Alemann Adventures

  We spent the last weekend visiting with Daniel's Aunt and Uncle at their manor house about 2 hours East of Chemery. We had such a good time catching up with them and Daniel's cousin and her kids who were also staying for a while. Martin and Sue run Bumblebee Manor as holiday accommodation and we spent the weekend eating, working in the garden, swimming in the pool and hanging out. It was 42 degrees when we left our house so swimming and chatting in the shade was such a good way to spend the weekend. We also made it the the nearby zoo, the only troglodyte zoo in the world (we just can't get enough of zoos!) and to a winery open day for lunch and a spot of wine tasting.                We very much enjoyed being able to speak English for a couple of days and were very sad to leave. We will be back (every weekend if the kids had their way!)

  Chemery is twinned with a village in Germany called Erden. Twinning started between Germany and other European countries in the 60s to encourage good international relationships after the wars. Every year the 2 villages get together to basically party and hang out. This year was the 25th anniversary of the twinning.  There was a ceremony in the morning (followed by pastries and wine of course) and once again the kids were asked to participate by holding the French and German flags. James' flag was particularly heavy but they did a good job standing there through all the speeches. In the evening we attended the "Diner Dansant", dinner dance. It started at 7.30pm and once again we didn't get to bed until 1am, and we skipped the final coffee course! We met some lovely people and had a good chat to Birgit from Erden who spoke English. She has led an extraordinary life so it was good to get the know her and she gave us some great travel tips too.  The dinner involved 5 f...

  Parc Asterix Haiku BY James Alemann This place shines with fun. Asterix Theming. SO COOL. We should go again.                                                                  Parc Asterix BY James Alemann Parc Asterix is an amazing place with everything that a theme park needs. From immersive theming, thrilling rides, and more. This had a thing for everybody. So here are my top 15 rides along with some other small details that we saw. I will put less description in the rides that are lower down the list. Number 15: Epidermis Croisières (and yes most of the names will be in French). This is a nice relaxing boat ride through the town where asterix lives and you will see some cheap animatronics that are related to the books.                 ...

We had a day after landing back from Morocco (which was fortunate planning as I had a horrible case of food poisoning) and so checked out Chantilly for a couple of hours. I wasn't up to much so we had a mooch around the famous racecourse, saw the castle (wish we could have gone in and explored) and Daniel and Sophie tried Chantilly cream waffles. It was a gorgeous place to look around and I've taken a mental note to come back one day to explore the castle, forest and see the horses! If you image search Chantilly, France there are much better photos than we took, but I like the sequence below :)

  The kids had a 5 day weekend thanks to having Wednesday off, Thursday being a public holiday and Friday school being closed. So why not go to Morocco? We booked some cheap flights on Ryan Air and had three nights in Fes. The first time in Africa for all of us! We landed after midnight on the first night so stayed close to the hotel in a villa. We stayed for the morning sleeping in and relaxing by the pool. The airbnb host brought us a fabulous Moroccan breakfast too. For the second two nights we stayed in a Riad in the Medina. What a culture shock! We ventured out into the marketplace a couple of times on our own but also took a ceramics and mosaic lesson and had a private tour guide on our last morning to show us around the maze of the Medina. The pictures show more than I can write in words, I'll add captions so you can get a sense of what you're looking at. The view from the rooftop of the riad, looking out over the medina. Inside the medina, so many shops Shop fronts and ...

  It is hard at school because it was a big change. At my school in NZ I could talk interact and know what they were saying but here it is the opposite. But it is not a big school it has only go 70 people compared to my school in NZ , it is not a lot at all because my NZ School in has 450 kids to there. The school that I am at now used to have double as many kids and double as many classes but now they have only got three so a big difference. I have two friends there names are Alyssa and Clara. Here James does not like the house because they are all the same. Our house is touching the church and the church has a clock so every time it's quarter past or half past it dings once or twice but for the o'clock it has a little party. We have meet lots of people and lunch with lots we had helped people people have helped us we have played sports like football and basketball with them we have been to their house we have done town stuff and mum and dad did bingo with nearly the whole tow...