December Daily {:11:} Flexibility, Russians, Silliness

My original plan for today was: prep dinner in the crockpot, fill out my forms for my end-of-the-year evaluation, go to jewelry class, invite thecamelridingcowgirl over for dinner.

Then she called me early this morning to let me know that one of our colleagues is sick and it would just be me teaching jewelry.  She added the statement, "But the last hour will be the Christmas party anyway, so even if you got overwhelmed with students, it wouldn't last for as long as a normal class."  Oops...forgot about the Christmas party.  So, change of plans #1: leaving earlier than planned to swing by the colleague's house to get the jewelry stuff.

Change of plans #2: make cookies for Christmas party...

 ...while prepping dinner in crockpot... ...put off end-of-the-year forms for tonight.  Don't invite the camelridingcowgirl to dinner.  Bummer.

On the way to meet thecamelridingcowgirl to head to class, I walked through the fallen leaves.  There aren't many trees in Marseille, and the leaves on them don't really change color.  Only in the last two weeks have we really begun to see some fallish colors.  These leaves fell green and then turned brown on the ground.  They were fun to walk through...in the middle of December!

I talked to my boss on the way to class, and he postponed our meeting for the end-of-the-year evaluation (that was supposed to be tomorrow).  So, change of plans #3: invite the camelridingcowgirl to dinner.  Yay!  But first, jewelry class.

Here we are afterwards having our sort of Christmas party.  It's sort of hard to throw a full American style Christmas party in center for mostly Muslim women.  So...we had fresh donuts, some North African pancake-type things, brownies and gingersnaps (the last two provided by the Americans), and  mint tea and coffee.  It was fun times.

Since thecamelridingcowgirl was coming to dinner, we dropped our stuff (and her car) off at her apartment, where I got to look out at this pretty view:

 ...and then we hopped the metro to head over to my place.  When we got off the metro at the VP, there was craziness.  Insanity.  Bedlam.

All of Russia descended on Marseille today in the most awful yellow you've ever seen, and were ALL carrying open bottles of alcohol, and they ALL decided to try to get on the metro at the very minute we were trying to get off.  Seriously...so crazy.  I snapped this photo once we'd pushed our way a bit out of the crowd upstairs above the metro platforms.  I suppose there must be a soccer game or something.  Otherwise, I don't know why Russia came to Marseille...except for warmth?  Sun?  Maybe they just like our metro?

{This is my life in France.  Something happens, and I just remain clueless about it.  Even after six years, I still feel lost at least once a week about things going on around me.}

There's thecamelridingcowgirl all cozied up by the heater in my apartment while we waited for the crockpot to finish crocking.  

While we ate dinner, we played this silly little game that Santa left in my stocking last year.  Oh man, did we ever laugh hard.  It had questions like, "Santa Claus lives in (a) North Pole (b) South Pole or (c) Nebraska."

The best, though, was when I asked her the question, "What is tall, green, smells like pine, and is decorated with lights for Christmas?"  Before I could give her the options, she yelled out, "Bonfils!"

Yes!  He was sick this past weekend, so he would have been tall and green, and maybe after cleaning up his sickness he smelled like pine...but what I wouldn't pay to see the Bonfils decorated with lights for Christmas!

So, the day didn't turn out quite like I'd planned, but it turned out well, I'd say.