Making the Yuletide Gay...

Hope y'all had a delightful Chrismahanakwanzavus.  We sure did, and have the pictures from Strasbourg* to prove it.  Our whirlwind tour of France continues with the arrival of AH's siblings today and a wine tour of Burgundy.  I promise to sober up in a few days and regale you with all the details.  Until then, enjoy the after-Christmas sales, and try to eat all of those leftover Christmas cookies before New Year's- for each Christmas cookie left unconsumed by the advent of 2012, a tragic circumstance will befall you**.  

*"Strasbourg!," you say,  "Surely you mean Cologne, Germany!".  But alas, our Cologne trip was foiled by striking Belgian train workers (they get a government, and chaos erupts.  This cannot be a good sign).

**Yes, I might have just made that up, but the principle still stands: Christmas cookies are meant to be eaten.

Let It Drizzle Depressingly (and Interminably)

Hey, as we've discussed, we're all about realistic expectations around these parts.  At least the uptick to experiencing typical Parisian weather over the holidays is that it beats driving in blizzards, and it sure as heck beats having to rely on two homeless men, a random passser-by, and three OSU students to push my car out out of the mountain of snow under which it had been buried by the snowplows (not that I speak from personal experience or anything).

The stockings my mommy sent have been placed 'neath the skylight with care.  So yes, Virginia, despite the lack of snow I've actually managed to find plenty of time to be festive and merry in the month of December.  Here have been some of the highlights:

AH, the man who is so Grinch-like that he refuses to allow a Christmas-tree in our apartment and has been wishing people a "Happy Winter Solstice" (I had to fight tooth and nail to keep him from putting that as the greeting on our holiday cards), actually suggested that we go to the Marche de Noel (Christmas Market) on the Champs Elysses.  Mulled wine was drank, sausages were consumed, an ornament was bought (for our non-existent tree)...

...and giant, animatronic dinosaurs moved slowly and creepily next to a little person in a Santa hat who was calling people to take their places in line for the "Age de Magique," sounding like he would rather be putting a nail through his foot than yelling at a bunch of disinterested holiday shoppers.  Seriously, I could not make this s--t up.

The holiday fun continued this weekend with the arrival of Tour Guide Barbie, stopping in Paris on her way home to the States for Christmas.  We promised her Christmas-themed happytimes, and thus we set off for Galleries Lafayette which has famously elaborate holiday window displays. The theme of the displays, however, seemed to be "angsty marionettes":

Because nothing says punk rock like puppets.

 And the WTF-ery continued with this window.  They look like pygmy puffs (shout-out, HP nerds!) as styled by the Kardashians.  

However, we managed to finish the night with a visual palate cleanser courtesy of Place Vendome:

Last night the Christmas momentum continued with a fun night of cookie-baking with some of the swell gals from the ACP youth group.  The chocolate chip cookies that we made were so good that AH actually had an Aunt Cheri moment with one, so I'd say the evening was successful.

We also baked sugar cookies, which meant that I got to bust out the Eiffel Tower cookie cutter that my mommy sent me.  I got to feeling a little prematurely sentimental, and decided that I would take pictures of the Eiffel Tower cookies, lovingly decorated with homemade frosting and sprinkles, and send pictures back to the parental units in the Midwest.  Instead, this is what came out of the oven:

The Pastor's Wife and I decided that, perhaps, the Eiffel Tower cookies should not be presented to the kids to decorate.  So I set mine aside and decorated it as appropriately as I could:

So enjoy your festivities, everyone.  AH and I are off to Cologne, Germany tomorrow to do much imbibing and museuming.  Wish me luck dragging him to the Christmas market.  Lord knows I won't be able to bribe him with a cookie.

 

So Come On and Let Me Know...

Ah, the fog of stress that has been my life the past week was finally lifted last night amidst a cloud of celebratory chicken wings and (much) beer.  My finals have all been turned in, my government-mandated integration courses have been completed, and the children's production of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas that I was helping out with was performed without a single kid peeing himself on stage (which is my measure of success for children's performances).  I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is a trip to Cologne, Germany, followed by the arrival of my favorite siblings-in-law (that would be all of them because, really, I can't pick a favorite). 

Indeed, it is mighty nice to indulge my love of trashy fantasy novels and facebook stalking without that touch of self-loathing that comes from knowing that I really should be spending my time more productively.  However, now that my mind isn't occupied by a million and ten other things, it has begun wandering back to my nagging question of the month: where am I going to be this time next year?

Allow me to explain.  At this time last month, I assumed that AH and I would be leaving France in March.  Then, a job opportunity came up that would keep us here for another two years.  Then we were back to September of 2012.  And now, for the moment, it's looking like another year.

Now, to be clear, our future is far from set in stone.  In fact, I make no assumptions until I know that a contract has been signed.  But every time AH comes home and asks me, “How would you feel about leaving in three months?,” “How about nine months?,” “How about two years?,” I’m forced to think about what up until recently has only been vaguely forming at the periphery of my consciousness.  At some point, I stopped being a long-term tourist and started being an expat.  I’m no longer simply gallivanting about on a pastry-cloud; I’ve actually made a life for myself here.  So now the question is, is the life that I want to continue living?  For how long?

The universe, knowing that his question is weighing on my mind something fierce, has put me on the receiving end of two folks reflecting on their time in Paris over the last few days.  The first was the mother of two of the young denizens of Whoville.  While making small-talk, I asked her how long she had been in Paris.  She responded that she had been here with her family for five years but that they were about to move.  When I asked why she responded, “Because I think my children can’t keep living the Parisian life indefinitely.  We spent the summer in Canada, and I forgot how easy things are other places.  There is just so much in Paris that is difficult, and none of it needs to be.”

And of course, in the midst of my own needlessly difficult Parisian circumstance, aka my government-mandated integration class, the instructor offered the opposing argument.  “Some people say that life in Paris is difficult, and they’re right.  But just try.  Try, and it won’t be so hard.  Try, and it’s worth it.”

Now this man counts French as his first language and is married to a French citizen, but still: dude’s got a point.  So far, I haven’t tried any harder than I’ve needed to, I’ve been satisfied with just getting by.  I keep telling myself that I’ll pick up French by putting the French subtitles on my Sex and the City DVD’s.  Looking for an apartment in Paris sucks, so I live in a dorm with the square footage of a Ford Focus and no kitchen table; AH and I eat dinner every night at my desk watching The Daily Show on my laptop like a couple of undergrads.  I have American friends, work for an American family, and go to an American school.  And all of this is fine for a person who is going to be living in a country for less than a year.  I largely credit any success I’ve had adjusting to life abroad to having realistic expectations.  I’ve been content to wander through Parisian life, trying not to be too hard on myself when I have to flap like a lunatic at the salesgirl to get her to understand what I need, and absorbing the culture as I go.  But if I’m going to continue living here, I need to quite pretending that I’m a sponge and actually wade out deeper into the Frenchy Frenchness around me.

My real dilemma, though, is not simply in how many hours of French classes I think I can fit into a week along with work and seminary classes, or even the prospect of finding a decent apartment in Paris.  I’m wrestling with the anxiety of trying to become a real grown-up, not a post-college nomad.  And it’s not my biological clock that’s making me anxious.  Rather it’s an itch to just put down roots; I can practically feel them trying to unfurl, searching for soil that they can burrow into, trying to anchor me to something safe and steady.  But I think that this might be the challenge of my quarter-life crisis: discovering that maybe rootedness won’t look like what I had always pictured it to be.  Maybe it doesn’t involve a two story house and a couple of corgis.  Maybe rootedness is more about what I’m willing to invest, rather than any sense of stability that I might gain in return. 

Perhaps this is for the best.  After all, if my life circumstances continue to largely be dictated by a laser, I’m going to have to stick to a sense of security that doesn’t involve corgis.

BLARG

 Alas, finals have descended upon me and are keeping me chained to the not-as-fun-part of my computer, but I will return to posting by Tuesday at the latest.   Pray that my Wills & Kate mug may be ever full, and my brain may ever be willing to create more BS to be transferred to the page.

Art According to Allison: Someone Get Jesus Some Pants

So, I get it.  Israel's a pretty toasty place; it makes sense that Jesus wouldn't be swaddled in velvet and fur.  But why must Jesus always be the lone scantily clad figure in a sea of corsets and pumpkin pants?  

 I might not have read the Bible as carefully as you would expect from a seminarian, but I still think I would remember a reference to Jesus' refusing to ever tell a parable or heal lepers in anything more  than a loin cloth. 

Nope, sorry.  Capes are fantastic, but they, like leggings, are not a substitute for pants.  Seriously, the strategic draping over his lap is more soft-core porn than religiously devotional.  And there definitely better be no wayward breezes in heaven.

OK, fine, even Andrew Lloyd Weber decided that the crucifixion has more emotional impact when Jesus is wearing a diaper.  But I think this artist might have been overly concerned with perfecting the super-stripey pants down there on the left, and thus left Jesus pantless out of negligence.

Old Navy has nice pants.

 

 Kohl's does, too.

 

Seriously, you jerks.  Jesus has been through a lot for us.  SOMEONE PLEASE GET HIM SOME PANTS.