Well last time I updated my blog I was rather open about my love life! Sorry about that, but it's probably not going to be much better this time as Will came to visit me last week. But I'm getting ahead of myself, a lot has happened in the last few weeks.
We started having jumping lessons at the Plessis! It was great to see how things have changed with Paris. Before we did Parelli jumping with him had become a real ordeal and I actually lost a lot of confidence with it. He would go fast then refuse or cat leap in the most bizarre jumping style and my imperfect jumping position and poor balance really showed - sometimes painfully! We have jumped the odd obstacle, usually barrels, since doing Parelli, but had never really focused on it. So before we started jumping Marie-Claire gave us all a seat building session and I realised that I had developed a pretty ok seat as long as I'm sitting, but I had completely lost balance with standing in the stirrups! Marie-Claire advised me to work on my canadian trot (one beat sitting two beats rising) to imporove my balance and then increase the difficulty as I got better. So every time I rode a horse, any horse, I would do canadian trot. It has really improved and is also a lot of fun! It was funny because Paris got a bit emotional about the change in rythm, especially when I lost my balance but soon he learned to cope with his "drunk" rider. And my balance has improved a bit!
So with my new found pleasure in jumping, not only have I been having fun going over, in my mind, fairly decent obstacles with my more confident, smarter, braver equine partner, but I have also started jumping with Touria. It's funny that she really seems to enjoy it! It has given more purpose to having impulsion and steering (in her mind at least, I always thought it was important but she had other ideas!) and getting a long break after a short blast of effort really suits her! We have also had fun on the playground. She tried napping with me, and by napping I mean turning around and bolting full pelt for home and bucking when I tried to stop her. I worked with the concept of make the wrong thing difficult and kept her going until we could agree on a good place to rest, away from where she had been gravitating too. Also when she started going crazy I literally freaked out on top of her, like i was having some kind of epileptic fit on a discoteque dancefloor! It was really cool to see that when I matched her energy she really took note! and I also asked myself why she was feeling the need to nap for home like that and realised my usually confident LBI was actually very insecure on her own in the playground. So we walked around all of it and found relaxation in all the spooky corners. Yet again it was a reminder to me of how important it is to always keep the horses confidence and curiosity!
Not so much has been going on with Seth and Riva. They both had the osteopath and needed to have a holiday. And at one point I rode Riva on a trailride whilst ponying Seth and he tripped and cut his knee open. It was pretty deep and we had to keep it bandaged for a few days.
I was enjoying my sleeping morning a couple of weeks ago when Karen noticed a link to something called the Parelli Institute on the latest e-newsletter. I looked at the link and saw that the course dates for next years externship had been released. It will be May through to August and applications need to be in by 30th September! Suddenly I was really freaked out. My plan had been to re-do the Fast Track and then with my new score hopefully qualify for an externship shortly after. But the UK Fast Track will likely be on at the same time as the externship and it could mean I would not be able to do the externship until 2014!
I absolutley love my life here - I get to be with amazing people, play with fantastic horses, develope my horsmanship and really enjoy a beautiful french countryside lifestyle. But I do want to become a Parelli Professional and return home where I can teach and be with my family, my friends and of course Will. So when I realised that these auditions were going to be so important in determining the timeline for this I suddenly felt the pressure. I went to Paris and started to play at liberty. I thought as we had been working on our draw and online was going much better maybe our liberty would also be better, we don't tend to focus on liberty. But Paris picked up my energy and what would normally cause him to become excited took him over the edge and he was running around the round pen in a right brain episode, not looking at me or responding to my hindquarter disengagment. I realised what was going on and new i had no business at that moment doing anything with a horse. I finally got him in and i sat on the floor with him. Finally I stood up and cried all my fears into his mane. I spent the afternoon looking at theaudition requirments and filling in the self assessment checklists. So the last coupole of weeks I have been basically obsessed with the auditions. In someway or another, I have done something everyday toward the auditions, with the exception of, i think one or two days when Will was visiting. Here is a link to the online audition which I have completed and submitted. Fingers crossed I get the results soon! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_gBFcfLHks
Will came Monday week ago. Jo France dropped me off at the village to meet him. Jo came here for a week last summer when we had another Jo, and English one (Jo England), also here. She has come for a month now and is sharing my room. We had estimated that Will would arrive in the village at 7pm so I got there 10 minutes early. I soon realised it was not clever not having anymeans to call him, no watch or anything to see how long I'd been waiting. It felt like forever. It was hot in the evening sun, no where to sit. The flying ants were starting to gather and I watched them as I walked manic circles like a boxwalking horse. Every car that went by caused me to get excited and inevitably disappointed when I saw the various occupents. Finally I herd a bib. A car had stopped at the corned and the driver was watching me. I ran across the road and jumped in. He was here! Will was in France! He was with me!
If you do not want to hear anymore about Will, please spare yourself and stop reading now! I took Will up to the top to see if everyone was there as they had requested I introduce him immediately. Of course no one was there soI took Will to the student house where I rustled up a nice meal and we ate outside on the patio overlooking the fields where Paris lived. I introduced Will to the girls one by one, and to Paris.
I won't go into detail about everywhere we went, everything we did. But I do want to share one thing.
One morning I woke up to find a small box on my pillow infront of me. As I opened the box Will asked "Will you marry me?" and I answered "Ofcourse!" Will says that is not actually the proposal. He said the original proposal had taken place already....
One night in Italy, we were walking along the beach eating icecreams we had just bought. We sat on the sand and I sat between his legs, leaning against his chest as we chatted about the crazy flavours of icecream in italy. It was another one of those moments, of which I have had many with Will, where I just wished I could stop time, freeze the world and just stay there, exactly in that moment. And I found myself saying "I think it would be nice if we got married, then we could be together always". For me we had already mentioned getting married. I guess Wedding fever was on everyone and we had people joking that after Lizzie's wedding me and Will would be next. For the first timein my life the thought of marrying a specific person was not at all scary, but exciting! I didn't have a ring for him or get down on one knee. In fact it is quite typical of me to kill all the romance by just having a conversation about what for most people would have been a landmark event. But for Will it was more than that, it was his childhood sweetheart talking about marrying him, and that doesn't happen everyday. We spoke of it in other conversations. Will even looked at rings in Italy but we didn't make anything official. Before Will came to France he went to visit Mum and Dave. I had told him to talk to them about us getting married because I wanted to makesure they would not get a shock when my Facebook status changed. When he got there they already knew what he was going to talk about and told him if I was crazy enough to marry him we had their blessing!
So I knew Will was bringing a ring and that we were going to make our engagment official and public, but still I didn't know which moment he would pick to give me the ring. Or what ring he had chosen. When I opened the box inside was a whitegold ring, consisting of two crossed bands, merging into one, with three small beautiful diamonds.
We changed our Facebook statuses and Will found it hilarious that his status change got more comments and like than mine. the girls all clocked the ring on my finger but Marie-Claire never mentioned it. Eventually we had a barbeque and whilst Marie-Claire was getting more wine the girls asked if i agreed that this was the moment to tell her. I agreed, I'd been thinking the same thing, but found myself surprisingly nervous! Finally I bit the bullet and said "So, Marie-Claire, I guess you've noticed that something is going on" "I do have good intuition" she replied. "Well the other morning Will asked me to marry him" I said. "And you didn't say yes?" she asked with a tone that sounded like a mix of caution and surprise at the idea "I did" I confirmed, suddenly very confident. Marie-Claire nodded and said "Well, congratulations!" and lifted her glass. We all raised our glasses and I showed the ring to Marie-Claire and Piet.
Will left on Friday, a week ago now. I miss him like crazy but it hasn't put me off my work or the horses. If anythingit has made me more determined to do my absolute best. We skype everynight still, which seems to make the distance not seem so large. I try not to think of how long it will be before I come home, just try to look forward to our next opportunity of seeing eachother.
Next blog should be less lovey dovey. Hopefully I will have completed my auditions and even got the results!
Wish me luck!
