms… After trying this I firmly asserted all of my might and whacked them… This didn’t seem to work either… So I decided to try the pushing again, pushing so hard that I started to slide on my socks across my wooden floor. Venetia went to stand behind and held onto my shirt to support me… Finally, I gave it another budge and “VWOOMP!!”, they flew open… Ahhh!
My dad just reminded me that this was supposed to be “short and sweet”, so going to leave it at that, going to go watch Scrubs. I’ll tell you guys the rest soon, so check back : P.
Hoping to hear from you all soon! Three sleeps until Christmas!
- Bianca =]
{ December 18, 2008 @ 10:09 PM }
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{ Deja Moi Comme Ca }
{ Tags: angel, anniversary, awake, back, bells, Bianca, blog, blogspot, brilliant, candyfloss, centre, Christmas, coal, concept, crepe, decorations, Deja Moi Comme Ca, dormant, eat, eighteen, elf, end, enjoy, entirety, everything, few, finished, fir, first, five, forest, France, Gadget, gianormous, girl, glittery, golden, good, gorgeous, great, grotto, idea, ill, jingle, jingle bells, Kiss My Fishy, kitten, last, lights, link, lounge, Matchstick, Matchstick Girl, mid-air, miniature, moving, new, news, nibbles, noise, number 13, pair, parents, perfectly, play, pretty, room, round-about, running, sad, santa, set, seven, shed, sitting, sleep, slinking, sore, sound, south, south-west France, story, strands, sugar, sunglasses, tags, tale, tangled, terrible, thirsty, traffic, trail, tree, tummy, twinkle, understand, wedding, west, whether, wordpress, world, wrapping paper }
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Hey guys!
The entirety of my day today (Since 8AM :-O), was spent checking out another blog host called WordPress and so I think that I’m moving Deja Moi Comme Ca there, I know that I’ve just moved from Kiss My Fishy but that was necessary… Mmm Hmmm! : P
I’ve also started it correctly by actually adding tags, heehee… Well I stopped half-ish way through because it took something like four to five hours just to do the tags for eighteen of my posts! I will continue with them sometime though! It’s also already got quite a bit of traffic, so I think it’s a good idea and if it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world… Right? : P
I’m not sure whether or not I should delete this blogspot because otherwise it’ll just be left dormant like Kiss My Fishy… So shall have to decide that! Anyway, for now, here’s the link to the new blog: www.dejamoicc.wordpress.com .
Okay, so to the news! Two days ago we finally finished putting up the Christmas decorations in the lounge… It’s just so glittery… It’s like, “Woah! Where’s my sunglasses?!” : P… Brilliant! I’m really looking forward to Christmas, especially because it’s going to be Gadget’s (my kitten’s) very first and he’s always so curious about everything, so it’ll be brilliant to play with the wrapping paper… Or the coal :/ with him : P.
Like I said in my last post, on Saturday the 13th it was my parents wedding anniversary. So before we went to dinner we went to town first. Our little town in south-west France goes completely out for Christmas. All of the little lights are all a-twinkle anywhere you look and even the round-abouts are all done up, it’s just so gorgeous.
In the very centre of town however, the whole place is turned into a Christmas forest sort of thing. The smell of fir trees is in the air and the atmosphere is great! When we were out we saw Santa and even an elf. In the centre, every year they have a little story laid out in a trail of miniature wooden grotto shed thingies.
This year it was the story of the “Matchstick Girl”. It was such a sad story but they had set it up perfectly and when she became an angel at the end… Or rather “Grotto number 13” everyone seemed to enjoy the tale. So it was good, all in all. I even got a sugar crepe and a GIANORMOUS candyfloss… So, in fact, it was GREAT! : P
Oh yes, the only thing that I keep worrying about with Gadget this Christmas is that he doesn’t quite understand the concept of Christmas decorations. I’ve caught him a few times trying to EAT the little golden strands from the Christmas tree. So I’m a little bit worried in case he gets curious, nibbles on something, it gets tangled in his tummy and he gets ill…
So every time he’s slinking around by the tree he gets a hissed at. Recently though we found out that he’s petrified by the sound of jingle bells. You see Venetia took a pair of these really pretty decoration ones that we have and went shaking them around the house… When she came to her room, suddenly Gadget was awake from his deep sleep on her bed and running mid-air to get away from the noise! It was so funny! Venetia felt terrible afterwards for scaring him though, of course but she didn’t know.
Okay guys, I’m getting thirsty and my back’s getting sore from sitting in front of the computer all day, so I’m going to leave it at that. Hope to hear from you guys soon! Seven sleeps until Christmas!
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 1:58 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: backwards, Belfast, better, Bianca, Disney Land, Dun Donald Ice-Bowl, elbow, electro, electronic, empty, fell, flopped, foot, France, freezing, French, friends, go-around-the-rink, heel, hockey, ice-skating, ireland, lifted, loud, muscles, next, outside ice-rink, pain, photos, pity, rave, recording, recreational, saturday, severe, side, siren, skate, slippery, sticking, summer, Sunday, surprised, T stop, time-table, toe, Tuesday, unlock, unstable-ised, Wednesday, wobbling }
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Thursday, November 15, 2007
Hey everyone!
I know I haven’t written anything lately, but it’s because I’ve been busy learning French and …. ICE-SKATING! I absolutely love it! On Saturday we went to the one in my little town for the first time mainly because we couldn’t find it and it had been closed the for summer months.
The first time we got there we were a bit too early so went driving for half and hour and then came back. At 13:30 it was time to go. We didn’t really know what to do, since the only time any of us had been ice-skating in France was in Disney Land’s outside ice-rink.
So anyway I went up to the woman behind the counter said “Patinoire?”. She replied “Oui, oui pour deux?”. Once we got our tickets we walked around to the doors, there was one of those twirling barriers that you walk though and it clicks, so like you would Venetia just walked into it… yeah, you actually had to click this button before so it would unlock. Venetia quickly clicked it and off she went. Once we were in we asked the two girls in there what to do, they pointed and we sort of got the jest.
After a while of unstable-ised walking we finally got used to them opened the swinging door and were met by the freezing temperature inside and the empty atmosphere. There was absolutely no-one there yet. This wasn’t a bad thing, it meant that we could skate and get our bearings before anyone else came out. I was actually extremely surprised! The last time I’d been on ice was nine months ago in Ireland, saying good bye to my friends. But I just got on the ice and went.
More people came and by the end of the day there were at least 40 
. Big difference to the amount of people there would have been in Dun Donald Ice-Bowl. It was the ice-rink in Belfast. Like you’d get there and there’d be literally hundreds of people crowded the rink!
The best part was that at 15:40 there was a LOUD siren and the shutters began to come down over the large windows, then loud “electro” (rave) music began to play and the disco lights came on. Lots of fun! About 20-30 minutes later though, the shutters came up again and the lights switched back to normal. I was like Aww!
It’s okay half an hour or so later it happened again 
. In Dun Donald it stayed with the lights and the rave music the whole time. We skated for four hours straight, I only fell once ! It wasn’t really like falling, Venetia was pushing me from behind then I skidded but quickly lifted myself up again .
Once the session was over, we got off the ice, wobbling because of the numbness and because of how painful our muscles were! We changed back into our shoes, had some difficulty walking, and then went home. It was so nice to sit down! For three whole days I was in severe pain with my legs and arms. Guess I’m not used to doing so much exercise . On the third day I thought it would be so much better but it was worse! I literally just flopped out of bed.
On Tuesday, I was much better and so my mom and I decided to go ice-skating! Wooo! We went to the place, but we were an hour early, so we went shopping, came back and then it was still closed! I looked at the large time-table again and realised I had been looking at the wrong day! The patinoire (ice-rink) was only open three days a week, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday does seem like a pretty random day but in France, schools finish early and primary schools don’t even go on a Wednesday. So we reluctantly went home but decided that we’d come back the next day.
Yes, so yesterday we got there at 13:30, skated for three hours, went shopping and then picked my sister up from work. It was loads of fun, despite the fact that I fell three times. The first time I fell it was because I was trying to show my mom something .
The other two times were near the end and were very painful! I hurt my knee, elbow and my side. I actually grazed my elbow and just sat where I fell and said “… Ow”. Really funny after the pain had gone away….
Last night I couldn’t even sleep on my side! I also fell on my hands, so that was very sore with them being numb from the cold already! Other than that I had an awesome day! My mom’s figure skates were sticking into her toe so we asked if we could change them and the guy said we could use the hockey skates if we wanted. We did! It was so much easier, for the first 10 minutes or so it felt very slippery but I got the hang of them.
I can even do the leg movements like a continuous figure eight, the snake, turn and skate on one foot and do a stop on my right heel whilst gliding on my left foot. So I’ve made up my mind about which ice-skates I want to get, just for recreational “go-around-the-rink” ice-skating. Hockey skates!
Pity Venetia didn’t get to try them out but I’ll just ask if we can use them this Saturday again. Oh! We also found out how to use the lockers! It’s all electronical and the instructions were easy enough to follow except for one that I couldn’t understand. We just got the guy to come and show us . So now I know .
Really looking forward to Saturday, Venetia’s going to teach me how to skate backwards and do a T stop . So I’ll tell you how that goes and I’ll also try and get some pictures or even recordings for you.
I think that I’ll leave it at that and I’m still waiting on those photos .
Hope to hear from you all soon!
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 1:25 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: ad, allergic, aunt, Bianca, bite, bullet, cake, converse, copper, cousins, crystal, damage, Daniel, Darius, daughter-in-law, David, ear to ear, England, English, experiences, Farringdon, France, galleries, Gizmo, good da, grandmother, grin, Jett, karen, laces, Luke, luminous, Matthew, milkshake, mueseums, Nespresso, penny, raining, shopping, Simone, son, speakers, stick, T.V., tempted, till, uncle, vinegar, winter }
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Thursday, November 8, 2007
Hey Everyone!
So yesterday we arrived in England… well I wrote about it yesterday anyway . Seeing my mom, Gizmo and Karen was great. But then there were MORE great things to come on the second day of being in England. My sleep wasn’t the best because I was staying at my grandmother’s (Karen) house… and her son and daughter-in-law live with her too… they have a cat. I absolutely love cats but there’s a tiny problem I have with them… I’m allergic :-O!
But never mind that because after four days of suffering, oh woe me , no it wasn’t that bad, we moved into my cousins, uncle and aunt’s house which is literally across the road… okay around one road, down another, around one more and then there it was .
Oh yes, the MORE to come on the second day was that I went to the super store with my mom and (:-O. You have no idea how happy I was to be understood and that I could understand people there! They speak English… I know, no duh you are in England but that’s not the point!
I had missed it so much… I just couldn’t stop smiling, it was when the guy at the till said the price and bid us a good day that I realised how much I had missed it… he seemed pretty confused at why I had a grin from ear to ear on but, I didn’t care, at least he spoke English! It is something that I still miss even living in France where there’s more English speakers here than Sicily but it was amazing. I never knew how easy I had it and I actually can’t remember any other “shopping experiences” (like talking to people at a store…) before I’d moved to a non-English speaking country. So it’s so true! You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
Then again… I did miss the weather in Sicily too… I mean I really, really missed it…. And I had really, really appreciated it there as well ! It was absolutely freezing in Farringdon… but my two little cousins loved playing outside and so I had to bite the bullet and stick there with them, in the end I tempted them to come back inside with milkshake! Mmm milkshake, it fixes everything .
Anyway on the forth day, this is now the seventh of May (Ha! I was a poet and I didn’t even know it… until I re-read the sentence anyway ) I saw the rest of the crew – Luke (16), Matthew (13… Matt was born on the same day as me! He’s only 12 hours older. He was 6am I was 6pm ), Darius (11), I know there’s an awful lot here ;-P, Daniel and Jett (who’s 4 and 3, aw how cute )!
Just read over the Matthew thing, in case you don’t know our birthday’s the 1st of February… now you have no excuse to forget it and can’t not send me in a nice picture of you kissing a fish . Pucker up!
On the 8th of May, it was my sister’s birthday! My aunt, Simone, baked a… actually two chocolate cakes for Venetia, you heard the list of names! One would’ve just been finished in an instant of it being brought out . Oh yummy, those cakes were just… so yummy!
We took tonnes of pictures but most of them are of Venetia and I stuffing our faces with chocolate cake… or the one’s that were taken too early and we were trying to fix our hair! Quite a few random ones of a vase of flowers… I think these where taken by my one cousin when he got his hands on the camera .
Most of the days that we were in England it was raining, so we didn’t really get up to much. I made sure I watched a good amount of English T.V. whilst I was there though . In France it’s a very odd occasion that there’s English on the television. Except for the Nespresso, what else? ad, they don’t dub it .
We stayed in England for a month, on the last Sunday Simone, David (my uncle), the boys, Karen, my parents, Venetia and I, wow quite a list there , went to a few museums and galleries. In one of the museums there were little stuffed chickens, that was really sad but my little cousins didn’t seem to mind… I guess they’re boys also fake dodo birds, dinosaur, giraffe, elephant and rhino skeletons and my favourite, the luminous crystal room! I was wearing converse so the laces looked so cool in the light. Of course we got pictures on my moms camera phone .
Oh yeah before I forget! It’s winter now, no duh , but that means that bees and wasps and looking for warm places to keep snuggled up. Yesterday my mom got stung by the wasp or a hornet on her leg twice and her hand at least four times! It was hiding in her trousers and then quickly flew away to the other side of the room once it had done the damage.
We didn’t know what to do so I put got the cream out, then my dad said to put vinegar on, the vinegar soothed the sting but today a few hours later it swelled up and today it’s still all swollen. Today I found out though that once you’re stung if you put a copper penny on it and hold the penny on the sting for 15 minutes it should take the sting away and it won’t even swell up!
Great to know, but a bit late now . Well I’m going to leave it at that! Hope to hear from you all soon!
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 1:02 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: Alfonso, Bageria, barbeque, Bianca, birthday, brother-in-law, domani, England, experience, father, fiance, foreigner, France, Giovanni, gorgeous, green, high, hmmm, incorrect, internet, job, Jovanna, kill, lines, lucky, lunch, May, Mazara del Vallo, offer, patio, phone, phone booth, planted, poisonous, ramshackle, refresh, serpente, slithering, sly, snake, south, south-west, South-west Sicily, spade, spirits, summer, telephone, tile-less, tomorrow, unorignial, west, wheelbarrow, words }
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Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Hey everyone!
Trying to think of where we were last … oh right yeah! Okay well once my mom left for England, a week or two later my dad got a job offer. I’m pretty sure I’ve told you this before but I’ll just refresh your memories… and mine !
In our Sicilian house since we were in what they called the country side and too far away from any phone lines so we didn’t even have a telephone or the internet in that house! Giovanni promised it would be within the first week… then domani, domani, domani (tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow). Per sempre domani (always tomorrow)!
The telephone guys came, looked and said “Yes, too far away for a telephone line”. We’ll need to put more in. The next time they came, they measured the distance, then after 15 minutes of being at the house went for a two hour lunch break!
They never came again, so the whole time in Sicily we didn’t have internet or telephone. Except for when we went to an internet café or telephone place. So anyway to get on with my original story, my dad received the job offer in a tiny, ramshackle-like telephone booth place since it was the closest to our house… and generally like most of the telephone places in Mazara del Vallo.
And of course in case you haven’t noticed or read in previous posts it was in south-west France . My dad accepted, and then my mom booked us tickets out of Sicily for the forth of May. You see my mom had to be in Sicily or we had to be in England before the eighth of May because it would have been my sister’s 18th birthday.
I was barely able to bring myself to stay in that house for the last three weeks. It was so boring!
We did have a little bit of fun though, even though we were stuck in the middle of a family fight between Jovanna, Giovanni’s fiancé, also given a random name made up by, yours truly… me! Okay, okay I got it off an Italian girls name site … and it’s just the girl version of Giovanni… I know I’m so unoriginal… and Jovanna’s brother-in-law. They wanted the house for summer… don’t ask me why they’d want that house, but whatever their reason was, they wanted it.
I’m using the word “they” because it was Jovanna’s brother-in-law’s father as well as the brother-in-law. Those two were really sly things. First off they made Jovanna’s mother pay them to fix up the house for us… which they did NOT do such a great job of… in my opinion. Is there actually a point to painting the outside of the house… and then just leaving the kitchen floor tile-less because they’d done “their work” . Secondly they planted a snake in our garden! Yes it was them… I reckon so anyway.
They came to paint the walls on the patio one day and went into the garden to get the wheelbarrow, but when they left they just stood around waiting for my dad to come up and they left the wheelbarrow outside the garden instead of putting it back.
That day, my dad and Giovanni were sitting in the garden. My dad spotted a giant green snake slithering across the ground, calmly told Giovanni… Giovanni jumped up looked around then ran to my dad’s side… I hope you know the descriptive word for Giovanni that I’m thinking because I’d really rather not write it out .
My dad asked him if he should kill it, if it was poisonous. Giovanni said yes. So my dad got the spade…. And you can imagine what happened next I’m sure.
Later that day Giovanni said that the last time he saw a snake was at a barbeque seven years ago… and THEN told my dad that green snakes aren’t poisonous… this from the guy that ran to my dad when he saw the snake and told my dad to kill it!
A few days later Jovanna’s brother-in-law… I can’t even remember his real name… so let’s say Alfonso. So Alfonso came around with his wife. My dad said in Italian “I found your snake!” he said “Mio serpente?!” (my snake) “Yes, your snake”, was my dad’s reply. So now Alfonso didn’t know if it was just a foreigner to the Italian language with the incorrect words… or of course that we knew it was him who placed it there . Mind boggling!
After he got over the confusing-ness of my dad’s comment he asked what colour it was. And then proved that it must have been them because his wife and he said “Oooh green, it is very, very poisonous! Brown is okay but GREEN!”… So who to believe now… hmmm.
My dad told Giovanni about them saying this and he said… yes… but no it was not green it was brown! Since it was clearly green . We went down to the farmer by us and asked him. Green is not poisonous. We decided to believe him .
So now you can see that we had good enough reasons to leave Sicily. Even though it was gorgeous… some of the people that we met weren’t. So I guess if we had had a better experience and had found a nice house, we would never have left and I wouldn’t be writing this… lucky I had that experience then, eh?
(South-west Sicily, Bageria)
Tomorrow I’ll write about leaving Sicily . See you all then. Hope to hear from you soon (spirits still high ).
- Bianca
ojp
{ December 18, 2008 @ 12:22 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: Aurora, awkward, Bianca, break dancing, Canada, Canadian, centre, charades, cliques, CSI, CSI: Manhattan, e-mail, forehead, fou, four, France, game, happy halloween, hip hop, home-schooling, impression, jupe, know, language, leggings, Les Experts: Manhattan, Manhattan, no, originated, oui, perfect, pointing, repeating, safer, scary movies, shaking, skirt, skirts, spicy, techno, teenagers, tektonik, tights, timing, trick or treat, wide eyed }
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Hey everybody!
First off, Happy Halloween! I hope you have a good one . I’m not doing anything today other than my usual home-schooling, but what about you guys? I’m not sure if they go trick or treat-ing in France, apparently they call before they come. So I get the impression that the kids would have to know the person they went trick or treating to. Much safer that way .
French T.V. doesn’t even put scary movies on. Yesterday they were advertising Les Experts: Manhattan (which is basically CSI: Manhattan)… well I guess that can be scary sometimes !
Okay well I don’t really want to write yet another blog consecutively on Sicily again, so we’ll make it a little more spicy this time… or at least slightly different…
FRANCE! Well as you all know I have absolutely no friends what so ever in France… STILL! Depressing, eh?
Well… I have had contact with people my age about a month ago, Venetia and I went into town. Today I didn’t want to go into town, I thought we were just going to pick something up quickly (so I hadn’t dressed appropriately) but then my mom and dad wanted to go to the bank and Venetia wanted to go into town.
So we made arrangements that when they were finished they’d meet up with us. I went with Venetia to town we walked around for a bit, and then Venetia noticed that two girls were following us…
We went into Game, came out, walked down the street and turned down one of the side streets that brought you to the main square centre. Here one of them called “Excuse moi!”, we stopped and she was making movements in a shape of a skirt, shaking her head then pointing at me.
Yes, the locals of all of the countries that I have moved to like to play charades . Well we stopped, Venetia ran behind me looked to see if my skirt had gone… too far up , it hadn’t.
Later on, through a lot of confusion and A LOT of “Did you understand that?” “No.” coming from both sides. In the end I said “Ah c’est trop court pour FRANCE! Je comprends maintenante! (Ah it’s too short for FRANCE! I understand now.” This was followed by a whole lot of “Oui”’s in French from them .
It was true I hadn’t seen any other girls (… or boys) in France with skirts on with no leggings or tights. As they were telling me that the boys in France are fou (crazy) and making circular movements to their forehead, a bunch of teenagers came over and started cat-whistling… Grrrrreeeeeaaaaat timing!
The guys left after a while of me saying goodbye in … a good few languages (since I couldn’t think of much French) and Aurora and… okay didn’t quite catch the tallest one’s name saying… other things in French, let’s just leave it at that .
We exchanged e-mail addresses and then parted. Venetia and I walked around for about an hour, met up with our parents, then bumped in Aurora and … the other one , this time they were chatting to two friends, they introduced us. One had lived in Canada for four years so spoke amazing English… so that was a HUGE help !
They asked our parents if they could take us around our little town and to a place called Tektonik. Now every time they said “Tektonik” they did a movement with their arms and legs… we figured it was a dance thing… our parents said yes and off we went.
As we walked around the corner at the top of the road, I realised it was the group of teenagers that I had dreaded ever bumping into… because you know how teenagers have their cliques and it’s like, you’re hardly just going to walk over to them and start speaking (in a completely different language)… it’d just be awkward!
Well I stopping mid-step, wide eyed and just stood there, they turned around and said “C’est bon!”, “Mais ma JUPE! La juuuuupe!!!!” (But my SKIRT! The skiiiiirt!). They laughed then the Canadian one said “Don’t worry!” and so off I went… very reluctantly…
They were all actually very nice! One guy even said in perfect English “Hi, What’s up?”… of course this was the only English he knew . I haven’t really seen Aurora or… the other one in town so as per usual I just steer away from that crowd .
Oh right yeah I never told you what Tecktonik was. It’s a new type of dancing that originated in France, it’s cross between, techno, break dancing and hip hop… very strange looking at first, but it grows on you …
Yikes! Just read a past blog and realised that I’ve told you about this… but in short term, aw well it’s writen out now . Well I’m going to leave it at that and hope not to repeat myself anymore than I have.
Hope to hear from you all soon! (Oh look at that! Already repeating myself )
- Bianca (And again (:-O what a shocker! )
{ December 18, 2008 @ 12:01 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: addicted, airport, anchor, archaeological, attacks, banana, banane e frutti di bosco, ben and jerry's, Bianca, boat, cathedral, Charlemagne, cheesecake, coughing, descendants, dig, drools, forest, fountain, France, fresh, fruits, gargoyles, gelato, gold, harbour, helmet, hermit, history, hunter, ice-cream, Italian, lemon, marble, memory, mmmm, monster, motorbike, mountain, noble, Normal, nude, Palermitani, Palermitani Public Square, Palermo, Paris, Piazza Pretoria, plague, prayed, procedure, reached, refresh, remains, Saint Rosalia, scented, scratched, Shame, shrine, Sicilian, sicily, sick, sinking, standsted, stomach, tippy top, vans, voila, watering, wishes, yummy }
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Monday, October 29, 2007
Hello again!
As you can see I don’t post blogs over the weekend… so I have to refresh my memory now…
We stayed in Sicily for two months, the first two weeks of that were spent in Palermo. Palermo’s the main city, like Paris is for France. The three weeks there we saw some absolutely amazing things! Like I said before the statues there were absolutely gorgeous, gargoyles on the buildings, and statues that the city has been built around, we were just wandering around and somehow managed to bump into Piazza Pretoria… a very… nude fountain … it was finished being built in 1581 and since the Public square has still been called the Palermitani Public square of the Shame because of how… nude it is .
Moving on… my dad’s family took us to lots of places around Palermo. One for instance was Saint Rosalia; I know that I’ve said before. Well if you ever go, I’m warning you now that it is a very, long, steep drive up the mountain and lemon scented air fresheners do not help at all! It made my stomach turn and gave me a headache, but once we reached the very, tippy top and breathed in the wonderfully fresh air, I was fine again !
We parked then had to climb quite a few steps until we finally made it. It was very pretty actually, with the mountain, looking as if it was leaning on the cathedral… really the cathedral had been built into the mountain.
Here’s a little bit of history for you now, come on it won’t kill you to read it ! Saint Rosalia was born in 1130 to a Norman noble family that were descendents of Charlemagne. Once she grew up she decided to go live as a “hermit” in the mountains. In 1166 she died, but nobody knew of it. Then in 1624 a plague took over Palermo, apparently Saint Rosalia “appeared” to a sick woman first. And then a hunter. She told the hunter to climb the mountain and described the cave in which he would find her remains in, so of course he did, finding the bones as she described. He brought them back down to Palermo and a cathedral was built in that cave.
Inside was gorgeous! If you read the post below you’ll see that I’ve already told you about the open area where the rain water came in, flowed down the pipes that were along the walls and then finished at the Holy water. As you walked past that bit, you came into the cathedral with the chairs and the altar but to the left was a large glass, tank sort of this with a marble and gold statue of Saint Rosalia and an angel inside, on top of that there was a box with everyone’s wishes that had visited it.
As you walk through the entrance there’s an absolute monster of an anchor just sitting there, quite confusing, eh? This isn’t a harbour… we’re on the top of a mountain :S… I was thinking.
Well the story goes that as a boat was sinking the people on it prayed to Saint Rosalia and voila ( <<< hey look at that! I’m really getting French here!!!) the boat stopped sinking. So the people that were on the boat carried the anchor all the way up the mountain!!! There’s a shrine with pictures and thank you messages with similar stories, for instance there’s a torn and scratched up motorbike helmet, no need in explaining this guy’s story .
I was just trying to think of things to type and (:-O! I can’t believe that I haven’t told you about this thing yet!!! GELATO!!! I LOVE it SO much! It is Sicilian ice-cream (gelato is basically just the word ice-cream… except in Italian)…
My mouth’s watering just thinking of it! If you go to Sicily, you will come accustomed to seeing gelaterias on practically every street. A gelateria is an ice-cream parlour. You go in and there’s a counter filled with TONNES of different types of ice-cream. It is the most complex procedure EVER! Once you choose what you want then it’s simple enough .
I was addicted to it. My favourite ever was Banane e frutti di bosco (I can’t believe I still remembered that… 5 months is a very long time to remember the name of an Italian ice-cream!), Banana and fruits of the forest. Oooh! *Drools* it was the nicest… even better than the cheesecake at Stansted airport !
The nicest ice-cream that I’ve ever had in Ireland was Ben and Jerry’s Archaeological Dig from a tub or something like that. It was chocolate with chocolate shaped dinosaurs ! Mmmm yummy! The ice-cream from the ice-cream vans always gave me coughing attacks…
Well I think that’s enough about ice-cream now… next post I’ll tell you about more Sicilian adventures… that’s where the fun really begins !
Hope to hear from you all soon.
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 11:50 AM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: Bianca, BMW, break dancing, British, car, Carcassonne, five, France, French, friends, girl, guess, hear, Hee hee!, hope, kids, lake, lost, medieval, movements, news, nicely, Paris, park, people, question, rhetorical, sad, Sunday, techtonique, tektonik, tonnes, Toulouse, town, train, translate, translation, twisty, understanding, Venetia, videos, Wednesday }
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Monday, October 8, 2007
Hey all again,
Well, not much news over here… none about fishing anyway. We’re all settling down very nicely in France, in the new house. We’ve even bought a new car with… a whole lot of frustration from me having to translate and the sales people not understanding… or usually me not understanding what they were trying to get across… eventually though we did it, and it was well worth it.
Tomorrow we’re taking a drive to Carcassone (a medieval city… somewhere in France, will get more details on it tomorrow or on Wednesday), with it. So will write about that afterwards and try get some pictures . On Sunday I found out that’s it’s only a five hour train journey to Paris from Toulouse, so that’s good to know… I guess .
Oh! About two weeks ago, my sister (Venetia) and I made French friends… okay they made arrangements to meet up with us the next day in town, but they didn’t pitch up :-O!!! Okay well I think we got lost in translation… Still haven’t seen them around, but on the first day that we met, they took us to a little square, beside the park in our town.
Here there were tonnes of kids dancing, they called this type of dance “Tecktonik” (Whew, that is the way to spell it, I used to have it as Techtonique… looks French enough … but was wrong >.<). It’s … quite different to British dancing… Tecktonik is like loads of arm movements and twisty leg movements, some jelly body movements as well, (wow, now you can REALLY imagine what I’m trying to describe ). At the beginning Venetia and I thought of it as strange, but after watching some videos on youtube, I think it doesn’t look… too bad , and want to learn it… so far I can do… one move… and it’s a very simple one (most of the time I can’t even get my hands right with it >.<). Hee hee! The girl who does break dancing even said it was more difficult than that, so I don’t feel that bad about it !
How sad am I?… Actually don’t answer that, it’s just a rhetorical question . I have absolutely no other news… wow I need to get a lake! Hope to hear from you all soon!
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 11:11 AM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: 13th century, 1515 A.D., best, Bianca, blame, Carcassonne, castle, city, David Bowie, devices, drive, eaten, entrance, flowed, France, frustrating, gorgeous, gross, half, Hautpoul, heretics, ice-cream, impressed, ireland, iron maiden, Kate Mosse, kids, Labyrinth, lost, mountain valley, nails, one, original, outside, painful, promise, roads, route, sarcophagus, scenery, seconds, signs, story, street, stunning, sure, The Black Mountains, torture chamber, towering, twisting, white, witches }
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Hey everyone!
I know :-O What?! TWO posts in ONE day! Well, I DID promise this one about Carcassonne on Monday!
Yes, so we went to Carcassonne yesterday, it was about an hours drive from our house. The scenery on the way was absolutely stunning! You have to drive up the twisting roads through The Black Mountains, there was a gorgeous, clear river that flowed to the right hand side of the road once we reached the city outside of Carcassonne, I don’t know where it came from though, might have dozed off for a few seconds .
The most frustrating part in Carcassonne though, was being in the city outside of it, being able to see the towering castle, but not able to find the route to it! Not such great street signs ;-P! Yep, just blame the street signs! (Below – Carcassonne on a NICE day ).
It was well-worth it… once we found the entrance ! The best part was that I’m reading a book at the moment called “Labyrinth”, by Kate Mosse (not the David Bowie one with the kids that get lost in the labyrinth). And in it there’s a character from the 13th century (not too sure on the century, will look it up later in the book, wow, I’m impressed, just looked it up and I was right ) that lived in Carcassonne so you get more of a feel of what the castle and it’s grounds would have been like back then.
Anyway to get on with my ORIGINAL story, we walked through, have some pictures below of me standing in front of the entrance… holding a half eaten ice-cream , (That’s the second one)! (Top one – I’m the shortest one and wearing white , my mom in the middle and my sister all the way to the left)
After looking around some “medieval” shops we came across “The Torture Chamber”. It’s like a museum of all of the torture… devices that they used on “heretics”, “witches”, and the “accused” in the olden days, the one date that I can actually remember was the first recorded date that they used “The Iro
n Maiden”, it was disgusting, that not even 500 years ago they STARTED using it (1515 A.D.). The Iron Maiden is like a sarcophagus that has long, I’d think very painful, nails on the inside, sticking out all over the show, the “accused” gets placed inside and the doors are slowly clamped over, it doesn’t do BRUTAL damage so the average person takes two whole days to die! It was so gross!!! Much worse things there too…
Afterward we walked around some more, ate, went to the BEST sweet shop EVER! Got ice-cream and walked around some more ! We drove home later, stopping by a gorgeous mountain valley, that over looked Hautpoul. (To the right – Hautpoul)
Really hope to get some more (Wow! More sounds weird there ) fish pictures in sooooooon!
- Bianca
P.S. Yes I know, I thought I lived in south-west France too, but with this weather… pfft, it’s okay though, it wasn’t as bitterly cold as Ireland was .
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