Yes, as my title hints, the Christmas tree is now up and decorated at my house, grâce à moi. My host mom told me I could decorate the tree so after we got it standing and put the lights on she let me have my way with it. Last week when the two of us were in a home store, something similar to Pier 1, we found an American flag ornament that she bought so that I could have a French and American Christmas tree. ☺After I put the last ornament on I told her that I had a little gift for the tree. I then proceeded to give her an ornament Mom had sent me from Tupelo from Midnight Pottery. It is the state of Mississippi and very cute. It's hanging towards the top of the tree. Another Christmas decoration that I'm very fond of is la couronne de l'Avent. Apparently these are very widely known in Germany and since my host mom is from Alsace, which is heavily influenced by German culture, she knows of the decoration from Alsace. It's a round wreath for the table that holds four candles which decrease in size. We light a candle each Sunday before Christmas, beginning with the tallest. It burns down to the size of the second candle. On the second Sunday we light the first and the second, and they burn down to the size of the third, etc. I was so excited the first Sunday to light the candle (which we actually lit Monday because we weren't at the house much Sunday. Oops!) I'm definitely in my full on Christmas mood, though, with all the lights in town, decorations in my house, etc. It also helped that my wonderful, amazing, beautiful, hilarious, perfect, bff Parker sent me a indescribably magnificent Christmas package! It included all the essentials: fuzzy Christmas socks, a Santa hat, blue ornament earrings, candy canes and chocolate, the perfect holiday card for me, a letter that provoked laughter and tears, American flag sunglasses, and a magnetic Barack Obama that I get to dress in all sorts of outfits. That's right, I get to dress our president every morning after stripping him down to his knickers at night. My host parents and I had some good laughs over that.
Friday night I shared with Paul a wonderful fusion of chocolate-ly goodness called Brownie S'mores. Brownie s'mores were created by the wonderful Kathryn Carroll and Kelley Frances Fenelon. However, I made this deliciousy goodness with my aforementioned friend of perfection, Parker, and my equally glorious friend, Janie. Brownie s'mores are quite easy to make. Just put the brownies in and when they are finished with half their time, take out the pan, place crumbled graham crackers-or in the French case butter cookies because graham crackers are not available-on top, then bars of chocolate, then graham crackers again, and finally, top it off with halved marshmallows. After, you put it back in the oven for the rest of the cooking time and voila! Brownie s'mores. MMMMM! I'm so happy I've brought this creation to France; although, now I must share it with a French person.
Saturday, I went to Toulon... yes, again. This time we met up with Anna, a New-Zealand exchange student that's not with Rotary. She lives in Toulon so she took a bus out to the shopping center. While we were there, we ran into Tracy, another exchange student with Rotary that doesn't live far from Cavalaire. It was good to spend time with Anna and Tracy. We ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant!! Oh I was so excited!! I had missed Mexican so much... of course, it was Las Margaritas, but I settled for what I could get. As night fell and our exchange student group dwindled back down to three, we went to wait at the bus stop. Paul and I had the not-so-great experience of missing the last bus to Cavalaire on the last Toulon visit so we went extra early to the bus stop. After waiting and seeing six or seven buses pull in and stop, we finally saw our bus, number 8814. We stood on the curb and signaled for it to stop but for some unknown reason it did not even attempt to pull into the stop. It didn't even veer a little to the right. Paul tried to chase it down to the next stop, but it didn't pull in there either. Oh it was awful! Of course our bus just drove right on by. Why would it stop? Ugh, so once again we went and sat in the warm McDo where I called my host mom who came and picked us up. Apparently the shopping gods don't want us to get back home after our day trips to Toulon.
The following day my host parents had seven friends over to the house to eat lunch. One of these friends was a Moroccan man who made couscous for the big meal. It was a wonderful blend of sweet and spicy with the sauces and all. Oh, I loved every bite. This wonderful meal was preceded by appetizers and followed by cheese and dessert. Five hours later, I was stuffed. Yes, we stayed at the table from 12:30-5:30. Typical. But I'm not complaining. The food was superb and everyone was friendly. My host parents' friends had some bold personalities that made everything very amusing. Our much laughter and wine, everyone returned home, but the leftover couscous stayed (yes!)
After school Friday I'm out for Christmas! Woo hoo! Holiday time gives everything a euphoric air; one that awaits me year after year. We're having a Christmas meal at school Thursday. I'm planning on being the obnoxiously excited Christmas kid by wearing most of the items Parker sent me. Oh well, I have no shame. I'm an American.
1) I'm so glad you have Milka Chocolate in your picture. If you get a chance, though, try Ritter Sport. It's also everywhere in Germany and very good.
ReplyDelete2) Those wreathes are, as you said, very German and are absolutely everywhere here! I wish I had a little coffee table or something so that I could have an excuse to get one!
3) Sometimes here the busses get so full that they can't take on any more passengers, and in this case they don't stop unless someone pushes the button to get off. Maybe that's what happened.
4) Long meals are my favorite thing about French culture!! People do that here to a certain extent, but only because we're so close to France (and were part of France for a while).