Christmas!

December 6th - St. Nicolas!

St. Nicolas is big here in France, especially in the Lorraine region, apparently. In a nutshell, the good citizens of BLD spent the greater part of November stringing lights all over the town, and on December 6^th, they turn on all the lights, and there is a parade and fireworks. This is pretty similar to what most of the towns do for St. Nicolas, in this region at least. After the parade, we watched the fireworks, which weren’t bad.

Christmas Markets in Nancy

This past weekend, after a minor strike by SNCF (they like to strike during the holiday season, apparently) which led to us having to take a 2-hour bus ride instead of a 1-hour train ride, we made it to Nancy to go Christmas shopping. Thierry, Kat, and I have now figured out a bizarre method of conversing: us speaking to Thierry in French, and him speaking to us in English. It sounds strange to hear, but it is effective for all of us. We kept this up for almost the entire time we were in Nancy…where it was COLD. Below freezing temperatures and wind are not things that should go together, but thankfully there is ‘Vin Chaud’ (hot spiced wine) for sale on every street corner due to the abundant Christmas markets.

Field trip

Today instead of teaching my normal classes at l’école de Fains, I went with the entire school (mind you, this is the school with 4 classrooms) via charter bus to Commercy. (20 min by train or 40 min by bus East of BLD, only 7, 000 people live here. They are known for their delicious little cookie/cakes called Madeleines). It was a bouncy ride, and of course, a student vomited. Thankfully this was only 9 km outside of our destination. There we saw a one-man musical show. It was very impressive actually, just one man and about 12 instruments, which he combined in different ways to make humorous songs for the children. When it was over, I abandoned the teachers when they went back to BLD, so I could go sit in on one of Caitlin’s classes and then grab some lunch with her, and take the train back to BLD in time for my afternoon class. It was a lot of fun and I wish I saw her more often!

I go back to the states for Christmas break this Saturday. I happily learned that there is not going to be a strike on the day I leave (two of my friends work for SNCF, so they gave us a heads up about upcoming ones) so assuming all goes to plan, I should make it to the airport okay. I am really looking forward to seeing my family, friends, and animal buddies!

I forgot to mention...it snowed!!!

Boulevard de la Rochelle
Walking down the Boulevard...
Our town's Christmas tree!
THE FLOATS
Alice in WonderlandNo idea what this is.
Aladdin?

A Mississippi Paddleboat!!! Complete with entire jazz band on top, and smoke billowing from the 'engines'.
The bike-powered bubble machine!The bubble machine power source.


Snow white and 4 dwarves?

Kat and I!

St. NicolasThey are really into Christmas decorations here.
Hôtel de Ville


The gazebo at the parc de l'hôtel de ville

Some of the smaller fireworks...

NANCY!
The fountain at Place Stanislas

More fountain...
More fountain...

Place Stanislas

The Christmas tree at Place Stanislas...check out the last video to see it in action.Street decorations...

More decor...Okay, so this picture, is the end result of the following video. It was already taking place in the Place when we arrived...no idea.


What the...


Place Stanislas at Christmas!