Christmas!

Bonjour!

I cannot believe Christmas is already here! (Well, tomorrow.) I feel like it got here so quickly. December was a busier month for me-- especially the last 2 weeks.

Last week marked the end of my first semester in France. I gave my last presentation and took my last test, and let me just say that my group killed it in this class. We were basically awesome. (If you want, you can ask me about it! I'm more than a little proud of what we did.)

Friday was an emotional day for a lot of people at FBS. Most of the students were leaving Poitiers for the last time that day and weekend. I said goodbye to some good friends. It was harder than I thought it would be to see them all go.

I took Friday night to walk around Poitiers with a few friends. Poitiers is such a cute town. I love walking down the streets to see the Christmas lights. We went through the park and to City Center. We walked for a long time before we finally said goodbye.

Parc Blossac

Next semester, I get to meet all of the incoming students and start over with new friendships. I'm a little nervous about this, but I'm sure it'll be great.

I may have mentioned in the last blog that we were going to be spending Christmas in Frankfurt, but we had a slight change of plans at the last minute. We could not find anywhere in Frankfurt that would take us in over Christmas. So, we decided to spend Christmas in Paris and then leave for Frankfurt a few days later than we had originally planned.

It has turned out to be great anyway. I think I'm slowly falling in love with Paris. Everyone seems to have this idea that Paris is the be-all end-all of perfect, romantic cities. I've always been skeptical. It's nice, but at first it just seemed like another city to me. Now that I've been here several times, I'm beginning to feel the magic. (But, Barcelona will always have my heart.)

Our first day here, we went shopping for ingredients for our Christmas feast. Shopping is sometimes so difficult because the things we're familiar with using are oftentimes not available. We made due and had a wonderful dinner on Christmas Eve.

After the grocery store, we visited Galeries Lafayette. It's an enormous mall. On the top floor there is a landing outside on the roof that has a great view of the Eiffel Tower. The inside of this place is magnificent.

When we left the mall, we started walking towards the Champs-Elysees Christmas Market. It stretched the entire length of Champs-Elysees. There was so much to see! It was cold outside so I grabbed some vin chaud (hot spiced wine) and started walking. There were so many booths offering all kinds of things. It was a beautiful experience.

That night we lazed around the apartment until bedtime.

On Christmas Eve day, we started at the Catacombs. After standing in line for nearly an hour and a half, we finally got to go down. The first little bit of the tour is just long winding tunnels. When we finally got to the grave area, I was so excited. There were so many more bones than I had imagined. They seem to go on forever and ever and ever. They aren't just piled around haphazardly; there's an artful order to it all.

We went briefly to the Eiffel Tower, but decided that a ride to the top wouldn't work with our plans. So, we headed back to the apartment to cook dinner before we left for midnight mass.

Our Christmas Eve feast consisted of salad, corn, mashed potatoes, and roast chicken. It was incredibly delicious and we had a good time together.

Not long after finishing, we went to Cathedral Notre Dame for mass. It began at 11pm. It started with a choir that sang all of our favorite Christmas songs. The actual mass began at midnight, but we were exhausted and decided to skip that.

The organ and choir mix was breathtaking. We didn't have good seats, so we couldn't see anything, but just hearing that music was magical in itself. Near the end, there was an organ solo. It was so powerful and emotional. It felt deep and dark, then it would swell into a booming crescendo.

There was easily 1,000 people in attendance. The seats were packed and there were people sitting on the floor (like us) and standing in the aisles. The service was being broadcast onto a screen outside the church also so there was a crowd watching from there.

We got back to the apartment at around 1:15am. You know how boring we are when it comes to the nightlife, well, tonight we actually went out past our bedtime. We went a little crazy and went to church!

Have a Very Merry Christmas!

Je t´embrasse,
Sarah


You can click here for the rest of the pictures from Christmas in Paris!