Marché du Noel à Colmar, France!

Again, apologies and excuses for not writing in a while. Teaching has been kicking me in the butt here for the last couple of weeks.

I did catch enough of a break to have a little fun this week! Thursday the other assistants and I went to an African Dance class, which was awkward and hilarious and awesome! It was the four of us--me, Lupita, Pam, and Katherin, plus about 8 older ladies. We began by stretching and doing some aerobic stuff. I had already done a kind of intensive internet-yoga class that morning, so I was starting to feel twinges in my back and my tush as we started laid on our backs doing pelvic thrusts up in the air...then to the left...then to the right...then pulses...;) We did some warm up jumping around and then started learning a new choreography--it seemed kind of difficult at first, but looked really cool when the teacher did it,  and all the ladies were saying things like, "Good Lord! I'll never get my body to do that!" and "Oh, now I've done it, help me up!" which was pretty funny. We all really enjoyed ourselves in the end and I'll think we'll start going regularly. It's good to be able to laugh at yourself at least once a week, I think...

On Wednesday we took off for Colmar after our classes to visit the marché du noel there (Christmas market). Colmar is about two hours north, near Strasbourg, and I think we had to traverse about a million roundpoints to get there. I am learning German from Katherin's GPS and I can now tell you that "fellassen" means "exit" the roundpoint...
We stepped out of the car in Colmar and I immediately thought of Disneyworld. Everything was incredibly picturesque--so much so that I wondered if I stepped around a corner whether or not I would backs to the buildings or if they would turn out to be two-dimensional!

All the shops and house in the old town were decorated with wreaths, lights, boggles, toggles, flowers, etc. The architecture was noticeably very different from that of Vesoul or Besancon--it's clearly an Alsatian town, and I found the wood-beamed houses utterly charming--like Snow White, spend-a-weekend-here charming, not like I-have-found-where-I-will-spend-the-rest-of-my-life charming. I say this because it was so touristy, and as with the two-dimensional feeling, part of me felt that Colmar was like Colonial Williamsburg or something--you could enjoy it for a little while, but it was like someone's idea of a perfect town, just a tad creepy. And, like Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg, or Helen, GA, there were busloads of plump older folks there to stagger around taking pictures of each other near fake reindeer and buy "folksy" trinkets that were probably made in China.

Also at Colmar I heard Americans and British folks speaking to each other, the first I have heard since I've been in France. At any rate, we had a lovely time poking around the arts and crafts booths and drinking hot chocolate and mulled wine while Christmas music was blasted at us from speakers attached to the sides of buildings. It was very very chilly, so after a couple of hours we were happy to pile back into Katherin's tiny car and head north a bit further to Riqswihr, a village situated in rolling foothills covered in grape vines, nestled at the foot of the Vosges mountains. Some of the Vosges had snow on the tops, and this was the first time either of the two Mexican girls had ever seen snow!

The town---village, really, was at one time a walled city. Most of the buildings and houses on the perimeter formed a solid enclosure, tightly contained, with outer gates and passages that could be locked, shutting out the world.  We found a passageway from the parking lot and followed it up a stairwell and out onto the cobbled streets of this entirely pedestrian town center. Night was falling and a nearly full moon was shining through a web-work of clouds. Christmas lights were starting to come on and it made a very warm, glowing scene. We stood, mouths agape, taking lots of pictures. There were a lot of touristy shops here, too, selling pain d'epice and holiday cookies and potholders with "Riqwehr" on them...basically the french equivalent of the tshirts that say "Sombody who loves me went here..." but the architecture and atmosphere of the town itself managed to win me over all the same. It was so easy to imagine life there a hundred years earlier, three hundred years earlier... I think the whole town smelt slightly of cedar boughs and cinnamon.

It got pretty bitterly cold as we wandered through the small marché du noel, but I think we were all enjoying this first day where it really felt like Winter--and the first time its felt like the holidays for me!

Then Friday night we were visited by several other assistants from Besancon, Luis, who we stayed with during the Toussaints break, and two Irish assistants, Laura and Rebekah. We had a nice time listening to music and learning to dance salsa and generally being goofy together.


Saturday morning we were awakened really early by the arrival of two more assistants from Bolivia. We sat around sleepily munching croissants they had thoughtfully bought on their way through town and then we headed off to the market to buy ingredients for what turned out to be a "Boli-Cuban" International Cuisine Cooperation Experiment, the results of which  were delicious. I enjoyed talking to everyone and hearing about their experiences in France as well as life in their home countries. As always, I wished I had had a moment to read up on things in Wikipedia.
"Do you know much about Bolivia?" one of the guys asked me.
"Errmm..."
"We have the highest capital of any country in the world," he said proudly, and without missing a beat, "and we grow more species of potatoes than anywhere else on earth."
And like the true multi-cultural gathering that we were, we spoke French while making and eating the Boli-Cuban meal, with background music from an a capella German group called "Wise Guys." Yes, truly, life is good.