Vacances de Noel: Part 2

This vacation was a very important time for me because I met almost the rest of the family and friends. That means that during February vacation I will know almost all of the twenty something people that are going to be staying in the house!

I had already met Lucile and Adélie's godfather's families, because they came to Bonneville during the Vacances de Toussain in October.  I essentially met everyone at Christmas.  We arrived at Pamiers, at Anne's sister's house Thursday (the 23rd) night after spending the day at the Chateaux Cathares.

We met the family, Noyale (Anne's sister) and her husband, Phillipe along with their three children, Gwendoline (23 years old), Loïc (20 years old) and Gaël (13 years old).  We all got along very well and had a great time together. The other cousins were there too, I had met them in Paris also during the Vacances de Toussain, Erwan (Anne's brother) and his wife Faty, and their two boys Magsen (13 years old) and Treveur (10 years old).

I also got the chance to meet Mamama (Anne's mother) and Mamie (Phillipe's mother).  They were the typical grandmothers, spoiling the grandchildren and refusing any help, getting up, sitting down etc.  They were very nice though.

Christmas was a very important time for everyone. To be together as a family for those couple of days a year is very special to them.  In fact, this was my first Christmas, and it was amazing! Christmas Eve we ate cold meat appetizers and foie gras (I LOVE IT!) and champagne before evening mass at 8:35pm (20:35).  This was also my first mass, and it was very interesting for me, they essentially sang and the priest told the story about baby Jesus and all that.

Lucile, Adélie and I

We got back to the house around ten o'clock and went straight to the gifts.  The mound around the Christmas tree was so large the we thought it was going to take forever to open them all.  The tradition was that the youngest got to distribute the  presents, the means that Treveur had to go through them one by one and hand them out.  Good thing that everyone opened their gifts at once, because if not, we really would have been there all night. After all of the presents were opened, we just stayed together, talked and ate the "petits gateaux de Noël" (little Christmas cookies).  We went to bed around one in the morning and slept until 11:30am!  They simply enjoyed being together, with the boys playing Mario Kart on the Wii and the girls reading on the couch.

Adélie and I Christmas Day, relaxin'

The next night we went to a restaurant where there were 28 of us where I met all of the family friends. I met the family who lives in Nancy, where we went for New Year's. We had a great time at New Year's, with the same concept of being all together.  I really did enjoy myself in Nancy and it is now the beginning of a new year!

We came back Saturday (Jan 1st) to Bonneville to finish our last minute work.  It was true that this past week (the first week back) was filled with work, tests, and more work! :)

To be continued in a short Part III