A New Album

I've started a new Metzing Around photo album on facebook complete with all of the new pictures since the end of Fall semester. Click HERE to view the pictures.

What a Wonderful Christmas

While it is difficult to be so far from family and friends during what the song says is "...the most wonderful time of the year", we have managed to make the most of our first Christmas together as a young married couple in a foreign country. On Wednesday we managed to get all of our Christmas shopping and wrapping done in a record 4 hours and then we spent two long shopping trips before the holiday stocking up on essentials for the long weekend with no open stores and tons of time to eat. We ended up with an impressive spread...foie gras, plenty of cheese, plenty of wine, escargot, a duckling, duck fat, a lamb leg, pork belly, lots of veggies and beans...oh, and of course, butter. And in case any of you worried (haha) that we weren't eating well in France, our main concern is some form of early onset heart disease :-)

Since we have no current income, we agreed that this this Christmas would be a frugal one. Most of our presents for each other were apartment necessities, but we made sure that each had a surprise gift under the tree. Michael ended up with a teapot shaped tea bag holder (more of a gift for me, really), escargot/oyster forks, escargot baking plates, a USB wall plug for his iPod and a new kitchen scale. My loot included a metal mixing bowl (I can finally make Grandma Baker's rice pudding!), chopsticks, new headphones and 1000 Bornes, a favorite french card game that we played incessantly in High School French class. We made a delicious brunch of French toast with some Canadian maple syrup and fried potatoes then we played lots of 1000 Bornes and watched some TV.

Excluding the whole being-a-quarter-of-a-world-away from "home", we have managed to make a pretty good temporary home here in Metz. We are so thankful to have this incredible opportunity to live in France and travel Europe but we definitely look forward to being at home again with family this time next year. In the meantime though, we are greatly anticipating the arrival of Michael's mom and dad this weekend. We will be traveling to southern France, very close to the Spanish border. It will be a much needed break from Metz, this frigid weather, and a much needed visit with family :-)
Enjoy the remainder of your Christmas.

The Finale

Since Michael is currently occupied trying to compete with the pretty ribbons I put on his presents last night, I thought I would steal his computer for a few minutes to update you on our latest Christmas Market adventure in our hometown of Metz.

We awoke to a blustry and snowy Saturday morning. I had been jealous of all the wonderful snow that has been hitting the northeast lately and was happy that we got to enjoy some of our own. Unfortunately, this cold and white weather did not make for a very amicable trip into town, but we'll get to that later. As we were walking around the lake to the bus stop we noticed all of the resident birds had flocked to this end of the pond...I had just said something about wondering what the birds ate when it was this cold when we noticed that people had thrown entire baguettes onto the lake for their feasting enjoyment. I'm not sure if you can make them out in the picture but it was an interesting thing to see.

Here is a glimpse of the Metz Christmas market.  As you have probably noticed, it bares a striking resemblence to the Christmas markets in Strasbourg and Reims. As such, most of the contents of the booths were similar and didn't interest us enough to warrant stopping in the very cold (1º with windchill). We didn't really find much to buy except for some delicious mixture of potatoes, cream and lardons that we scarfed down for lunch. We did manage to make it to all of the markets just for the sake of seeing them all. In between markets we would find a large department store to explore so our feet had time to recover from the chill.

On one of said breaks, we decided to take another walk-through of the Metz Cathedral and this time, take some pictures. 

After freezing and walking for most of the day, we were ready for a break and a nice warm drink. We met up with a Metzer friend, Vanessa (I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of all of us) at one of the markets for some hot mulled wine...YUM! The picture isn't meant to do much more than demonstrate just how cold it was. Around the center of the table you can see the wine ice forming from all of the wine hungry customers who couldn't keep the drink in their cup.

After picking Vanessa's brain for some of her favorite French restaurants in Metz, we said goodbye and made our way to the place at the top of her list where we enjoyed our first multi-course French meal in Metz. It was quite a treat, be jealous!

I will try to post again over the next few days but we all know how bad I am at posting regularly, so if I don't get to posting before, have a very merry Christmas everyone! We will miss our families and friends this holiday season but are incredibly grateful to be spending Christmas in this wonderful country.