HELLO DEAR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!Sorry it's been so long since my last letter. As you can see from the photos, we had a great time working in Bretagne. It was really hard work and we felt sore and stiff for basically the whole time! It was the type of work that every day a different part of the body was in agony!! I guess that's what working on the land is all about! But it was beautiful to be in such a pictoresque part of France. It's the celtic part and it has a feeling of Ireland, very green and rural, with quaint little towns and stone houses. The signs are all in both French and Breton language, which is similar to Gaelic.
We were staying in a gorgeous little stone house which as you can see in the photos has been renovated to seem like a new apartment from the inside. There was a little stone chapel just 10m from our front door. While we were there we were working so many hours that we didn't really get to enjoy the surroundings until the last 4 days which we had off. Then as you can see Giovanni enjoyed cooking pizza and collecting chestnuts from the forest, which we then roasted over the stove...a typical autumn tradition in both Italy and France. Yum!!
We then returned to Giovanni's family's house back here in Germany, where we have been for the last 10 days relaxing and enjoying the family and preparing for our next adventure! ARICA!!
We booked our ticket and are leaving in 6 days.! We are flying directly to Bamako, the capital of Mali, in West Africa. We have arranged through a friend we met at a Rainbow gathering to go and live with an african drumming teacher and his family. They will give us food and accomodation and Giovanni will take lessons with the teacher for 3 or 4 hours a day, to improve his drumming technique and to learn traditional West African rhythms. He is so excited! I am also excited to do African dance classes. I also want to do some sort of exchange, to teach someone English and they can teach me French[the second language in Mali, which we'll really need considering the family doesn't speak any English!!] I'm very happy to start learning another language too!
So, we've done all our preparation, getting our mandatory Yellow Fever vaccination, our visa for three months in Mali, our malaria proof travelling mosquito net! We've read up on Mali and West Africa in general in our fantastic Lonely Planet guide [Thanks Rachy!] and we're all set!! We have about 6 months until our return ticket to Australia expires so, we'll probably spend most of that time in West Africa then make our way up north to Morocco to head back on a cheap flight to Germany around April. From there we have our return ticket to Australia, through Thailand.
We'll be in touch and I'll update our blog with our travel tales and photos when I get the chance to use the internet, although apparently the internet is quite slow and unreliable in Africa.
We send all our love and hope you are all well and enjoying your journey in life.
Love Jess and Giovanni
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