Noel is approaching!

Well Christmas (Noel en francais) is approaching and it's definitely going to be a different one for me this year. Thursday we had the Christmas meal at school, which wasn't really anything special except that they gave us bags of chocolate including a chocolate Santa, snowman (bonhomme de neige), and a couple small chocolate Christmas ornaments. Basically I got stuffed and then had a couple extra hours without class that I could do nothing with. Other than that not much is going on. My "host grandfather" came last night and he is staying a little bit past Christmas. I don't have much more to say on the subject of Christmas, but I'll be sure to post a little more about my experience here after it happens.

In other news, I realized that I've come a long way in speaking French. Yesterday I had to go and ask a secretary in my school if a teacher was there so I could go and talk to him about a class that he marked me absent for, and I think I talked really well. Plus the fact that I spoke well with my host grandfather last night, responding to his questions quickly and without confusion. I've actually realized for a while now that I understand people when they speak much more quickly, however I'm still not near what I consider fluent while speaking. I've found that speaking a new language is much more difficult to do compared to understanding one.

Now I don't have much going on. Today is the first day of vacation, and as the weather isn't very nice I spent it playing some board games with my host father, brother, and sister. I dominated Risk but my 11 year-old host sister won Clue. Tomorrow I'm going to my friend Benjamin's house for lunch, a little hanging out and possibly bike riding.

Anyways, I hope everyone who is now at my house for the Hanukkah party has an awesome time, I wish I could be there with you all. And I also hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas! Until the next post...