Joyeux Noel

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! This year's Christmas was very different for us, spending it with the members in Perigueux, but it was formidable ( in French this means fabulous ). Being away from family, Kyle and I decided to start some of our own traditions. We made a great big Christmas Eve breakfast together. They don't have bacon here but I found something similar called "poitrine" (I looked it up on the internet and I think it is pork...). It was good but had a little too much fat for me. We found an internet site with a bunch of Christmas cartoons including the classics like "Charlie Brown," "Rudolph," and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Growing up I remember watching these shows with my siblings and I love it! They never get old. Another tradition we started this year was reading about Christ's birth in the New Testament and Book of Mormon. I think in past Christmases I've gotten lost in the gift giving. Don't get me wrong I think it's still an important part of Christmas but this year I wasn't so busy buying gifts for everyone that I had more time to think about what gift I could give my Savior. Christmas morning I decided I was going to start a tradition of making cinnamon rolls or sweet rolls every year (like my mom). The only thing they were missing was frosting--most recipes I found required powdered sugar or cream cheese which I haven't found here yet. All in all I think this Christmas will be one I look back on for the rest of my life.

So Christmas Eve we had dinner with the Donadier Family. They have 4 boys, ages ranging from 12-19 and they absolutely adore Kyle. The youngest boy (Remy) tells us every week at church that we aren't allowed to leave France. We have a lot of fun with this family. They are probably one of the strongest families in the ward. Sister Donadier (Martine) made a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner for us. The first course consisted of  caviar, a myraid of tropical fruit and cheese. The second course was a shrimp cocktail salad with avocato, cucumber, radishes and a white sauce--very interesting. Poor Kyle dislikes seafood but he managed to swallow a couple bites; I was very proud of him. Next up was escargo...

They were huge! And actually tasted pretty okay after getting over how the texture felt. I ate 3, Kyle ate 9, and Mattieu ate 19--sheesh, good for you kid. Now for the main course: chicken stuffed with cheese, cooked carrots and potatoes, roasted chestnuts and something that resembled bacon. Boy was I sure stuffed after! We've found that when we are invited for a meal at a French person's house, you are eating for the entire three hours. We had to learn how to pace ourselves because sometimes each course could be one meal in itself. After dinner we played games before jumping into dessert.

12: 02 A.M. Midnight Mass. Christmas morning. Was it worth getting to bed at 2:00 A.M.? And I thought my family got up early to open presents at 6:00 A.M.

I took some pictures from our seats (pretty inconspicuously I might add as not to offend anyone) and probably shouldn't have but even got a shot of the priest himself. Kyle and I counted and we guessed there were between 800-1000 people at Midnight Mass in the famous St. Front Cathedral of Perigueux. It was so cold inside we could see our breath! I felt like the priest repeated himself a lot, but it was in French so I could be wrong...

Christmas morning we were excited because we had some small gifts to open from our families. That afternoon we ate lunch with a member family and later that evening had the missionaries over at our apartment to skype their families. Then went back to the member's home because they invited us to watch a movie. Christmas weekend + mountain-sized portions of food = pass out on bed for 12 hours.

A Bit of Noel Joy

We got a Christmas package from my family this last week! Looking at the address and the United States Postal stickers made it feel a little bit more like home. Being 5000 miles away from everything we've really ever known makes you feel so small sometimes. The package looked so lonely in the corner of our living room, I decided it needed a tree for it to live under. Using our creative juices and things lying around our apartment, this was the outcome:

Listening to Christmas music while making our tree really got us in the Christmas spirit! This year will be very different from Christmases we've known in the past. It has made me think of the reason why I celebrate the season. I know our Christmas in Perigueux will be one we will never forget.

Funny story. Last week was our branch Christmas Activity. They asked us to play the part of Mary and Joseph but Kyle was playing the piano so it would have been impossible (side note, this poor branch didn't have anyone to play the piano before Kyle came along. They would sing a cappella or turn on a CD player with hymns). They couldn't find a couple to play the part and being desperate asked me and Elder Heywood to do it. The funny part was, neither one of us can speak French (or understand it) very well yet so when the members read the Christmas story and we were supposed to act it out, we had no idea what we were doing. It was so hard to keep a straight face! At one point Kyle (sitting behind us at the piano) whispered "you're supposed to look surprised". It took a lot to not burst out with laughter at that point. Then there was baby Jesus--a wad of cloth (they forgot to bring a doll). When the angel handed me baby Jesus, some of the members looked at me and made hand motions like "what happened to baby Jesus?" (they were obviously laughing as hard as I was inside). Here are pictures for proof:

In the end, the program turned out great. We had a lot of less active and non-members show up so that made it worth it!

To end my post I just wanted to show pictures of downtown Perigueux decked out for the Holidays. It's very beautiful here! We live five minutes from where these pictures were taken, we are so lucky.

Chocolate Chip Cookies = Success

Can I just say the chocolate here is amazing. The supermarket has a whole aisle dedicated to chocolate and other candies. And I am in love. Kyle and I have decided to buy different varieties of chocolate during our stay here, try them, and then rate them. I will post our findings. I am super excited. The first bar we bought is coeur crème brulée craquante. It is the crème brulée dessert robed in a fine milk chocolate. My mouth is watering as I write...


So cookies. They aren't really made here. The bakeries are filled with pastries, cakes and tarts--but not cookies. Since chocolate chip cookies are a standard in every American home I decided to share them at a ward activity. They don't have chocolate chips here so I used some fancy French cooking chocolate (which is very tasty). I was very surprised when everyone kept asking who made the cookies and then telling me how delicious they were: "C'est qui qui a fait ces cookies?  C'est trop bon!  Tres delicieux!  Il faut qu'elle fasse au moins un kilo pour Noel!  Non, pas un kilo, au moins DEUX kilos!" ("Who made the cookies? It's just too good! Very delicious! She's got to make at least a kilo for our Christmas party! No make that two kilos!") And then I made some ginger snaps for a relief society Christmas meeting and everyone wanted la recette (the recipe). It made me feel good to hear these comments. I told Kyle later that night "if I can't talk to people very well in French, I might as well win their hearts through my cookies!" 


My French cooking is coming along. I tried a soup recipe from a blog I found (latartinegourmande, which I have fallen in love with) called "white lentil soup with chorizo and paprika cream". It was very satisfying. An ingredient they add to a lot of food here in France is an egg. They simply crack an egg in a pot of boiling water, cook it until the egg white is done and the yolk is runny, then place into a hot bowl of soup. Or they crack an egg in the middle of the pizza you ordered with the yolk still runny. I wasn't sure if we would like it in our soup but I tried it anyway just to get the full effect. We were pleasantly surprised! I sadly forgot to take a picture to share.


Tonight we are going to see the third Narnia movie with a young couple in our branch. Ca c'est mon premier film en francais sans sous-titres ( My first full length movie in French WITHOUT subtitles). *Sigh* I hope I will be able to understand what's going on...

Hair Cut

A couple of weeks ago I gave Kyle a haircut--it was my first time. I was actually pretty nervous because kyle's hair has no curl whatsoever (which isn't as forgiving if I had made a mistake). But my hubby was very encouraging and trusted me completely which made it a little easier. So I turned on the electric clippers and...

                                      

Voila! I had a lot of fun in the process so I will be cutting his hair from now on to help save some money. A man's haircut here costs at least 30 euros--sheesh, that better include a meal too. Even though it took me une heur et demie (an hour and a half) Kyle said it was worth it. I'm sure I'll get faster in the future.

Merry December

First off I wanted to give an update about our Thanksgiving feast last week--what a night. An hour before the missionaries showed up, our power went out and we didn't get it fixed for a half hour. By the time they got here at eight o'clock, everything was still cooking except for the apple pie, so it was very interesting trying to cook and eat before nine thirty so they could get home on time (mission rules). It ended up not being the nice, quiet, sit-down Thanksgiving meal I had pictured, but it was still enjoyable. It will be an unforgettable Holiday that Kyle and I will tell our kids about.

I can't believe it's already December--it has been over two months since Kyle and I flew to France. I am very excited for Christmas here in France. Kyle gets two weeks off of work and we've decided to take a little trip somewhere. We thought about Alsace (a region of France near the border of Germany) because everyone keeps telling us how beautiful it is there during Christmas-time. We also thought about somewhere in Italy. Anyone have any recommendations? One of our favorite families in the branch invited us over on Christmas Eve so we'll be here for the Holiday. Apparently here in France Christmas Eve is  the day to celebrate rather than Christmas Day. They invited us two weeks ago saying "we had to do it early enough otherwise someone else would have snatched you up since you're so popular". That made us feel good. Then on the 25th, another family invited us over for lunch. We are so thankful for the church and the members here in Perigueux--everyone has been so kind and generous! Another reason I'm excited for Christmas is because Perigueux will be decked out with lights and decorations. Since the end of October, workers have been out stringing lights between buildings and apartments. I can't wait to see the finished product.

Last weekend we went to Bordeaux with some friends we've made to see the new Harry Potter movie--I thought it was great (probably because it was in English). We went out to eat at a nice restaurant and then walked around centreville (downtown) browsing some of the shops. We had a desert that is unique to this city called le canele. The outside is crispy but then the inside is very moist--super delicious... Bordeaux is famous for the wines they produce and it's also famous for having one of the longest shopping streets (.75 miles)  in Europe. We got a taste of Christmas at night in Bordeaux seeing all the lights and the walking through the Marche de Noel (Christmas market). Each city at Christmas-time has a Marche de Noel where wooden booths are set up for people to sell gifts, food, ect. Haha, one booth we saw was similar to the carnival duck bond game were you fish out a duck and the number on the bottom tells you if you won a prize or not. In this game, it was santa that you chose instead of a duck. I can't wait to check out the market in our little ville.

Le Canelé