Celebrating 3 months, in a very French way

Today marks the 3 month anniversary of my arrival in France...I cannot believe that 3 whole months have already gone flown by! Where did the time go, and how am I already at the 1/3 mark in my stay here? Well, they do say that time flies when you're having fun, an unfortunate part of life...unless it's your preference to have life go by at a snails pace, hating every minute of it...

So, to celebrate my "anniversary", (aside from buying a slice of bûche de Noël) I thought I would do a little recap of what I've been up to the last few months:

- Taught about 90 hours of English to over 450 students aged 15-19
- Spent about double that time lesson planning for above classes
- Visited 4 countries and 12 cities
- Visited about 6 museums
- Saw 1 opera (Rusalka) and 3 classical concerts
- Visited 12 cathedrals
- Celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with 2 Americans, 1 Scot and 1 German
- Ate a traditional French meal with a French family
- Spent about 40 hours speaking French/English with my 3 "tandems"
- Enjoyed 10 paid vacation days
- Visited 4 (soon to be 5) Christmas Markets, and drank 10+ cups of vin chaud
- Consumed an innumerable amount of baguettes, cheese, pastries, chocolate and bottles of wine
- Gained xx(?) lbs from consuming said delicacies (I don't believe in scales)
- Spent over 35 hours travelling by train
- Had 4 successful Couchsurfing experiences
- Spent more Euros than I'd like to admit
- Spent dozens of hours dealing with the ridiculous red tape in this country, including getting a chest x-ray and medical appointment for visa validation (but I now have a very pretty x-ray sample of my lungs)
- Spent about 16 hours swinging from a trapeze
- Danced (contemporary style) for 15 hours
- Wore out 2 pairs of boots from the amount of walking I've done
- "Faire la fête" quite a number of times...
- Learned 100+ new words, expressions and slang in French
- Made 50+ new acquaintances and contacts from all over the world
- Reunited with 2 good friends for the first time in 4 years
- And last but certainly not least, made some very special and wonderful friends from other countries and cultures (special in the good sense, not the short bus sense) - without you, this journey wouldn't be half as fun as it has been! So, merci mes amis :)

I'm sure there are a few more things I could come up with, but voilà the highlights for the meantime!
Overall, I still love this country (despite hating it at times), I love living in Nancy, I love the friends I've made here, I love my super roommate and my super job and my super French life. La vie est belle!

Wahoo!

With that out of the way, I look forward to coming home for Christmas. As much as I'm dreading the horribly long flight(s) and the crapload of snow I'm coming home to, I can't wait to see my family and friends (and boyfriend). It'll be nice to see some familiar faces and spend some quality time in my own country, albeit short!

Yesterday I had one last "hurrah" of 2010 before coming home. One of my tandems, Jean-Michel, and I decided to throw together a little dinner party for our friends and roommates, as a sort of cultural exchange. He picked me up on Monday so we could go grocery shopping and get all the needed supplies (it was so nice to go grocery shopping with a car, oh how I've missed my little Honda...). We did some mad cooking last night, poor JM had to work until 6, and doesn't have a proper oven at his apartment, so we did the brunt of the cooking at my place, he had to run home to clean and get the car to come back and pick me (and the food) up, and by the time we had finished cooking and prepping everything, we ate around 10:30! (Which, for the French, really isn't all that late). I invited my friends from around Nancy to partake, so Erika, Megan, Megan's new fiancé Kevin who has come to visit her for the holidays, Robyn and myself (poor Julia had a migraine...don't worry chérie there'll be another evening!) got to share a lovely meal with Jean-Michel and his 3 roommates (2 girls and 1 guy). For dinner we cooked a vegetable quiche, stuffed tomatoes, green salad, and raclette with potatoes (and mean for the carnivores), plus lots of wine, bread, and for dessert I successfully turned out a pear tarte-tatin. After dinner a few people took their first taste of eau de vie de mirabelle (mirabelle liquor), "canard" style (poured over a sugar cube and lit on fire.) I learned my lesson when I had dinner with the French family, one try was more than enough for me! And we got to experience a very stereotypical French moment: JMs male roommate (argh I suck at names) broke out the accordian and played for us, he was super good too! Overall it was a very pleasant evening and everyone had fun getting to know each other and speaking a mix of English and French (Franglais?). There are pictures, but I need to steal them from Megan.

So I'm home in 3 days, with 1 more trip to Saarbrücken, Germany on Saturday. So, very likely, this is my last post of 2010.

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!