I love it when a plan comes together

The Sous Chef and I just got back from a cycling trip in Brittany (but sans cycle computer so we have no idea how many miles we did). The Sous Chef proved worthy of his name, as we cooked some excellent dishes on our new primus optima stove (including spaghetti carbonara, risotto, fried bananas) which is no mean feat with limited ingredient options and only one heat source. We’re planning to take the stove with us on our round the world cycle tour, as it burns on anything (even petrol if necessary).  Since we’re carting all our provisions around on bikes and up every hill it means packing very lightly and being smart when it comes to what foods to carry and when to buy. As it turned out, we cooked out every night except twice.

Although I’m a bit of a polyglot, French is not really in my repertoire. I realised that I can say more useful things in Russian than I can in French and I don’t consider myself a competent Russian-speaker by any means (about the level of the average person’s French or Spanish, I’d say). Still, we managed somehow and people never snubbed our pathetic attempts at pronunciation and were always extremely nice to us.

My linguistic skills did come in handy on our second restaurant meal on the last evening in St Malo, though. We found a Restaurant Javanaise. Within a minute I noticed that the staff all spoke Indonesian so rather than struggle with French we communicated in Indonesian. Easy! The food was excellent (if you go there, have the Rendang Padang Asli, it certainly tasted ‘asli’ (authentic) to me which is more than I can say for any other Rendang I’ve had since leaving Indonesia). It was great to be able to communicate freely for a change.

I got my essay back that was driving me crazy for its vague question and my inability to tie it all together into a coherent piece of writing. I expected a not so terrific mark (maybe 60%) but was amazed at the 78% I got. I’ve reread it and still don’t think it deserves that much, but then I’ve had essays I think are better than their received mark too so I guess it evens out somehow.

I’ ve also now got the materials for my next course which runs concurrently with this one for a while (so I’ll be revising for an exam AND doing an assignment for the other due on the same day as my exam. Eeeep!!) but once that course is done, I’ll have finished my degree.

And here’s the perfect timing. My final piece of work to submit for my degree will be sent on 24th November. After that, no more uni work to do. I’ll be free. Meanwhile, the Sous Chef is to be made redundant and we’ve been waiting for the official notification of timescales for when he’d be actually unemployed. There’ve been some changes and it seems he’ll be free as of December. This means I finish sooner than expected (I thought it’d be January) and he gets paid for longer than expected (we though it’d be October) and we both achieve the freedom we need to travel at about the same time. Whoop!!!

All we have to do now is figure out how to rent the house out, where to keep up our stuff, buy the equipment we need, plan our route around the world (hmm South America or New Zealand start…) plan the visas and organise the finances. Easy  (and all while revising. Oh God)

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