Salut de Laurens and our new "View from the Terrace"! We are so pleased to be back again in Languedoc! We arrived Tuesday, June 18, and dug right into our new house. Roland, our French carpenter, had worked on it intermittently throughout the winter, and now it has a new parquet floor on the first floor, and a new kitchen as well. We still have some organizing to do to feel totally at home, but we are very pleased with our house, our view, and our new village.

Our new house is on a canal, which only has water in it when the big rains come in the fall and spring. Our little house is connected to other little houses, but we don't see anybody else once we're inside. The house has 4 floors: the first is a garage, the second a living/dining/kitchen, the third 2 small bedrooms and a bath, and the fourth our beautiful terrace (overlooking the canal) and a room we are using as Les' office/family room. Our entrance door (off the living room/kitchen) opens to a small medieval "allee" in the village.

As usual with a move, we've had a few "soucis": plumbing issues (fixed now), a spinning washing machine (it actually spun around in a circle as it wasn't properly balanced!), and broken glass (a huge draft slammed the bathroom door shut and its glass insert exploded on the tile floor). However, the quiet calm of the surroundings, and that beautiful view has us totally enchanted.

This view is so different from our last view in Campagnan. We thought that view was magnificent, but it was far out and below us. Here the view is up front, and we are IN it. It's layered right in front of us: clouds in the back, then mountains, then green hills, then vineyards, and then a lovely stone house. The "hirondelles" (swallows or martins) swoop around us and right over our heads as they look for insects to swallow.

We have been the ultimate consumers over the last several days, buying curtain rods, a few furniture items (we sold some of our "stuff" to the Swedish couple who bought our house in Campagnan), kitchen organizers, computer paper and ink, paint and supplies, etc. We are ready to be done with the "move-in" phase, and on to the "really live here" phase.

Speaking of moving in....this is the second time in 2 weeks that we've changed houses. We changed houses in Charleston, SC on June 10, and had just enough time to get that accomplished and somewhat organized before we left for a week in Chicago, and then our flight here.

So....check us out from time to time on our blog to see how we're doing. For a look at updated family pictures, our new Charleston house, and a very few pictures of our new house in Laurens, see our album labeled "Changes".

Love,

Elise & Les