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The travelling continues, and after spending Sunday at home with Esther and the children, I am now in Cardiff for a few meetings. The first one is tonight, in Welsh.

I started a Masters in theology at the Faculté Jean Calvin, in Aix-en-Provence. It is a small reformed evangelical seminary, the only one of its kind in France. It is located at the heart of Aix-en-Provence’s campus.
It was good to be there, although I was asking myself why I was there most of the first day.

I sent to Aix en Provence at the end of last week to begin a masters in theology in John Calvin seminary. I had hoped to stay with friends but they couldn’t have me this time, so I decided to stay at the local Youth Hostel.
It was great fun and brought back memories of my travels through the US many moons ago.
It was clean. The room wasn’t too big with only four people. The food was nice. On the first night, there were mainly students, and I had some nice chats. The second night was quieter.
It is easy to find, and bus number 19 that goes past the seminary stops nearby which makes it easy.
If you don’t know where to stay while in Aix, go to the youth hostel. You’ll get decent accommodation for a decent price, and will meet interesting people.
Auberge de jeunesse d’Aix-en-Provence

Having been brought up in the area where we now live, near Chambéry in the French Alps, I never thought people had a specific accent. But after 15 years away I have now noticed that local people have a strong accent. Not sure how to describe it but there is definitely a local accent.

A week ago, on Friday 22nd August, we emptied our house in Brittany and made our way to Cognin, a small town on the outskirts of Chambéry. It was a long day.

The removal company came early, we cleaned the house and waited for an estate agent to come and make sure we hadn’t broken anything. We hoped to leave before 4 pm but finally were on our way at 4:45. We drove to Bourges that night, arriving very late.

On Saturday, we popped in to see a cousin of mine who lives near Bourges. Then, we made our way to Chambéry, via Clermont-Ferrand and Lyon. There was a bit of traffic, but we avoided the big traffic jams. We were about an hour from our destination when we saw some friends from Rennes at some motorway services. It was odd but just as well as I needed to speak to one of them anyway. They are with the GBUs, and were on their way to a camp near Grenoble.
We arrived at my mum’s exhausted and just in time to watch Guingamp-Marseille.
On Sunday, we went to church in Cognin. It is the church where I grew up. We surprised them by telling them we would live locally for a while. We had only told one person. The rest of the folks didn’t know. The rest of the day, we rested.
On Monday, we visited the flat and got our keys.
On Tuesday, we received our stuff. It took the best part of 3,5 hours to empty the lorry. We decided to go back to my mum’s for the rest of the day and following night.
On Wednesday, we started unpacking and slept in the flat. On Thursday, we went to the schools to register the children.
Today is Friday. We’ll unpack a bit more before heading to the mountains for the weekend.

Work in France is slow and can feel lonely at times. That’s why we love it when we have visitors over the summer season. So far, we’ve had some friends from Wales two Sundays in a row. Some more will come on the third of August. The family that was with us last Sunday may come again this coming Weekend. It’s great. We can enjoy fellowship, make the most of the sun, rest.