French Holidays (Part I)

Well, I survived my first Christmas season far away from home, and I have to say that despite really missing my family and all of our holiday traditions, it was wonderful.  Even though the weather was unseasonably warm (and therefore lacking in the beautiful sparkly snow department), Paris is really lovely at Christmas.  Every neighborhood, brasserie, and boulangerie gets into the act with holiday decorations and lights.

Some of the most notable Christmas decorations were at the grands magasins, Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, in downtown Paris. Though I've never been in the big city around the holidays to witness it, I think this is the Paris equivalent of the Macy's holiday windows in NYC.  We first went to check it out on a Saturday evening at around 6:30 which was... a HUGE mistake!  As we probably should have predicted, the place was packed with families and kids and Christmas shoppers trying to get a look at the windows.  I think we gave up on the last few displays just because the place was so crowded.  Paul took this opportunity, though, to bring me to the rooftop cafe at Printemps were we had a gorgeous view of Paris.  The city was all lit up with regular lights, Christmas lights, and the Christmas Ferris Wheel at Concorde.  It's fun to get tours from real-life Parisians.  :)  

Getting back to the window displays, we happened to be in the neighborhood a few days later and really lucked out.   It was 10:00pm on a Wednesday, so the sidewalk was almost completely empty and we had a perfect view of all the windows.   Here are some of our pictures...

The awnings over the sidewalks were covered with lights that somehow made it look as if it were snowing (I think there were flashing LED lights mixed in among the regular gold lights).

The displays at Printemps were created/sponsored by Dior.  There were at least 4-5 different scenes (that moved) with these lovely ladies in pink and red dresses.  I believe the ladies in the picture above were ice skating with hot air balloons and the ladies in the picture below were at the amusement park in their best ball gowns.  

The Printemps advertisements around the city were also featuring one woman in a pink dress and one woman in a red dress during December... so once you had seen the window displays, every ad made you smile at the memory of the fanciful scenes.  The scene pictured below featured what looks like a holiday ball. 

As you can tell from the superbly fashionable Polar Bear's bag, the Galeries Lafayette windows were designed by Louis Vuiton.

The penguins were also styling....

Both of the grands magasins had little walkways right in front of the windows to give little kids the opportunity to get up close and see everything.  And on the sidewalks of this area there were about a dozen different guys selling roasted chestnuts out of wire grocery carts.  (They seemed to disappear quickly when the police came around, but the chestnuts smelled delicious).  

Although they weren't as intricate as the grands magasins, even just the local "places" and neighborhood main roads in certain neighborhoods were decorated.  The city in general had some extra sparkle, which definitely helps the Christmas spirit.  This is in front of the Pantheon... it was like walking through a little Christmas forest in the middle of the city.

Well, I have lots more to say about Christmas in France (ummm the food?  So much to say about how awesome that was) but I hope you enjoy all of these pictures for now.  More to come about the holidays later. 

And of course, a belated Joyeux Noel!

French Lessons

Greetings, and my apologies for the long hiatus!  The past several weeks have been chocked full of visitors, three out-of-Paris excursions, and our continued efforts to settle into our apartment, just to name a few things.  As usual, it has been a whirlwind, but a lovely one.

The main thing to which I’ve been dedicating my time lately is a French class at La Sorbonne. I’m very proud to say it is an intermediate French class (that’s right… no beginner French for this girl!).  It is also an intensive class, though I’m not sure why they don’t just call it intense!  It’s three hours of grammar every day followed by one hour of a phonetics lab.  Between the class itself and the studying/homework, it has been a lot to handle.  However, it has helped immensely.  I’m learning new words, verb tenses, and (of course!) agreement rules every week.  Taking this class has made it much easier to communicate with people who do not speak English and given me a much greater appreciation of all the gender-neutral nouns and adjectives in English!  Paul and I are even trying to speak French to each other at home, though I think our record is only two hours without slipping into English, if that.

The class itself is very interesting.  There are about twenty students of all ages coming from all over the world.  We’ve got a few Americans (North and South), Europeans, Asians, and even one girl from Australia.  The age range is fairly wide as well, including some people who have just finished high school.  In fact, one of the American students was explaining to me how excited he is to be allowed in bars here!  (Sigh… that made me realize I’m a decade older than some classmates.  Wow).  A few other students are retired or nearing the end of their careers, and simply wanted the opportunity to live in France and learn a beautiful language.  I’m humbled by the fact that for most of the non-US citizens, French is their third language.  I can speak to almost anyone in the class in English without a problem.  Unfortunately, I discovered that learning French has overrun the part of my brain where I used to keep my Spanish and Italian skills.  I tried to speak to one of the girls from Columbia in Spanish and ended up saying, “Yo parlo español.”  Yikes.  Last weekend I did manage to speak one sentence of coherent Italian, though.  Maybe the wine I had been drinking awakened the Italian in me? 

Another fun fact about my French class:  It’s taught in French.  I thought perhaps that’s because we’re an intermediate class, and therefore very advanced learners (okay no, I guess those would be the people in advanced French), but I later learned that even beginner French classes are taught in French at La Sorbonne.  So… they teach you the language you don’t know in the language you don’t know.  I have to say that there have been quite a few instances, especially at the beginning of the course, when I really had no idea what the professor was talking about.  I’m happy to say those instances are few and far between now, but it definitely still happens. 

I’m not sure if I’m holding back my own progress (I hope not!), but after four hours of class in a different language, I sometimes return home desperately wanting English music, prose, TV… or sometimes wanting no words at all!  It’s daunting to consider my goal, which is to be completely bilingual, so I can live and work here as comfortably as I did in the States.  I know it’s a long shot… I sometimes imagine all those words in the English dictionary that I don’t know… and then I imagine the French dictionary right next to it.  Oy. 

Moral of the story here:  Find a native speaker and have them teach your toddlers another language – it will be way easier for them when they’re that young.  OR, give your own brain some exercise and learn a second language.  OR!!!  (This one is the greatest idea in my humble opinion) come to Paris to learn French and hang out with me! :)

Just as a side note – the tiny little pine tree I mentioned in my last post has been planted in our courtyard and is actually doing really well!  It’s grown and spread out its branches!  I can’t say that the French Oak is doing quite as well, but hey… it was supposed to lose its leaves around this time of the year anyways, right?