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| This was taken on Christmas Eve, a few hours before it all went wrong!! |
I had to take a forced break from blogging over the Christmas period. This wasn't due to the fact that I wanted to spend some quality time with my family and my friends, spend days eating chocolate and drinking wine or the fabulous Christmas dinner my neighbour had cooked. No, I was ill before, during and after Christmas...
It all started with a massive cold 10 days ago and all I was waiting for at that stage were my holidays. I had to work until 23rd of December but knowing I would be off until the 5th of January kept me going for the last few days. I could barely breathe day or night but eventually I felt better on Christmas Eve.
Fantastic! I thought. I'll be able to at least enjoy a nice evening with Fabrice, eat seafood (home tradition!) and drink lots of wine and beer. We were supposed to have Christmas day dinner at home with friends of ours, but they unfortunately had to cancel, due to illness (I'm sure it was a sign...). At the last minute, our Danish neighbour invited us for a traditional home-made lunch. It was perfect. No need to cook or even clean!
On Christmas Eve I was OK but not great. I couldn't drink alcohol for some reason but ate anyway. First we had prawns, crab meat and crayfish topped with lemon mayonnaise. Then, in pure French style, we dug in the cheese, saucisson, salami and pâté. God it was good!!
Unfortunately I think this was way too much for my stomach to handle and I regretted my sins around 3 in the morning when I woke up with cold sweats and an urge to go to the bathroom. I will spare you the details but I'm sure you know what I mean.
It went downhill from there and today is the first day I feel well enough to put some coherent words together. I couldn't eat anything of what my neighbour had cooked and my Christmas day lunch consisted of a slice of bread, three potatoes and water. I felt so bad on St Stephen's day we didn't even get dressed at all. The kids stayed all day in their PJ's and I ended up on the couch, too weak to even give out at them for watching too many Minecraft videos. Mind you, I know everything about that game now. The bad thing about not being able to get up to switch off the TV? I had to watch the whole SpongeBog Gameplay they ended up putting on Youtube... Maybe worse than my stomach bug. The good thing though, is that I definitely didn't over indulge during the festive season, and I think I might have lost some weight. Every cloud has its silver lining after all...
I also had time to think about some new ideas for the blog. I will be doing an "A to Z" blog series about my Irish experience, more Expat books reviews, and I'm also going to write about other expats and their own story. This will be done in the form of features, not straight interviews. What I want to do is tell stories of ordinary people like me, who decided to live in Ireland. I have a few friends already interested, but please if you want to feature, don't hesitate to contact me.
I am looking for people from all backgrounds, all nationalities, who are living in Ireland and are willing to share their experience. I have a list of questions but this is just a base. You can tell everything that is important to you. So please, get in touch if that's sound like something you want to do!!
That's it for now folks, I know I've been off for a long time, but I'm back now so watch this space for great new posts, and Happy New year !!
