Bordeaux has exploded Christmas

Thursday was frustrating. There was a mandatory stage for all the secondary English assistants. About half of the secondary English assistants are American, so you can imagine our disdain about having a stage on Thanksgiving. I am not exactly sure what the stage was about, since I spent the morning thinking about the word stage. Is there an American English equivalent? Meeting? Not exactly. Training session? Kind of. A giant waste of a day and way for the French powers that be to ensure that since the French fail to see the fantasticness that is Thanksgiving, the Americans’ holiday celebrations are lame as well? Precisely. I spent the afternoon making a list of what I need to bring home with me, what I want to bring back here, and thinking about what kind of wine I should bring home. Aside from being held on Thanksgiving, one of the most annoying things about the stage was that it was conducted by 3 English teachers- a French woman who refused to speak to us in English, a French woman who only spoke to us in English, and an English man who spoke to us in English. It is really difficult to switch back and forth between languages, especially when the French speaking woman kept interrupting her colleagues to throw in her two, usually worthless, cents, and ended every one of her sentences with the word “what”, like she was 13. We had to write an evaluation at the end of the stage. One of the other assistants wrote her review in French and English, every other sentence. It was passive aggressive, but hopefully got the point across.

Thursday evening my friend had a Thanksgiving potluck at her apartment. No one really had time to cook anything special, since most of us were at the stage all day. However, we had the 4 basic French food groups covered-wine, baguette, cheese, and nutella.



I made an interesting observation on Friday. For over a month now I have been watching as Bordeaux put up beaucoup de Christmas decorations, and I have been eagerly anticipating the lights being turned on. For many Americans, myself not included given that I carve my jack-o-lantern while enjoying the Now That’s What I Call Christmas CD, the Christmas season official starts the day after Thanksgiving. Since the French do not celebrate Thanksgiving, I have been curious as to when their Christmas season official begins. I now have my answer. Despite the forth Thursday in November being just another day to the French, the fourth Friday in November is used as their official start to the Christmas season as well. I was sitting in a cafe late afternoon on Friday, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker of light. I got up and looked out the window, and much to my delight, saw the lights had been turned on.




On Friday evening, there was a fete outside the big cathedral in Bordeaux. From my understanding, there is a big competition among French cities to see who can have the biggest Buche de Noel. Currently, Bordeaux holds the record. In addition to the Buche de Noel, they had free vin chaud, a band dressed up in Santa suits, and ice skating.




Yesterday, another assistant had a Thanksgiving dinner at her house. She had found some turkey breasts at the grocery store. The food we had was a little more traditional Thanksgiving fare, despite the turkey not tasting at all like turkey. I provided the pumpkin pie, although that would have not been possible, had it not been for my fantastic mom, who gave me the gifts of canned pumpkin, evaporated milk, and pumpkin pie seasonings when she was here last month.


Our little family chez Maryse has grown. We got another housemate yesterday. His name is Robert. Robert is an interesting fellow. He is British, here for 2 months doing an internship. He is here through the same program that Catherine (my former housemate) was in. Catherine was 22, and just out of university. All of her colleagues were 22, just out of university, or 18 and here on their gap year. Robert is 39. I hope to befriend him, at least well enough to learn why he is 39 and just now doing an internship. He is 10 kinds of socially awkward though, so I may never know.