Christmas in France

Christmas in France! It seems a little less commercial  than in the US but you still hear a good amount of Brenda Lee signing  "rockin' around the Christmas tree." Speaking of which Parisians appear to eschew 'natural' looking trees for ones coated in fake snow or even more conceptual trees (vive la difference!)

Paris has a good number of decorated streets and Christmas markets. The Christmas markets aren't too different from ones in New York except for street food they sell hot wine, crepes, and chestnuts roasted over an open fire.  Mary and I enjoy walking through them, crepes are great but chestnuts turned out to be a bit of a let down  after Nat King Cole's build up.

A side note; don't believe all the 'bad weather' hype you hear in the states. We've a bit of snow but barely an inch or two. There must be something in the conversion to metric, because airports closed for days and people slept in train stations rather than go home. But don't worry, the only danger is wet feet (though I guess if you're not used to any snow, a little bit causes a lot of problems!!).

Finally, Merry Christmas all! We'll be taking a little vacation from blogging for the next week but we'll post more exciting stuff in the New Year!

French Class

For the last three weeks Dave has been taking intensive French four hours a day at the Alliance Francais. Its a very international class containing Asians, Europeans, North and South Americans. While nobody speak French well, most everyone speaks English which is the 'lingua franca' of the class!

Its been a while since high school French but something must have stuck with Dave because he feels he has managed to handle getting back from random phrases to passe compose and the future tenses easily. He is a frequent contributor in class and even corrects the teacher from time to time!

That part about correcting the teacher is an inside joke but Dave really is enjoying the class. The teacher does a good job of coming up with interesting exercises. One of the most fun was a skill Dave doesn't need anymore 'Speed Dating'. He is planning to take more classes in the new year. Until later, or as Dave says 'Awh Rev-war'!

Lets go Metz!

 Weekend before last Mary and Dave went on their first weekend trip to the border town of Metz. We heard they had a great Christmas village, an interesting mix of German and French architecture, as well as a huge flea market! We also heard it was cold, so we put on our long underwear and took the TGV out to Alsace-Lorraine.


First off, it was much colder than we thought! Also the flea market closed at noon, so the market was shutting down just as we found it. Dave was able to score a 2 euro cap from one of the stalls, which was much appreciated with the weather.  We enjoyed the cathedral at Metz but we most loved something we didn't even know was there when we left for Metz, the La Cour d'Or Musee. (Which initially just seemed to be an inexpensive place to get warm.)

The musee told the  history of Metz through art, from the  city's day as a garrison town on the Roman border town ( building the museum lower floor actually exposed a Roman bath, which you can see) to the present.  This includes numerous medieval decorations, many uncovered when people renovated their truly ancient homes. These kind of discoveries are extra interesting since coming from the States the only old hidden discovery is liable to be asbestos in your 1950's era home. Truly a great museum! Even so Metz isn't really a destination to go out of your way for, but if you ever end up in the area definitely worth checking out.

Hoboken to Paris

We finally got internet so expect a flurry of catch up e-mail in the next few days.  In the meantime checkout our apartment overrun with our boxes (which came in early last week.)  We just wanted to give you an idea of what 28 boxes look like in an already furnished one bedroom apartment. They are virtually all put away now but we are still saying 'why did we bring so much crud?!?!'

Also our new address is    

    17 Rue Etienne Marcel #3
    Paris, France 75001

Lots to be Thankful for!

Sorry it's been a while since our last post! We don't currently have internet at our apartment, and it might still be a while before we have it, so the posts might not be as often as we'd like for the next few weeks... and there's so much to say!

Anyway, on Thanksgiving Day we were able to move into our new apartment, which gave us a lot to be thankful for! We'd been in temporary housing for the prior month (and in 3 different places in that time!) so it felt very good to settle into a place where we'll be for a year! It's a very cute one bedroom right in the center of Paris, and we really like it. All of our stuff arrived on Monday, so we've been busy getting unpacked and finding room for 28 boxes of stuff- thankfully our new place has lots of storage!! We'll post pictures once we have internet at our apartment.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving (Mary had to work on Thanskgiving Day since it's just an American holiday) we were able to attend a Thanksgiving dinner at one of the churches here. Everyone was supposed to bring a side dish, so we attempted to make a sweet potato casserole that's one of Mary's favorites. It miraculously turned out pretty well despite not being sure if we'd bought the right sweet potatoes, didn't know how long to cook them, only had metric measuring utensils, and not being able to find brown sugar (and mixing white sugar and honey instead!). It's always nice to have a taste of home - especially if you're celebrating far away from family and friends!

We'll write more later, but hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!