Our House

I haven't posted in quite a while because we still don't have internet in our new place yet. The only way I am able to get online at all is to come to campus with Jenny and get on the University's wireless network, which is what I am currently using. Hopefully soon we will have internet at home, but who knows.

Anyway, we did indeed get moved into our new house, and it's great! There are, of course, a few things that suck about it, but for the most part Jenny and I both really like it! I think not having a home for such a long time really helped me appreciate how great it is to have one.

It turns out that we will be living there by ourselves - we realized after we moved in that the fact that the bedrooms do not have doors would really be a problem for more than just Jenny and me, and also that the common areas would be kind of small to share between more than two people.

Our mailing address, for those who are interested, is: 22 Rue de Douai, 59000 Lille, France. And here are some detailed pictures of what our house looks like!

The entry room/dining room. It's kind of weird living somewhere where your door opens straight onto the sidewalk. Most of the furniture in this room (and the rest of the house) was given to us by Liliane and Francois!

Jenny and my room. As you can see, we are still living out of our suitcases.

The short hallway between the upstairs rooms

The spare room upstairs

The staircase

The kitchen, downstairs adjacent to the entry room. And it has a refrigerator!!!

The doors to the toilet on the left, and the bathroom on the right. It's weird, because these are directly across from the windows in the kitchen which look out onto the sidewalk, so if you're on your way to or from the shower in just a towel, anyone who cares to look in can easily see you.

Parc Jean-Baptiste Lebas, a park that is about a block away from our house

AT LAST!

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Our house in Google Street View! It's the white one on the left - double-click the front of it to get a straight-on view!

Today is our 29th day in France, and tonight, if all goes as planned, we will finally, for the first time, be staying in a place of our own! Yesterday we signed the lease, and Liliane and Francois rented a truck and helped us move the majority of our stuff into the new place. However, there was still some work to be finished up in the new kitchen, so we went back to Bois Bernard last night.

Today, the guy who is doing the work on the house is supposed to be finished by 6pm, and another guy is coming by to turn the gas on so that we will have hot water and everything. After Jenny is done teaching for the day, we will head over to our new home!

The only bad thing is that we will be without internet and phone for a little while until we have time to get that set up. We will still be able to get online at the university, though. And it will be totally worth not having phone or internet for a little while to finally have a place of our own!

Vimy Memorial

Today we returned to Bois Bernard once again and Liliane and Francois took us to a war memorial near their home. It was called Vimy Memorial and it was for Canadians who fought in World War I. It is located on a battlefield where Canadian forces had an important victory over the Germans. There is a huge memorial to all the dead and MIA Canadians who fought in the battle, and the trenches and tunnels used during the battle are preserved.

The area is actually owned and run by Canada, and there are tours led by Canadian students who are brought over to work at the Memorial for four months at a time. Tours are given in both English and French, and we took an English one. It was very interesting, and made me very happy that I've never fought in a war, especially in a trench.

Jenny in front of the Memorial

Jenny between the towers - the Memorial was huge

The other side of the Memorial

Looking out from the Memorial - part of the reason the victory that took place here was so important was because of the strategic advantage of being able to see for miles

People aren't allowed in the woods that have grown up around the battlefield because of the possibility of leftover artillery shells

There are a ton of sheep around the memorial - the tour guide told us they are there to keep the grass short - a job that would be too difficult and dangerous for a person because of the craters left behind by explosions and the possibility of leftover shells

A view of some of the trenches - these were real trenches, preserved in cement, although during the war they would have been taller and narrower

The entrance to the preserved underground tunnels

...and the tunnels themselves