Here Comes jolly ol' Père Noël.

Père Noël = Father Christmas = Santa Claus

Did you know that the French typically eat turkey (la dinde) at Christmas?  It's also tradition to eat fois gras (yuck), as well as smoked salmon (le saumon fumé)...and oysters (les huîtres).  I told them that we eat turkey at Thanksgiving, and usually eat ham for Christmas.  They were shocked.  Apparently it's a "poor person" food to the French and they wouldn't eat it for a special occasion.  Interesting.

So, as I may have mentioned before, I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music.  Particularly a lot of oldies by Bing, Nat and Frank (the CD is called Christmas Crooners...and it's awesome).  It's a great CD because it's a nice mix of fun classics like "Jingle Bells" and "I'll be Home for Christmas," but has a lot of religious classics like "Away in a Manger" and "Silent Night."  Something I was a little surprised to notice is that a few of the songs mention both Santa and, shockingly enough, Jesus.  I've never really thought of this before.  I grew up with Santa Claus.  I still get presents from him actually (though his handwriting looks shockingly like my mother's).  And I think it's great!  When did Santa and Jesus become mutually exclusive?  Obviously Jesus is more important than the idea of a jolly fat man in red underwears sneaking into your house at night, but that doesn't mean you have to exclude other aspects of a holiday.

"Santa knows we're all God's children, and that makes everything right.
Fill your hearts with Christmas cheer, cuz Santa Claus comes tonight."

"Peace on Earth will come to all, if we just follow the light.
Let's give thanks to the Lord above, cuz Santa Claus comes tonight."

It's not something that plays any significant part in my life, it's just something fun to do at Christmas time...like giving presents...or doing a crazy White Elephant gift exchange with your family...or drinking mimosas and having delicious buttery pastries for breakfast!

Just something to think about during this delicious Christmas season.

Here's my Christmas tree this year.  No floor space, so I had to get creative:

17 days left!

Mon Anniversaire.

Hello!  Bet you weren't expecting another update already, eh?  I like to keep you guessing.

First I would like to say THANK YOU to all my awesome friends who sent me overseas birthday wishes. And who especially to Shannon who actually sent me a card!

I had a fantastic day: I woke up late, ate pancakes with my buddy Sarah (which were super super delicious), listened to Christmas music while making paper snowflakes, and then went to a friend's apartment and watched Christmas movies...and made more snowflakes!  I'm getting pretty good at them, not gonna lie.  I also spent about an hour "elfing" various friends.  That wasn't so much to celebrate my birthday, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

As I embark on the 25th chapter of my life, I'd like to think that I've grown a little more mature, a little wiser, and a lot more handsome.

I think, however, that only one of these is really true:

(You're supposed to look at that picture and say, "He's right...he is a lot more handsome.")

That's it for now!

Thanks again to everyone for the birthday wishes!

Back from November Hiatus.

Sorry guys.  The good thing about doing a lot of things in the city with people is that it's really fun and I'm living my life.  The bad part is that it gets hard to sit down and share it.  I'm going to work on it.  Promise.

I'm currently listening to the Muppets sing "The 12 Days of Christmas" (Miss Piggy singing "Five golden rings" and hamming it up, of course).  So, obviously, I'm in a really good place.

As we roll onto December from November, I've been thinking a lot about what to do this next year.  Things are happening so fast!  I can't believe I've already been in France for two and a half months!  And I can't believe I come home for CHRISTMAS here in two weeks!  Completely ridiculous!

I was actually very productive today!  I cleaned/straightened up my entire apartment, went Christmas shopping and paid my rent!  Christmas shopping was fun, though I probably wouldn't have gotten anything if I hadn't gone with someone.  I'm not one to just aimlessly wander through stores.  I'll walk through the mall or something, but I don't usually go into a store unless I see something I want.  Going with Sarah, however, made me actually go into stores.  Once I actually enter a store, I see things that I think people might like.  Let the holidays begin!

I've been unapologetically bingeing on Christmas music.  There's always a point each year after Christmas (usually around March or April) where I get tired of having Christmas music come up on my iTunes shuffle, so I go ahead and delete it all.  Then, eight months later, when I need it, I have none!  This is especially troubling when I'm a six hour flight away from all my Christmas CDs.  I've had to be very creative this year, to say the least.  Sarah and I bought two Christmas CDs of classic Christmas music from FNAC (a French Best Buy-ish store) today and we're going to split the cost and have great tunes to guide our spirits through this festive time.  It's going to be great.

Teaching has been going really well.  Some of the teachers have been giving me a lot of freedom with the students, so we can do lots of fun things.  For example, some of the students are working on the environment, so I printed off some articles about the COP15 conference in Copenhagen (yes, it's a real thing), and we talked about it, then I assigned them to go and take a picture and provide a caption for something around them that makes them think about the environment and pollution and what not.  I decided (the day before their assignment was due) that I should probably do it too so that we could all share and discuss.  So, while doing that, I took these very unrelated pictures:

And a picture or two from the Musée de l'Orangerie:

 

I'll give 5 points to whoever can identify the artist and subject of the second painting.  He's super famous....

One more thing to share!  A bunch of my American friends and I had a fantastic Thanksgiving celebration last weekend!  Complete with turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, yams/sweet potatoes (I know they're supposedly difference...), apple pie, green beans, and anything else you can think of that's necessary for an awesome feast!  It was truly spectacular.  Props to Libby and Sara for getting up early to bake the turkey and desserts and all.  I tip my hat to you.  I neglected to take pictures but I'll try to get some from some others and put them up here.  There were 14 of us: 11 Americans, 1 Brit and 2 Frenchies.  So, out of 14 people, three had their first Thanksgivings.

Surrounded by friends, the wine flowed, the laughs abounded, and the food just kept on coming!  Now that's something to be thankful for!

Gobble gobble!

Chez Moi.

Hello!

So I took pictures a while ago of my apartment to give everyone the grand tour, and it's about time that I finally put them up!  I took a little time to clean up before hand, so you can be relatively certain that it doesn't currently look like these pictures.  But you'll get the general idea.

So let's start with where I am right now!

This is my desk where I do most of my work.  The window right there gives me tons of natural light and opens all the way up, so I can get lots of fresh air too (when it's not too cold or rainy).  I also call this my study.  And the entertainment room.  And maybe the wreck room.  But it's nice, haha.

Next on the tour we have the living room/bedroom/lounge/dining room/entertainment room (yes, I have two rooms for entertaining...I'm very rich).  That's my bed that folds up into a couch.  It's actually very comfortable and is nice and large.  It makes kind of a loud noise when I take it down, so I feel a little bad for the people who live below me when I go to bed late, but I haven't had anyone down there bang their ceiling in protest, so I think I'm ok so far.  And I have two large pillows that I use too, not just those little ones.  Thank goodness.

So here is my library and wardrobe.  The picture is kind of weird because the wardrobe has a mirror on it and you can see my desk through it.  All the clothes that I have fit just perfectly into the space allotted.  It was great.  And it's nice having a full length mirror.  I actually do my hair in this mirror because I have to duck to see my head in the mirror in the bathroom.  Really essential things, obviously.

Here is my grande cuisine.  It's pretty awesome.  You can't really see it, but I have two electric burners (both of which work) on the right hand side, and a nice big sink and fridge.  It's very nice.  The cabinet under the sink is where I keep all the plates, pots, pans and cups and silverware.  It was all supplied for me, and it's mostly pretty nice.  I did just break my sauce pan, however.  Though to be fair the handle rusted off.  So not my fault.  I was lucky and found a brand new replacement for less than 10€.  So that was pretty exciting.  You can also see into my bathroom right there.  It's pretty great.  Small, but great.  Originally my shower didn't drain worth a crap so I had to shower for two minutes, turn off the water, wait for it to drain a bit, and then finish.  So that was awesome.  I called and talked to the landlord though and he came and fixed it.  So now it's great!  It's like a real American shower!  And those of you who have lived in France know what a blessing it is to have one, haha.  No offense, France.  Well....maybe just a little.

And one last thing that you should see is my "pantry."  Whatever doesn't belong in the fridge finds itself in a little spot on the floor next to the wardrobe to wait until it's called upon for dinner.  This picture was taken a little while ago, so the pantry is a little more full right now.  One requirement of things placed there is that they be somewhat stackable.  For example: I bought too much spaghetti to fit into the pasta jar (look bottom left), so I put the extra into the fridge.  This also applies to any sandwich bread I buy.  I currently have two half-loaves in the fridge.  (This happened because I went shopping without looking in the fridge to see what I needed.  Out of sight out of mind I guess, haha.)  One more interesting thing to note: Do you see that little blue and white bottle?  That's milk!  Though I don't have the same bottle there now, the milk I do have in the pantry expires January 1st, 2010.  "How is this possible?" you may ask.  Well, milk is sterilized before it's bottled here (I think).  So as long as it isn't opened, it's good for much longer.  You'll thank me for this useless knowledge some day when you find yourself in France desperate for a bowl of cereal and all you see in the grocery store is milk that's not being refrigerated.  You're welcome.

So that's the grand tour!  I hope you enjoyed yourself.  If you're in the neighborhood you'd be welcome to stop by!  Assuming I actually know you, obviously.

Oh, and here's the view from where I'm sitting right now:

The courtyard I look out on is much larger than you would ordinarily find.  It's quite cool.  There are some conifers.  I like it.












And if I look out to the left, I have this view:

Not amazing, but I can see when it's lit up with different colors, and on the top of the hour it sparkles for five minutes, and I can see that too.  So I'm not complaining.

That's it!

Back to Life.

Hello all.  The long, harsh winter of my absence has finally come to an end!  I hope you were ok without me.

Brandon left this morning to return to the Motherland and I have spent all day recovering.  This included first and foremost a three hour nap.  I then skyped with the 'rents for a while, bought a plane ticket home (Dec. 17th through Dec. 29th...let me know if you want to get together), ate dinner and cleaned and did dishes.  Everything (well...over 50% of things) is back in order.

So during the course of Brandon's time here, we visited:

the Marais

the Jardin de Luxembourg

the Louvre

the Eiffel Tower

the Arc de Triomphe

the Champs-Elysees

Notre Dame

Montmartre

Versailles

Reims

And plenty of other things I'm sure I'm forgetting.  It was a busy week, to say the least.

I know that these photos seem like I just google imaged these things and posted those pictures, but all the ones that are on here are ones that either Brandon or myself took.  I know I know: We're amazing photographers.

I'm still on vacation from school for a few more days.  I'm going to have to try and find something to do as all the other assistants are still on vacation. I can't wait until I have the funds to go and take trips like that.  This paperwork has been a nightmare.  I thought that everything was finally getting sorted out, but I was apparently mistaken as I have still received no paycheck, haha.  Whoops.....

I'll update in a little while with a more meaty posting.

Stay tuned!