Hello!

It's been a while since I updated this. I'll see if I can remember all that happened.

We had Thanksgiving here, and then that weekend, I took the train down to Montpellier to visit Kiersten from the Mac rugby team. She's spending the semester studying there. It was really great to see someone from Mac and I had a fun time. We went with one of her friends from her university rugby team to the Montpellier match. Montpellier has this gorgeous rugby stadium that they built for the world cup a few years ago and it was pretty exciting to see rugby in a real stadium. Montpellier played horribly and lost by a lot, but I still love watching rugby even if it's bad. After that, we headed back to Kiersten's for a while, then we met some more of her friends in la Place de la Comedie where they had a wine tasting. We tried some wine. I still don't know anything about it, but I tasted some things that I liked and it was fun to wander around and here about the different kinds of wine. Then we took the tram to another one of Kiersten's friends from rugby's apartment where a bunch of us watched the French national rugby team play the All Blacks (New Zealand). France started out doing okay, but then they lost it completely and ended up losing the match pretty badly. Kiersten's friends were all nice though and lots of fun. They made fun of us for being American quite a bit, but it was pretty entertaining. On Sunday, Kiersten showed me around Montpellier. It was kind of cold and windy, but it was fun to see the city. They have 2 mini Arc de Triomphes. Then in the afternoon I took the train back to Bourgoin.

I worked during the week and that was good. I worked some more on body parts and sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" way way way too many times. I also taught a class of 5th graders the hokey pokey. That was really fun. I should take a video of them. They really get into it.

Oh yeah. I tried to get my rugby stuff worked out since I have my social security number. I went to the rugby association and waited while someone printed out my license form. It was supposed to be done on Monday, but the French rugby website was down, so I couldn't get it until Wednesday. Then I had to make a doctor's appointment, which was scary and annoying. The 2 clinics that the lady at the association gave me didn't have appointments until after Christmas, so that wasn't good. Isa from rugby gave me the numbers of all the doctors in Bourgoin who could sign my form, so I was going to spend Wednesday calling all of them begging for an appointment that afternoon or Thursday morning. It actually worked out well though - the first doctor I called had an appointment Wednesday evening. I went, had a physical, he told me I was fine, and he signed and stamped my form. I dropped it off at the association and then Christine (the lady in charge of our team's paperwork) took it up to the regional association in Lyon on Friday for them to stamp it. (The French really like their stamps). Unfortunately, the place in Lyon couldn't stamp my form because I'm not French, so they had to send it to Paris instead. So I didn't get to play in the rugby game on Sunday even though I had all of my part of the paperwork done. That was disapointing, but oh well. I really should be able to play in the next match in January.

This weekend, Zoe came up from Grenoble. We went to the Bourgoin rugby match on Saturday afternoon. Bourogin won, which was exciting. They don't win very often. Then Zoe, Ellie, and I took the train to Lyon for a lights festival. There were light displays all over the city. Mostly there were huge projections in front of buildings. It was cool to see, but unbelievably crowded. In front of most of the projections there were wall to wall people. It was almost impossible to navigate through the streets. We didn't get to see a ton of displays, but the ones we did see were pretty. I tried to take pictures, but they didn't turn out very well. Once we were all tired out from trying to push our way through giant crowds, we took the train back to Bourgoin. On Sunday, Zoe headed back to Grenoble, and Linnea and I went to go see my rugby team play their match. The team played really well and they won 40-8. It was fun to watch.

Today, I went to the grocery store, did laundry, mailed letters, bought a sewing needle to finish the mittens I'm knitting, and made Christmas flashcards for my little kids tomorrow. I'm glad I can talk about Christmas in school. I'm going to teach them a bunch of words and then we're going to see "Oh Christmas tree" and then color. I'm excited.