Aussie Rules

We brought a football to France with us. Sophie is very keen to teach the French kids how to play Australian football, but usually they think it is a rugby ball. The Viennet family got the hang of kicking and marking pretty easily, and Stephan has a pretty good boot on him. (I don't suppose that will translate very well for those using the Babel Fish translation service.)

We stopped for lunch near the river at a pretty village called Pesmes on the river Ognon (yes it means onion). Annick had packed a substantial lunch of bread, cheese, ham, juice, wine, yoghurt, and fruit. It was quite chilly in the wind but once everyone started to play football they warmed up. As you can see in the photos most have shed their thick jackets.

We were already in the Australian spirit playing footy, so why was I surprised when I saw an emu?? Yes, a real emu, walking back and forth trying to get out of its little pen, in the village of Pesmes. Apparently there is an emu farm somewhere near the Grenoble airport too.

A Walk in the Countryside

Walking in the countryside...

Running in the countryside...

A sheep...

The first morning in Dampierre-sur-Linotte was fine and we all went for a walk around the village and down a rural lane. Here we saw a sheep, just in case we were homesick. As you can see in the photo it bears little resemblance to one of our merino sheep on the farm back home in Australia.

We also saw big piles of firewood along the edges of the lane. The local community has a lot of forest, which is managed and harvested to allow all the residents of the village to have an annual supply of firewood. Stephan said that he is going to take out their expensive oil-fired central heating and replace with a wood-burning unit before next winter.

Penfriends

Sophie has several penfriends around the world, and one of them is Noëllie, who lives in Dampierre-sur-Linotte. Sophie and Noëllie have been writing to each other for a few years, and chatting on the computer with MSN/ Windows Live Messenger for several months, so they were very excited to finally meet each other in person.
We travelled to Dampierre-sur-Linotte on Monday and were welcomed very warmly by the Viennet family. Stephan and Annick have three daughters and Noëllie and her little sister Marthe are about the same age as our girls. At first the children were a little shy, but by the end of the evening they were playing together to such an extent that they performed a circus spectacle for the adults.

The Viennet's house in Dampierre-sur-Linotte

Circus Training

Bonnie went to her first day of circus training today, just to see if she liked it. And do you know what? She LOVED it! The worst thing is that we now have school holidays and then the next two Thursdays are holidays so she has to wait until the 15th of May to have her next session.
Today she tried out heaps of things including balancing on a ball, tightrope walking, juggling, rolla bolla (balancing on a board balancing on a cylinder) and fun wheels - the cycle thing that has pedals like platforms and two wheels on the outside.
Here are some pictures to show some of the things she did:

Detour

Usually when we have been driving we have gone where the road leads us - we have never been anywhere around here, so everywhere is new and interesting. But on the weekend we got our Tom Tom GPS system set up with a map of Western Europe (the Australian map we had didn't help us much around here...). So we planned a trip for today, while the girls were at school. We wanted to see what was on the other side of this mountain called Chartreuse. So we planned a route which avoided toll roads and took the scenic way around the mountain. Not exactly around, but a little bit over too, with a couple of passes being at about 1300 metres. It had snowed overnight so the scenery was very picturesque, with chalets and pine trees covered in snow, and clear mountain streams cascading down the mountainside.
Mountains are extremely exciting and picturesque, but I am not a mountain girl. I grew up on the farm at Pingrup where you can see for miles and miles - with not a hill in sight, let alone a mountain. I was hoping to get to see out over some sort of flatter countryside on the other side of the mountain. But it was not to be...
During the night some of the mountain had fallen onto the road. And the rockfall had closed the road. So we had to program an alternative route into the Tom Tom and we arrived in Grenoble rather sooner than we had thought.
But not before I had snapped a photo of the scene and of the workers, hanging from ropes, who had drilled holes into the rock to insert bars which would hold the hillside together. Like sticky tape I was told.

Le Cirque

This afternoon we went to the circus "le Nouveau Cirque Triomphe" at Pontcharra, which is 7kms from Sainte Marie d'Alloix. Of course the lions (lionesses actually) came out first and we didn't get off to a good start when one of them sat dutifully on the platform in front of us - and did a poo. Sophie didn't like the smell of that too much...
Hugh sat on my lap for the lions, but joined his sisters in the front row for the rest of the show. He liked the animals, and there were plenty of them - apart from the dog that performed with the lions there were horses, snakes, a camel, llama, and donkey. All the usual circus tricks were there with juggling, balancing, hula hoops, and an aerial hoop with a pretty girl dangling. Probably the part we enjoyed the most was the clown. And maybe that was because he didn't speak, but used a whistle to communicate. He chose two people from the audience to act out his commands which made it even funnier. All the usual circus talk was unintelligible for us, although I now know how long the pythons live for, which temperatures they favour, and how often they shed their skins.

Farewell Ash

We are all feeling a bit sad today, because Ash, our dog at home, died. David, who's been living in our house and looking after her, emailed this morning with the news. She had an accident jumping off the ute and got run over by the sheep feeder apparently.
Ash was Roger's number one sheep dog, and the only one we kept when we left the farm. She was also the only the dog that the girls aren't scared of. Hugh liked to play with her and he would roll around on the ground with her. He would give her biscuits to eat and he has on occasion tried to clean her teeth with a toothbrush.
I have found a few photos with Ash in them for her final farewell.

Hot Chips, Anyone??

After arriving at the Etap hotel we decided to have some dinner and get to bed at a reasonable hour, being aware that we would lose one hour of sleep - due to the advent of daylight savings we were required to move our watches forward an hour during the night (at the same that Western Australians were moving their watches back one hour, making our time difference now only 6 hours).
We were given directions to a Pizza restaurant less than a kilometre away and hurried there with rumbling tummies. Roger ordered two pizzas to share, but Bonnie insisted she didn't like pizza and wouldn't eat any. Because we knew Bonnie would be hungry in the night and she needed to eat something (but refused all that was on the menu) I asked the waitress if they had fries. She replied that they did, and would we all like some? I am sure that I told her we would all eat some and two serves should feed all of us.
But maybe my French isn't so good. When she returned she brought a huge serving of chips for each of us. Yep, six plates overflowing with hot fat greasy chips, worth about 20 euros, or nearly $40AU. Yummo... or maybe not.
Feeling guilty for my mistake I consumed many of the chips, because I didn't want to have 10 euros worth of chips remaining on the table when we left. So to my Weight Watchers leaders, if you are reading this, please forgive me. And I swear I will never order chips again...

Is it Christmas?

The trees in the background of this photo had decorations on them that looked like Christmas decorations. We're not sure if they are left there from last Christmas or getting ready for next Christmas...
This is in the Etap hotel near Aix-les-bains where we stayed on Saturday night. We got a really cheap room - only 61 euros for the room and breakfast for all of us. The room had a double bed with a single bunk above and another very skinny little bed beside it (2'6" bed). Hugh slept in the big bed with Roger and me, Sophie and Odette shared the bunk and Bonnie had the little bed. We thought it was great and started checking out where all the other Etap hotels are around France. At this price it is even cheaper than youth hostels (auberges de jeunesse) AND it had its own bathroom with shower over the bath. And a TV.
When something seems too good to be true it probably is...
In the morning when we went to breakfast there was a different woman at reception from when we checked in. She asked our room number, then counted us and asked if we had all stayed in the same room. "Yes" we replied, "It was great!" She didn't look happy and told us that the room was only allowed to have 4 people in it. If there was a fire they could be in big trouble and the young lady who booked us in could lose her job. Did she know there was six of us? I said that maybe she hadn't seen all of us when we booked in, because I didn't want her to lose her job, but in fact she had taken all six of us upstairs to see the room. Next time, we were told, we would have to have two rooms.

Our spacious and comfortable room at Etap hotel

Another Trip To The Snow

We went and found some snow to play in this afternoon. This time on this side of the valley, at Col de Marcieu. Although the ski station is closed we played in the snow, on the luge, and tried to start to learn to ski - with Roger as our instructor. Sophie stayed up surprisingly well. I can't say the same for myself, and I don't think I'll ever become a skier. I can honestly say I now have more respect for those who make skiing look easy.
On the way up to the ski field we were surprised by the amount of snow on the ground, on the houses, on the cars, and in the fields. Everything was pretty much covered with snow, and I guess that is a result of the heavy snowfall over Easter. It is a pity that most of the ski stations will be closing in the next few weeks.
Here are some pictures of the kids enjoying the snow, although when I look at the enlarged picture of Sophie and Hugh in the luge (above) I am not sure that the look is one of pleasure.