#LIKEACHALLENGE 

Normally it takes a few days or weeks till I get my head around writing about my latest adventure, but this time I decided to jot everything down while it’s still fresh in my head. I’m also on the train right now, so there’s a couple of hours to spare. On Monday I jumped on the Eurostar from London to Paris. This time the goal was to visit the Palais Garnier. The Garnier Opera House stands in the middle of a very busy road intersection with an ocean of people running acros

Just some long overdue highlights from the epic Monte Carlo or Bust rally, when me and my dad managed to clock up nearly 5000km around Europe and raise nearly £500 for the Help for Heros charity. We went from Warsaw to St Quentin in France then down to Monte Carlo (via Switzerland and Italy) and back to Warsaw. All in my grandad's 1991 Toyota Corolla, which is still going strong. Enjoy!

It's over half way through the French challenge, so where am I at? Well, I can finally talk about the past as the last couple of days have been about learning 'passe compose', the basic past tense in French. I did future tense a couple of weeks ago, so in theory I know all the verb forms now, but I have to practise, practise and yet again practise to feel more at ease using these in conversation. I had two French lessons this weekend as I wanted to catch up after a busy week

So, first ever blog is finally up. Very humble beginnings, random bits filmed on my iPhone & laptop :) Summary of my first month mastering French pronunciation and memorising basic phrases. And an opportunity to see me with barely any make-up on, wet hair straight out of the shower, sitting in the kitchen. Think I sold it to you..!

I know a bit more than 'une baguette' by this stage..just finished week 5 of my learning French challenge, but still writing a blogpost about week 4. My only excuse is that...I’ve been learning French plus doing the Vicky’s Secret challenge. So no sitting around for sure! Week four was when I had my first 1:1 lessons and that gave me a massive boost of confidence when it comes to actually speaking the language! You can learn from books, internet or listen to tapes / apps / y

I’ve had some moments of doubt this week pondering if I can ever get past only being able to name things and memorise whole sentences. It’s speeds up the learning process at the beginning, but at some stage you want to express genuine opinions or say how you feel, naturally, rather than delivering a script. I think I haven’t reached that stage with French yet. I’m getting to the point of ‘Tarzan French’ (a name used in the ‘Language hacking’ book), where you simply use whate

As it was an extremely busy time for me work-wise, my second week has mostly been about trying to fit in at least one minute of French whenever I could. On the train, in the cafe, between phone calls, listening to the app when standing in a queue or at 11pm at home before going to bed. This is the reason why a lot of people give up their challenge a few days into it, they just don't find the time. Or rather, they don't even TRY to find the time. We've got work, daily erran

Pas mal! Not (too) bad. I was very excited the first day and then it got a bit slower towards the end of the week. Luckily, with the help a salted caramel cheesecake, I got back on track at the weekend and did my reading and speaking exercise like a diligent first class student. (I was far from that during my Uni days, so not sure what being a 'diligent first class student' actually means, but... I’m doing fine, by the way.) I’ve yet to have a one to one lesson. I’ve asked a

It’s not that easy to find those 15min where I solely just focus on learning French. I mean, I’m not doing too bad considering it’s been a busy week overall and I had a long list of boring admin stuff which I had to be sorted out. I did manage to 5-10min each day so far (a good hour on day one!), but it’s still the bare minimum. I find it really tough to suddenly zone out, forget about everything else and.. speak French. There’s so many things to do each day and then it’s so

It’s one of the most popular banger car rallies in the world and I’m taking part in in the 2018 edition! It takes 3 days and the route starts in St.Quentin in France (just north-east of Paris) and goes via Switzerland and Italy, finishing in dazzling Monte Carlo famous for those F1 races (and 0% tax). No Ferraris on this occasion though: in order to be eligible, my car has to be worth less than £500. Source: Flicker, Here Lawford There will be a lot of driving and burning