Bonne Annee tout le monde!

This was my first New Years away from home, and where better to spend it than in France watching the Eiffel Tower. I am now staying with my friend from UT who is living in Paris for a year. He has a little flat in the East of Paris with his own room and a shared living room and kitchen. We have been going out each day to explore all sides of Paris and see all the big sites. I have been under the Eiffel Tower dozens of times now (but never up it yet because the lines are usually too long), and I have seen it both in the sun and at night when it glows gold and lights up with sparkling lights every hour. It is neat to see as you are walking around town or from underneath where you can feel so small, but there just might be too much hype given to this monument (I saw it for the first time and then that was it, it is just the Eiffle Tower). For New Years, I stood on the steps at Trocadero and watched the Eiffel Tower light up at midnight. It was a little disappointing because there were only tiny fireworks far away, and the Eiffel Tower did not do anything too special, but the energy from everyone around us made the night fun.

Paris is a lively, thriving city, but I think it is way too international and too touristy. I would recommend many other smaller cities over Paris to anyone wanting to visit the real France. In my time here, I have almost forgotten than I am in France. Most of the people I hear around me are speaking a language other than French (usually German or English or Spanish or Arabic) and most of the signs are in English. There are also hundreds of people everywhere, so even intimate places feel like a big tourist attraction.
We visited the Pere Lachaise cemetary which is home to thousands of tombs and dozens of famous graves. I saw Edithe Piaf and I kissed the grave of Oscar Wilde (it is completely covered with red lipstick kisses from fans who saw him as a rebel, jailed for love). The cemetary was huge with it's own street names, and half of it was scattered in the woods with big trees and moss and cliffs while the other half was lined up in rows on flat, trimmed grass. I loved walking through the wooded area past big stone tombs that had grown into a part of the nature around them. I was also a little confused on why some graves were so famous and who was famous enough to get their name on the entrance map. There were plenty of beautiful graves that were much more impressive than most of those of the famous people. The cemetary was also pretty crowded with tourists, which took away from the soulful feeling, but it was beautiful nonetheless and I enjoyed walking through it.

I waited in line in the literally freezing cold for almost 2 hours to enter the Catacombs, but the voyage under Paris was well worth it. For what feels like a mile long trail, the Catacombs is filled with bones and skulls from thousands of bodies transported from old cemetaries around Paris. The bones are stacked perfectly along both sides of the walls up to 6 feet high. The skulls are used to decorate the bone stacks, and they are placed in lines and crosses and other shapes within the other bones. I only wondered where all the little bones were (like the fingers and toes) because all you could see were large leg-like bones.

I visited the Sacre Coeur at night, a multi-domed cathedral that looks like it should be found in India. It is at the top of a steep hill with hundreds of steps to reach the top, so I was winded while staring up at its walls. The neighborhood around it was very peaceful with a lively center with restaurants and street artists entertaining the night crowd. The Sacre Coeur is close to the Moulin Rouge, and apparently it was built there to purify the area a little. The Moulin Rouge itself was not super impressive, filled with lights and its little windmill, but the area around it was exciting. The only time you should go to this area is late at night, otherwise you miss the lights and prostitutes.

Notre Dame was another beautiful place spoiled by hundreds of tourists. The outside is beautifully carved with stone figures, and the inside ceiling stretches infinitely into the sky. I went on a Sunday evening, at the start of a mass, so I got to hear the room echo from the organ. I could never imagine attending a service there though because there were constantly hundreds of people talking and walking around the room. Apparently you can go up to the top floor and look out at the town (maybe even catch a glimpse of Quasimodo), but I could not find the stairs to let me up!

I have two days left in Paris and then I get on my plane at 11am Wednesday morning. I am planning to meet up with a friend from my program from Nantes to hopefully go to the Louvre before I leave. After I see that, I think I will have seen all the main touristy sites of Paris. Paris is a great international city, and there are definitely plenty of famous sites to see, but I would not miss it if this were my last trip here. I think it has lost too much of its French identity and I could have easily been in New York this week and been in the same environment. It is fun, but nothing compared to my home in Nantes.

Noel en France and Goodbye family

Christmas was as fun as I could have wished for in France. The house by the end of the week had 17 people (12 adults, 3 kids, and 2 babies). The kids are always running around and playing games, the babies are always cooing and playing with their Sophie giraffe (a squeeky giraffe toy popular in France), and the adults are not far from the game table. I have loved playing games every night with the family, and I am now seen as a big threat for the family at the game table. My host dad and brother had to build a new table top to place over the dining room table because it was too small to fit everyone for meals. I shared a room with Paul, and all the other rooms had someone sleeping in each bed. It was like a sleepover every night for me and we watched french movies each night (It is amazing what I can understand now compared with when I first arrived). It was cold every day so I was always bundled up, but it only snowed one evening and only stuck until the next afternoon.

The days before Christmas were fun with all the family in the house. It did not really feel like Christmas time for me because so much of that feeling comes from being at home with my house decorated, but I was still excited for the day to come. I made my famous quesidilla lunch for the family and a guest from town, and they loved it again and felt very full. My step-host brother (who I played games with every night, the father of the 3 kids) wanted to make sure that I did not leave France without experiencing fancy french food, so he made me try oyesters, snails, and fois gras. I did not really like the oyesters (huites), the snails were delicious and buttery and garlicy, and the fois gras was almost too difficult to swallow (But in France you eat everything on your plate, so I used a lot of bread to help me get my portion down). Most of the time we went back and forth from our house to the other family house a few minutes away (I think my host family and their extended family own at least 4 houses in the small town). The other house was filled with even more cousins and we played cards and hung out with the older cousins. The little cousins remembered me from my previous visit and they ran around singing "Preston est gentil!" (Preston is nice). I gave the girls silly bands and played games with the boys (I would do anything to win the hearts of the entire family!).

For Christmas eve, after our late 9:30pm dinner, we went to mass at a cathedral nearby which started at 11pm and did not finish until 1am. The service was filled with french hymns, a little Mary and the angel skit by some kids from my host family, and prayers over the creche. It was cold enough for me to see my breath during the songs, and my extended host family took up 4 whole rows of pews with their large numbers. That night after mass, each person in the family set out one shoe around the living room, and all the gifts were placed by each person's shoe. It was a fun tradition, and my host mom thinks it works better than having 17 people's worth of presents packed under the christmas tree for days until Christmas morning.

On Christmas morning, I woke up to the little kids jumping on my bed and telling me to come downstairs, exactly how I thought it would happen. From my spot on the couch, I could see the entire room and I spent most of my morning watching the family open their gifts. My host family was extremely generous and so my shoe was covered with little gifts too. I found my christmas stocking from home hidden under the couch which my mom had sent to France. That was such a great surprise! I had been talking with the other American girl staying with us about what our families put in their stocking, and we both agreed that it was usually little candies and snacks along with personal hygeine items. When I opened my stocking in the morning, we saw that our predictions were correct. My host family gave me little treats typical to Nantes and Bretagne, a Nantes Soccer shirt, a french book, and a new card game. I was blessed to be with a family who took such good care of me. The rest of the family received some big gifts and most of the kids immediately started playing with their new gadgets. One of the little kids even got a hamster (On the subject of rodents, in France when a child loses a tooth, a little mouse comes in while they are sleeping and gives them some coins. I thought that was a little less sanitary that the tooth fairy, but also more realistic).

After Christmas day, we made an American brunch for the whole family. We served southern-style scrambled eggs, potato wedges, and French toast (We could not find Texas Toast obviously, but they tasted just fine with thin white bread). We set the table American-style (cup to the side of the plate, spoon on the right of the plate) and they were surprised that we ate all three foods on the same plate at the same time, mixing the sweetness of the syrup with the salty potatos. It is funny how breakfast is "the most important meal of the day" in the States while most people in my host family just munch on bread and nesquik to hold them over until lunch. One day we went to watch a family friend play Boule on a court that was curved rather than just flat. Everyone playing was over 70 years old, but they were very skilled at this version of the traditional French game. But mostly my final days with the family were spent like all the others: card games, settlers of catan, video games, movies, and playing with cousins.

When it was time for me to leave, it was so bittersweet. I was leaving my family but not leaving France and not seeing my real family for a while still. Saying goodbye to all the host bothers and families was not too sad (although I genuinely enjoyed being around each one of them and I hope I get to see them all again soon), but finally leaving the house was hard to do. I felt content when my host mom said "say goodbye to your son" to my host dad as I left. At the train station, I said goodbye to Paul and Constance (she was teary) and finally to my host mom with goodbye bisous. The train pulled away as I waved goodbye from the window, and then my life with my host family was over. Sitting on the train was when I actually felt sad to be leaving my host family and life in Nantes. I will be back as soon as I can to see them again.