Chateau de Rivau

I visited a chateau a few days ago, which was REALLY COOL! Normally it's just incredible, because it's a big old building and stuff, but this one was actually entertaining and fun! It had a SEESAW!!

The restored Chateau de Rivau

It was completely restored recently and has MASSIVE gardens full of oversized objects, an Alice in Wonderland maze, peacocks and assorted lovebirds, a fairy garden and billions of varieties of flowers/trees/plants/green things.

Just doing some gardening!

Me and Jade's/my host mum

Giant legs! They were meant to sway in the wind (but it was SUNNY for once! Hooray!)

Everything was supersized to give the impression of being in a fairy garden/fairytale. The gardens were enormous and really beautiful!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

The giant pot!

Very difficult to find shoes in my size  - these were a lucky find

In other news, I had a revelation! No, an epiphany!
I think I'm getting quite good at French now. Not fluent, obviously, or even REALLY REALLY GOOD, but I don't have to remind myself every morning "make sure you say bonjour and not good morning!" All the French words just pour out of my mouth like amazing verbal vomit (In the meantime, I'll see if I can find better analogy).
My accent (apparently - I still can't hear the difference) is better too. YESSSS!!

So France is going spastic because elections are going on right now - is that on Perth news? Probably. The first round of voting results in 2 finalists (Nicolas "Ratface" Sarkozy and Francois Hollande) and then in the second round everyone chooses who's best out of those two. No question there, really.
During my last Rotary meeting, I (stupidly) made the mistake of announcing to everyone that if I could vote in France, I'd choose Hollande! Everyone GASPED and I nearly had champagne corks thrown at me - I was in room full of Sarko lovers!!!! Typical.

I'm Sarko and I'm an idiot. Blah blah blah blah blah.