Hey everyone, I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years! I have quite a few things to catch up on, so I'll be sorta breif.

I got to spend a couple of days in Paris with (I'm never sure how to refer to people on here because it depends on who's reading) so with the Flerchingers/ my best friend and her family, when they visited in December. I had a really great time and it didn't feel like three and a half months had passed since I'd seen them! We did all the classic stuff like climbing the Eiffel Tower and doing to Louvre and just had a good time together.

 This church is near Notre Dame and has awesome stained glass windows.
 Up on Notre Dame

 In Versailles. That Palace is amazing!

 The Eiffel Tower from the top of the Arc de Triomphe

 So after a second goodbye (easier than the first one, but still hard!) I headed back home to Villepreux. Christmas was just a few days away so we were busy finishing up decorations and cooking. Most of our relatives showed up on Christmas Eve. We all walked to mass together, which was cool because I hadn't been to the church yet.

We came home and had a big seafood dinner. I had a great time with eveyone, eating, talking, and playing fooseball (a gift from their grandpa). At midnight we opened all the gifts, I got some lovely things from my host family and relatives that I didn't even expect, it was so nice! Then we went back to the table at about 1 am for dessert, which was delicious (of course). Elisa made the classic "Bouche de noel", or a log cake that was really yummy, Ludo made macaroons, Lucie and I helped with truffles, among lots of other stuff. Then we stayed up a little longer hanging out, testing our gifts, playing Just Dance on the wii. It was so much fun, I really had an awesome French Christmas :D

 Cheers!

 I can't get these pictures to turn for the life of me, your gonna have to cock your head, sorry :)  This is me with my host siblings and cousins.

 At the table

Our cute little Christmas tree (sideways, gosh dang it) with all the gifts. Most people headed out the next day so we had a couple lazy days to hangout before heading off to Geneve, Switzerland to go skiing. The skiing was great and we had mostly beautiful weather. As always I love seeing snow :) I don't have pictures with me now, but I'll hopefully get those posted soon. We walked around Geneve for one of the days, window shopping and looking at all the cool (and mega expensive) watches and jewlery. We spent New Years eve there as well, it was fun to see everyone out on the street with music and dancing. At midnight we watched a great fireworks show over the lake then headed back home to sleep.

Voila, that pretty much covers Christmas break! I'm glad that I have such a great host family that does all this cool stuff I get to experience. 

One last thing, we had the neighbohrs over last weekend to eat Galettes de Roi, or king's cakes, which is a french tradition for New Years. Each cake has a little thingy (called a fève) that you put inside, and who ever gets the fève in their slice is the kind/queen and gets to wear the crown.

So happy New Years to everyone!

Lauren