beauty

We found a home

This news is coming to you via the blog rather after the fact! We did indeed, by God’s grace, find an apartment to live in for the year. It is just a 15 minute walk to the kids school. And from there, it is about 25 minutes to the university where Michelle and I are studying the French language. All in all, it worked out well. The landlady just recently had it painted totally in white, so she encouraged us to not get too creative with decorating, especially since we expect to be in this apartment only for one year. She doesn’t want to have to paint again.

But before we found this one, ooh boy, we looked at a lot of others. They all had their appeal. One had a nice balconey. One had a finished kitchen. One had lovely views. But they had drawbacks too. One was in view of a prison (did we want prisoners looking out their windows into our place?). One had single pane glass doors on the balconies (cold!). Another had a sink and counter so low it was too low for even Liberty to work on! Praise God, the place we have is just right.

Caen

Caen is a very nice city. The bus service is really good, and attached to the bus service is a rental bike service too. So we have gotten monthly subscriptions for the bus, and I signed up for the bike. Bikes are not as prevalent as I was expecting here, but life in general is ready to incorporate bikes, like this storage on a train for a bike.

Bike on a train

There is a lot of history in this region too. The landing beaches of Normandy are just down the road, and every where you go you can find a plaque, or a monument, or a statue commemorating the soldiers who fought in WWII as well as WWI. The city itself too retains an old “European” charm.

Local street

Street

merry go round downtown

cathedral

Yeah, this is Spring

Does that look like Spring? It sure does! We had forgotten that at the central park in town there are tulips all over the place. They have started to bloom, but not all of them, so the full splendour has not been revealed. It was a pleasant surprise to see all this. The city itself is not so ugly, but like most cities it is concrete everywhere. One funny thing about the parks here in general is that you are not allowed on the grass! So you end up walking through the parks on paved walkways… which for me sort of defeats the purpose. But I suppose I shouldn’t complain. It is still a visual treat.

W e are looking forward to getting out more and observing the wonders of nature. For example, there are loads of Praying Mantis egg sacs in the bushes around us. We can hardly wait for them to hatch!