Nous sommes encore 5!

Our Nicholas arrived safely at the Marseille International Airport on Friday into anxiously waiting, welcoming, loving arms. It was SO good to see him!

We've spent the weekend enjoying each other and the merriment of the season.

Tonight, we are off on an adventure to Egypt and we wish all our friends and family who read this blog Blessings of the Season, a Merry Christmas and Joy and Peace in the New Year!

Concert a Cathédrale St-Sauveur

Last weekend, our church had its annual Christmas Carol concert in the beautiful Cathédrale St-Sauveur (Holy Savior Cathedral) in Aix. The cathedral was built in fits and starts from the 5th century to the 15th century and is known for its interesting combination of architectural styles. The site on which it was built has been considered sacred for thousands of years. It first hosted a pre-Roman pagan temple, then a Roman temple, and finally the Christian church that stands today. At the concert, there were about 1200 French, English and other nationalities in attendance. This was our family's third year participating in the concert and this year there were four of us; Nick and I sang in the Carol Choir and I also sang in the newly formed Gospel Choir.









Sarah moved from Children's Choir to Ushering...




and Lindsey was in the audience!




Hilary How Rivera and her assistant, Shane, did a great job of directing all three choirs...



The cathedral looked beautiful and we had some great speakers who told the story of Jesus' birth through scripture...

The last song of the evening is always Silent Night. For this carol, all the lights in the cathedrale are turned out (and it is really dark!). While we sing Silent Night acappela, one single candle is carried from the rear of the church to the alter where all ministers, priests and pastors present congregate to light their candles. They in turn, light the choir's candles and then the light moves throughout the cathedrale until everyone's it lit. These photos hardly do the whole experience justice, but they give you an idea of how magical it is...

One of our church members, Apryl Anderson, put together her photos and made a YouTube video of the performance. If you watch it, the background music "Oh, Happy Day" is sung by our gospel choir and that is our good friend and choir director, Hilary, singing the solo. Maybe if you look very closely you might find a few photos of Nick, Sarah and I.

Concert video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkOSsVsuGBE&eurl=http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1022250529266

The second video is of the concert rehersal the night before.
Concert rehersal:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phe2qBWxZJA


Here's a photographic look at our walk home from the concert that night.

The Hotel de Ville....

Rue Gaston de Saporta...




The Cours Mirabeau...

Let Us Give Thanks...

At this time of year, many of our American friends say “They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving there, do they?” Well, the French don’t celebrate but the Americans definitely do. Not only that, but the French love to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. They find this particular American holiday really interesting; it's history and, o course, the special foods. This year, we had the opportunity to share the tradition not once but three times!

Our first and largest celebration, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, was organized and sponsored by our church, The International Christian Community of Provence. In an attempt to provide many with a place to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast, our congregation invited friends of many different nationalities to come and partake of the meal at a Salles des Fetes in the nearby village of St Marc Jaumegarde, just 7 km east of Aix. Each family was asked to bring their favorite side dish or dessert and a baguette; the church and its staff decorated and set up the facility and provided all the turkeys and wine. Our good friends, John and Claude Elk were here to visit and celebrate Thanksgiving with us for a few days. Together we made mashed potatoes, with Claude's secret ingredient, ground nutmeg, and green beans for 15 to contribute to the meal. Everyone’s combined efforts, as you can see, produced a long, lavish table!! What a ‘harvest’! Can you believe 248 people were served that day!?!

Lindsey's housemother, Marie Francoise, Lindsey's housemate in Aix and at the College of Charleston, Caroline and Claude...

Our bookend friends in this photo, Martin, British and John...

Now add our Scottish friend, Jill Eadie, to the table....

And our French friends, Bettina, Capucine and Waldemar Lucas de Reau for a truly international bunch!

Our second Thanksgiving dinner was the brainchild of Lindsey and her American housemates, Caroline and Karolyn. These three college students, who’ve been living together during their semester in Aix, put together a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner for their housemother, Marie Francoise, 5 of her friends and Nick, Sarah and I. They worked really hard to produce all the dishes they each felt needed to be represented on their Thanksgiving table. Being from the states of Colorado, Alabama and Massachusetts there were different ‘must haves’ from each of them. Fixing a traditional Thanksgiving in the US takes a lot of time and effort, but imagine life without ingredients like Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix or Libby’s pumpkin pie filling? None of that stuff is available here so you have to make everything from scratch. The girls made cranberry sauce, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, a tomato casserole and a pumpkin pie! Everything was delicious and we all gave these girls very high marks for their first attempt at preparing a Thanksgiving dinner.

Linds was happy to have Dad on hand to make the gravy and carve the turkey...

Sarah helped put the finishing touches on the gravy....

A few smiles for the camera....

and we all sat down to another feast!!

Our third, and final, Thanksgiving dinner took place on Thanksgiving Day at 2:30pm in the afternoon with the same three families we celebrated with the year before. Our pastor, Darrin and his wife, Julie and their kids hosted the meal this year. All tolled we were a party of 16; four families of four! Nick, Sarah and I were delighted to have Lindsey with us. We were joined by our American friends, Teal and Megan Rapp, their girls and Fabien and Cecile and their children, now celebrating their 2nd ever Thanksgiving.

Julie set a lovely table....

Darrin and Fabien carved the beautiful bird....

Julie, Cecile, Nick and Teal anticipating the feast....

Kids table also awaitng the feast....

In addition to homemade pumpkin pie a la Lindsey, Cecile brought amazing French desserts. One special one has hidden treasures in each one and Olivia and I each got one so we were crowned queens for the day!

So, as you can see, YES, we do celebrate Thanksgiving in France....and with so much to be thankful for why not do it more than once!?!?

Un jour a Montpellier

Nick, Lindsey, Sarah and I went to the southern provencale city of Montpellier this week. Located about an hour and a half southwest of Aix by car, we have been interested in visiting this city for a while and decided to make our debut trip a 'look-see' day trip. In current travel literature, Montpellier, population 225,000, is described as France's fastest growing city. "Located just a few miles inland from the sea, it has been transformed from a sleepy, university city into the powerhouse of Mediterranean France – and the new darling of the international party set." 1 Montpellier is described by one visitor brochure as "an ancient, academic city with handsome historic buildings, abundant gardens and an impressively vast central square". OK, so let's take a look! We arrived at midday and went directly in search of a cafe for lunch in that 'vast central square' known as Place de la Comedie. The square is dominated by the opera house of the same name and is also by the fountain of the Three Graces, both of which you see here...

The cherubs in the fountain were precious....

Place de la Comedie is home to not one, but two, grand opera houses a mere 400m apart. The other one is the Berlioz opera. Monpellier is known for having a large, well endowed music program and hosts events of all kinds year round.

Once on this great plaza, we had a number of inviting cafes to choose from and we settled on the Cafe 1893, which might very well have been there since then. We got a great outdoor table which allowed us to listen to street musicians and watch the constant parade of people walking by. Apparently this pedestrian zone is one of the largest in Europe with some 60,000 people through it each day. There were far fewer when we were there for lunch but by afternoon when schools were out it was full of people of all ages. It never felt crowded though, just full of energy.

After lunch, we began our very informal, self-guided walking tour of the city. We started out from Place de la Comedie on rue de la Loge, one of the main shopping streets. We saw most of the same shops one finds in Aix, only they were bigger, as well as others that were new to us. On past the retail taunts, we took rue Foch toward the Arc de Triomphe...

This arch, built at the end of the 17th century, is an imitation of the gates in Paris and was constructed to honor Louis XIV. Passing under the beautiful Arch, we crossed the periferique and entered Place Royale du Peyrou, a large public square with a grand statue of Louis XIV on horseback and at the far end a water tower.

Nick's three girls!!

From this terraced promenade, de Peyrou provides views as far as the Med and Cévennes National Park. The walk leads eventually to an aqueduct modelled on the Pont du Gard, which is located to the north outside Nîmes.

We continued our tour passing the Jardin des Plantes, created by Henry IV and one of France’s oldest botanical gardens. We will go here on our next visit, hopefully when Mom, the landscape achitect is visiting. Next stop was the Faculty de Medicine, the oldest still-active medical school in the Western world. Montpellier was only two centuries old in 1181, when its Lord Guilhem VIII signed a surprising and far-reaching edict. He declared that anyone, regardless of religion or background, could teach medicine in Montpellier.

Nick and I standing at the doors to this illustrious institution...

There was much more to see in Montpellier, but the afternoon got away from us so after a brief stop in a cosy cafe we headed back to Aix with definite plans to return to this fascinating city soon.

1. http://www.timeout.com/travel/montpellier/intro
2. ibid.

Tourist information: http://www.ot-montpellier.fr/