Stephanie in the City of Lights: Joyeux noël!

Bonjour et un joyeux noël à tous!
So, although it's certainly not a white Christmas here (which is fine by me), there have been lots of Christmas festivities this past week! On Thursday night, my friend Victoria held a lovely party for two of her friends visiting from the French countryside, and it was also a sort of pre-Christmas party, with some of the typical French Christmas food (salmon, foie gras... I had the salad) and one typical American dish, an apple pie, baked by yours truly. The party was a lot of fun, and for more practical language reasons, I enjoyed being surrounded by so many talkative native French speakers!

Yesterday morning, for Christmas Eve, the three other students in my program and I had arranged to meet at a restaurant called Breakfast in America, specializing in (surprise!) American food. It was hands down the most satisfying breakfast I have eaten since leaving the States, with the possible exception of my breakfasts in Ireland. I had a stack of blueberry pancakes--delicious! And an "Obama" (peanut butter and chocolate) milkshake rounded the meal off very nicely. We also arranged a Secret Santa among the four of us, which was a lot of fun. I received some very classy English tea and some yummy red candies!

For Christmas Eve dinner, which, incidentally, is traditionally when the French, and many Europeans, open their presents and celebrate the holiday, Victoria had me back over to her house for a really lovely dinner with her and her mother. Of course, they also had some of the traditional meat dishes for themselves, but they also prepared a lot of vegetarian dishes which we all enjoyed as well! (And there were macaroons for dessert--yum!) I had brought over a little yellow orchid arrangement as a hostess gift, and Victoria's mother had also gotten me--a yellow orchid! Great minds think alike, as the saying goes! It was a very lovely evening!

And then today, after a very quiet morning, when I opened Dad's Christmas card, and early afternoon, spent alternatively reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (in French) and listening to David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice (in English), I enjoyed a nice family dinner with my host family, as well as my host mother's sister and nephew. Again, there were more of the typical meat dishes (foie gras, salmon), but also a nice green salad, some delicious onion sauce, and a yummy mushroom tart (as good as mushrooms ever can be, anyway). Then came the present opening; I gave Natalie an orchid arrangement in red, and she gave me a really nice little shoulder bag from India and some lovely soap and lotion from L'Occitane! And then we had dessert, which was a meringue filled with ice cream, with a candied cherry in the center. Yum! So it was a very lovely evening, and it has been a very lovely Christmas week!