Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!

Sorry to keep everyone waiting for a post for the Holiday's! Finally, I'm home and have time to rest and get everything sorted out! My first Christmas in France was certainly an amazing one. I had the chance to spend it with all my friends and I got to do things I was more lucky enough to do.

It started out with me passing all my classes! I was extremely happy and proud that I was able to do this and it definitely helped make my vacation more enjoyable. Then when all all my classes ended, I went with my friend Stacy and her friend to get a hot chocolate to say goodbye for the last time..! It was really sad, but I was happy to have met a really nice friend like her! The poor thing had to listen to all my complaints/happy moments and all my jokes throughout the semester but she did a pretty good job. The following day, I wanted to get all my Christmas shopping done so I wouldn't have to battle anyone. I decided to get each one of my host brothers and sister something that I thought reminded them of me. So I got Axel a book about the top 10 biggest FBI files. I got Mathilde a notebook with San Francisco on the cover. I got Adrien some rugby socks and poker cards, and finally I got Pierrot a book with everything medical that he can use next year for Med School.

Starting the Friday after break until Wednesday morning, each one of the trickled home and I couldn't have been more happy to see each one of them. Wednesday night Dimitri's aunt invited all their family over as well as Manon and I to her new apartment. Once I got there we talked for a little and then exchanged gifts between each other. Dimitri's parents got me a bottle of wine, as did his aunt along with des bonbons. Then Dimitri and Manon got me a beanie to take on our snow trip. For all of them, I had my mom send me a couple boxes of Dewars chews. I thought this was a really neat idea because it was something from Bakersfield, rather than some random (While I was writing this Dimitri says "coucou!") gift. Along with a box for each of the families I wrote a little card to them. On Friday night, Dimitri and I went to his grandparents house for a Christmas dinner. Dimitri's cousins, Enzo and Charles, joined us as well. It was a lot of fun because we decorated the house for Christmas and we cooked a chicken in front of the fire in the house. We set up a table next to the fireplace to really have that Christmas touch!

Before we started dinner, Dimitri's grandparents got me a gift - a bottle of rose champagne and I also got them a box of Dewars as well.
Saturday morning consisted of us waking up way too late and so we headed back into town and when I got home helped my host dad, brother, and sister bottle wine! This was obviously the first time I've done something like this but it was really cool. We had to have a special hand machine to put the cork in after the bottle was filled. After some time, we got dressed and we drove out to the grandparents home in Sologne - the same place where I was for the family reunion. Once we got there, we had to start preparing the oysters. In France, the main things you eat during Christmas time are oysters, foie gras, and then any kind of meat; normally chicken or deer. After the oysters were finished all us kids played a game called loup-garoux. Basically, everyone is given a character - either you are a werewolf, villager, little girl, hunter, magician, Cupid, robber, or a psychic. Everyone has to close their eyes and one person conducts the game. One at a time each get to open their eyes. To start the robbers can trade cards with who they want. The psychic can see the card of someone they choose. The werewolves have to decide who they want to kill, but silently and discretely because the little girl can peak to see who are the werewolves. If the werewolves decide to kill the hunter, he can decide to take someone down with him too. The magician can decide to kill someone along with the werewolves or he can save the person that the werewolves decided to kill. Cupid chooses two people to fall in love and if either one of those people are killed the other dies as well. After the round has finished eeryone opens their eyes and the conducter says whether or not their were any deaths and then the whole "village" decides to kill someone else as well. But the idea of the game is to get rid of the werewolves and not the other people. After we finished a few games of that we went back down stairs to go to mass. It was a packed house for Christmas Eve. When it was finished we went back home and ate the oysters, foie gras, deer, ice cream, and wine! When dinner was finished we decided it was gift time! So I gave my host parents the gift from my family which was two bottles of wine and some chocolate and all my brothers and sisters their gifts. My host parents got me a calendar and a wine opener and all my brothers and sister got me "Le savoir-vivre pour les nuls (How to live (in France) for idiots) and they all wrote a little something for me on the first page and then made little remarks and notes trhoughout the book. It was super nice and cute.
Christmas morning my host family went to Paris to visit a family member so Dimitri's aunt came to pick me up and we drove to Dimitri's house. There, we all talked and they exchanged Christmas presents and we took pictures and ate! After we finished with lunch, all of us drove to Dimitri's other uncles house for dessert with all the rest of his cousins. The day flew by and, for sure, wasn't long enough but it was absolutely enjoyable because I had the chance to see and talk with everyone.

The next morning I didn't wake up because I never went to sleep. I had been a bit under the weather all week and for whatever reason - I couldn't sleep. So around 7am I jumped in the shower and grabbed my bag and went to the train station. From there I tok a train to Normandy where I met up with Manon and her family. For Christmas they rented a big house that was next to a really beautiful chateau. When I got there I said hello to everyone again. It was really nice to see everyone because they are all so nice. One of Manon's cousins was a bit different from the last time I saw her because now she was already 6 months pregnant! We ate a bit of lunch and after we finished we all drove to the beach to walk around and enjoy time together there because it was only an hour away and there was no reason not to take advantage of it! Finally we returned for dinner and dessert and played a little bit of foosball. Then we played a game with the entire family. it was a lot of fun because you start out by writing any sentence about anything that you want and you pass your stack of paper to the person to your left and they must draw a picture from the sentence that you wrote and then when you've finished drawing the picture you, again, pass the stack of papers(you have as many stacks of paper as there are people) to the next person and then from the picture the person has to write a sentence that corresponds with the picture. so at the end when the stack is all finished you get your original stack back and each person reads and shows their stack to see how off topic it got from the original sentence. So of course there is bound to be huge laughs. Afterwards, all us kids went to the chateau and slept on one side of the house which was really, really neat. But before we slept I taught everyone how to play Blackjack! The next morning we woke up and ate lunch then we drove back to Orleans. When we got there we stopped by my house and I dropped off one bag and took another two! Then we drove to Manon's house and she packed her bags and we ate some dinner and then after some time Dimitri, Camille, and Maxime - a friend of Camille, come to pick us up and we started on our raod trip to the Alps! It was only about a six hour drive and I slept for half the way so that made it nice.

The first full day we were there was the 28th. We woke up and got ready and went out for a day of skiing. I don't know how to explain it, but the Alps are just comething completely different. I looked like a complete noob out there. That's a bit of the problem as well - not having the chance to go more often when I'm back in California. But it was absolutely beautiful. As soon as we reached the top it was as if none of it was actually real - it was too magnificent. But here we were and I was actually in the snow. Actually in the Alps. Actually skiing with friends. It couldn't have been better. But then as we descended - the falling and tumbling started. I think i was in the snow more than I was on my feet. It was really depressing because I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I never fall back in California, I've even tried snowboarding before! But here, I was as if I've never seen snow or never held skis before. So everyone stuck with me which was super nice and everyone was encouraging me and giving me pointers. For dinner we ate crepes and watched all the videos from the day.

Because I had lost a bit of confidence I was hesitant to join the rest of the group on a ski trip that was a lot higher and a lot longer. So I took the day off and walked to the village which was about a 15 minute walk. So i got to look around and see a lot more of the area and again it was too surreal. Later on, I met up with the rest of the group and we watched a bit of TV and watched the videos that they took on their adventure. Later for dinner we ate raclette.It was a really fun dinner because you warm the cheese and then scrape it off onto your plate. Normally, you eat potatoes and meat with it.

Friday, I woke up and talked with Max while he ate breakfast because i was sleeping in the living room. He left for a full day of skiing. But this time when he came back for a lunch break - i left with him so we would do a half day of skiing. It was exactly what I needed. The weather was perfect and the snow was just right and being just the two of us made it an easy time to get back in the groove of skiing. We stayed out there for nearly 3 hours and this was plenty!
New Years Eve rolled around faster than I expected but we were ready for it! The weather was horrible and we were wanting to leave early the next morning so we decided to return our skis and boots and pick up some food for the evening while we were in town. After we got back to the apartment we watched a movie together and we all cleaned up and started preparing for the evening. It was lots of fun with some dancing and eating and with an hour to go until midnight we headed to a bar that we were at the night before. It was even more fun there with a packed house and dancing and people from all over! I met one guy from England, a couple from Amsterdam, one guy from Texas, and someone from Belgium. We spent most of the night there and finally headed back home around 4 in the morning.
The next morning we woke up towards the afternoon and got to work right away cleaning the apartment and packing the car and got out of there. I was really sad to leave but even more sad to wake up the next morning in Orleans - without the mountains and snow.
Overall this was an amazing Christmas vacation and I couldn't ask for more. I hope everyone else had an amazing vacation as well. Now time to watch a little college football!