Coucou

Were back!!!!! 9 months ago, we made our last blog…. We couldn’t even remember what the topics were… Just too busy enjoying life 🙂 Below a little summary of what have been up to lately. For sure we are doing well, we are happy people and enjoying life as usual.

Last year after visiting Italy we came back to the region of Bourg Saint Maurice. The first people we visited are our friends Lelani, Greg and their kids. Wonderful to see them again. We stayed for 2 weeks in their big chalet which they rent out during the different seasons. We could stay until we moved into our rental house in the village of BSM this time. Thank you, dear family, also for just being you!

Our winter season was quite different in terms of work compared to last year and we really loved it. A very good ballans between working and enjoying the mountains. Lillian mostly worked during the morning and Stephen worked on set days, Tuesdays and Thursdays. But all with one exception: If there was fresh snow we worked whenever but the priority was going up the mountain. Work is going well. We have a good balans and the feeling that we found our way of working for the next couple of years. Lillian still likes to work for hotels and is picking up her old job again. Stephen is back in commerce and is able to do this remotely.  Lillian started her new project with her second client and Stephen is finalising his first project and looking for a new client (no sander, you are Stephen’s friend – not our client 🙂 ). That remains of course the thing with freelance, assignments ends and you always have to find something new, but that’s fine. We are working 2 – 3 days a week, not too much pressure…

Morgan went back to the same school as last year. We are very proud of her because she “must” always be flexible with parents like us. But we still see that she is happy. In the meantime, she speaks fluently French. When we listen to her in the beginning, we were so proud. A friend from school came to play, and we were secretly listening at Morgan’s bedroom door like two little children. Morgan spoke French the whole time, super impressive to hear. We hope a benefit for the rest of her life. School went with ups and downs this year. The teacher was very good and helpful but it was just difficult sometimes because children can be very hard on each other. Especially between the ages of 7 and 10. Morgan finds it hard from time to time because she is incredibly social. With a little help from our side, we hope we can give her the right tools so she still likes going to school.

After school there is a lot of time for skiing and snowboarding and we do this a lot together. This season Morgan still had ski lessons every Saturday, for 2.5 hours. Honestly, she can ski beautifully, with great technic, no fear and she made a lot of progress. Her off-piste is also going well and she is now faster than her parents, with only 8 years old. Since we have decided that we are going back next year (I’ll get back to that in a minute) we decided together with Morgan that she will join the Freeski club (https://nl.lesarcs.com/news/freeski-academy)  She has done a test and she is good enough to join next year. Frankly, in the beginning, Stephen thought it was not the best idea because she had ski classes every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Isn’t it a little too much? But when she came back from the introduction/test day, she just loved it! Ski jumps, lots of off-piste skiing – she thought it was the bomb. She will be trained by some of the best free skiers in the world. So who are we to say no.

Last ski season started slow in terms of the amount of snow. There was really little snow. Many slopes were closed and off-piste was not possible. The big advantage was that we (Lilly & Stephen) started to do more skiing and really made progress. We also liked it a lot, another hobby on the side (and more stuff….). The last 6 weeks of the season it became paradise! Finally, a lot of fresh snow. This was our second season in Paradiski ski area, we still can’t get enough out of it! We worked and many days of the week you could found us on the slopes. Riding the slopes or with a beer in our hand, sitting in the sun and enjoy time with friends. A lot of friends came to visit us this year, thank you for that! We enjoyed every minute of it.

The thing is, we are a bit in love with this region of French. People who are living in the area are telling us that winter is great but summer is even better. Locals are much more relax because in wintertime everybody needs to earn their living for the total year. In the area there are a lot of nature parks to visit. This area is great for many outdoor sport activities. Last and also very important, we got to know some very nice people in the surroundings who became friends.

All these advantages have made us decide that from coming November, we will stay 1 year in Bourg Saint Maurice. We are renting the same house as last year for a full year now and we are very happy with that place. When we work, we have an amazing view over the mountains and can see when fresh snow is falling (very important!) The house is also just a 5-minute walk from Morgan’s school.

The last two months we were back in the Netherlands. Most of the time in Friesland at the farm of Lillian’s sister. The best place to be when we are in the Netherlands. We are enjoying the place, being with family. Morgan can play a lot with her cousins. Unfortunately for Morgan she still has to do some Dutch school homework. It’s was very good to see Stephen’s father, he is in need of a lot of hugs. It’s was amazing to see friends again and dance at a festival and party our heads off! Being back in summertime gave us also the change to create a big birthday party for Morgan. The last time we did that in the Netherlands was when she was 4, five years ago. It was great, we created a big child festival for Morgan and her friends 🙂

At the beginning of August, we left the Netherlands again. We travelled with Wiranda (Lillian’s sister), Egbert and kids. They rented a camper for 1,5 weeks. We could let them experience our lifestyle and showed them how we live and travel when we are on the road. We started in Normandy and went slowly down the coast line with the D Day beaches as main goal. Beautiful sceneries with some history lessons. They drove back home on Friday and we said goodbye again for a while. The next months we will travel through French to enjoy the rest of the country and to carry on practicing our French lessons.

“What our long-term plans are “ well, that’s a thing you never now with the family Wise. For now, we will go back towards French and after the 1 year we hope to do some adventure again. If all go’s well we want to do something very adventurous again for a year or so. Direction? We are thinking about traveling through Africa. We want to be back in Europe somewhere before Morgan turns 11 years old and needs to start with the next school period. The next step after primary school. Somewhere the beginning of next year we will make a decision if we want stay in France for a few years or not… Ah well, enough plans and dreams. Step by step, first of all we started again with a great road trip with Ella through France for the next 2,5 months.  We are very curious what France looks like outside the French Alps.

We hope everybody is doing well, big hug for you guys.