Holidays are in the Air

Hey Everyone,

Happy Holiday Season! I am loving being here for the holidays. In general, I have noticed that the town is more involved in decorating the streets, but the people don’t really do much to decorate the outside of their houses. Instead, all of the holiday warmth is felt the minute you walk into the door of someone’s house. Candles and wreaths and Garlands and a christmas tree and little christmas ornaments...it is very homey in the houses I have been. The outside of the houses tend to be dark, maybe a tree lit up or something, but not the extravagant lights(even unofficial competitions between neighbors) that I am used to in the United States. Here, the city’s talk care of that for you. All of the streets are lined with lights, shooting stars or candy canes on the light poles, lights crossing above the streets that say things like “Joyeuses Fêtes”(Happy Holidays) Everyone seems to be in a much better mood all of the time with the holidays coming, rather than the almost frantic feelings I remember in the USA.

So, I have some news to share. I changed host families, and right now, I am staying with what’s called an “Interim family” meaning they are sort of a buffer period for me. Things just weren’t working out very well for any of the parties concerned in my other family. So, now I’m living with a completely AFS related family. The family has hosted, has sent their kids on AFS programs, and they all volunteer for AFS. I’m with them for a while, until I move to my new permanent host family. They are really nice, and they live in Valenciennes, so continuing at my school for the last few weeks of class is no problem. I walk to school in the morning and walk home, right through downtown in fact. At one point, when explaining the route, the daughter said, “So at tis point, the easiest thing to do is just follow the lights” pointing to all of the hanging lights lining a street. And  sure enough, I follow the lights right through downtown, end up at the city hall, and then it’s just a few minutes to my school from there.

So, I played handball for the first time in my life on wednesday, part of a team with the school. I was horrible, but there are 7 on the court at a time and there were only 7 of us, so i got to play the whole time. I was best as goalie, I think. I shot 10 times, and finally made a goal at the very end. The best way to describe handball is water polo on land. It is like basketball and soccer combined. It was so weird for me that when someone comes up to you when you are playing defense, you can just wrap your arms around them so that they drop the ball. Like I said, I was horrible, but it was super fun. And the other school we were playing wasn’t very good, so we won 33-3. I’m going to a practice tonight, so that should be great.

Tomorrow, I am going to Lille with AFS to do an activity, called Inquest. I guess it is some kind of adventure course inside a building that involves questions and physical activity. It should be fun to see all of the other AFS kids in my chapter, in Lille, and greet all of the 2 month kids staying in our area. Yep, there is a 2-month AFS program that just arrived. It is all southern hemisphere kids that come and spend there summer vacation here, going to school and doing their best to soak up France in just 2 short months. I can’t wait to meet them.

I absolutely fail at saying the names of American candy bars in French. Really, i fail. I already told the story of the snickers(or sneak-hairs.) Well, the other day, I tried to order a Lion. I even tried to say it with a French accent and the lady didnt understand. Plus, there were like 20 other people in line behind me so she was frantically trying to go fast. One of my classmates had to order it for me because I just couldn’t say it. Everyone is telling me my French is getting better, which i think it is, but my accent is still horribly american. Even saying “Bonjour,” people immediately ask, “Oh, where are you from.” My grammar and comprehension are doing great, I think, but the accent still has lots of work to be done.

So, the “Place d’armes”(basically town square) of Valenciennes has been all decorated with lights and a ferris wheel and a giant decorated christmas tree and a little roller coaster with rudolph at the front and Santa Claus and his sleigh at the back. It is very cute, and there are even little wooden chalets  that are little stores. When I went to the center on Sunday, there were a bunch of people standing in front of the city hall, so we stood in front too. A few minutes later, Saint Nicolas came out and and took some pictures with some kids, then climbed to the second story of city hall. And then, he and some of his volunteers started tossing gingerbread wrapped in plastic out of the second story windows. Everyone was jumping up and down to try to grab one, and it was total chaos. I got hit on the head with flying gingerbread about 5 times while I was grabbing for other pieces, or putting them in my pocket. But it was super fun, too. I caught a couple and it was yummy, but not fantastic. But, it was free, so who would turn it down?

Afterwards, we went to a free Christmas concert. There was a middle school and high school aged community concert band playing when we arrived. Later, a group of harps played(well, the harps didn’t play themselves. Some very pretty young women in red tops and black pants played them beautifully.) I had never heard a harp chorus before, but it was very very beautiful. It was like a thousand sounds at once, even when one person was playing a solo. And then a choir that came and sang some songs(some in french, some in russian, and some in english.) the French accent was so strong when they were singing “Let’s break bread together.” It became “Let’z break bread togezzer.” But the singing was very beautiful all the same.

I went to an activity with some other students last weekend. We had hot dogs for dinner, and they were very frenchified. The hot dogs are so skinny here, and then you add the fact that we were eating them in baguettes, instead of hot dog buns. I much prefer the baguette, but it was a bit weird that you would take a bite, and half the time, you would end up just eating bread with ketchup, the hot dog having slipped to the side. So about every other bite, it was a bread sandwich, but that wasn’t really a problem, since it was amazing French baguettes that we had just bought that afternoon.

And finally, garbage trucks here. The garbage trucks are less sophisticated and technological here than in the USA. Instead of just having the driver who goes along and presses a button where the mechanical arm comes along and picks up the bin. Instead, two men ride along holding onto the back of the truck, in addition to the driver. The truck stops, the guys jump off and grab the bins. Then they put the bins in the mechanical arm, which lifts them up and empties them into the truck. Then the mechanical arm descends, the guys in bright green suits put the bins back on the street, while the truck moves to the next house. Then the guys run to catch up with the truck and hop on to hold on to the back. It looks like a dangerous process to me, but I guess it works.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’m liking my chocolate advent calendar quite a bit. So far I’ve gotten a hazelnut, a soccer ball, a moon, and lots of other things. I can’t wait until the holidays. I’ve got big plans on the horizon. But for now, it’s off to handball, and the Inquest tomorrow. Have a good week, everyone.