General

Christmas in France

First I thought Christmas could be hard for me. I thought I will miss my family and the German traditions.
But I didn’t.
In Germany the time before Christmas is filled with decorations in the house and in the shops. In France there are decorations too. In the shops and on the Street lamps. But we decorated our house very late, the week before Christmas. And our tree is very colourful, not like the one of my German family.
The day before Christmas eve we went shopping to Montpellier to buy gifts. I had the most gifts before and so I had time to buy other gifts, things for me and watching the decorations. The French seem to love colourful lights. In the dark they look really amazing! (but it is quite hard to take a photo of them)
On Christmas eve my aunt and her two children went to our hose and we had diner together. We went also to the church, it dured more than 1 1/2 hours! That was extremely long.
Afterwards we went home to eat the traditional 13 desserts and the “bûche de Noël” which was very delicious.
This morning we had our presents. That was a bit weird for me because in Germany we have our gifts on Christmas eve. But I felt very happy to have the possibility to be here!
And I got so fantastic presents!
My hostdad offered us a trip to Lisbon, we’ll fly tomorrow for 3 nights! That’s a big surprise for me and I’m very excited!
For lunch my hostdads mother, his brother and his aunt went to join us. We had very delicious things and I ate for the first time in my life oysters (it was a bit crazy because my host family watched me during eating).
And we had a very delicious bûche made by my host mother (I’ll be fat when I have to go back to Germany)
So that was Christmas for me in France. It was a very good experience and I enjoyed it soooo much.