Et Finalement...

During my walk home today- it's been raining so much the Seine is overflowing

Lots of food pictures today! As I write this my entire room is packed up and cleaned. It's my last night in Paris and I've spent it packing and listening to Christmas to get into the holiday spirit. It's been noticeably warmer this week, so it's been hard to remember that Christmas is only a few days away. And on top of that I'm approaching the holiday with mixed emotions: sad to be leaving Paris, excited to start my next quarter, so happy to finally see Thea again, and very upset that I won't be seeing my family for Christmas. I'm missing them more than anything. 

On a lighter note, I leave for Sweden tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to (hopefully) have my very first white Christmas! So the last few days here have been filled with goodbyes and lasts. 

Christmas feast

Not a very attractive spread, but very delicious. We had a Fête de Noël in my French class on Friday morning and everyone brought something fun. My favorites were the Vietnamese food and our professor's homemade chocolate truffles. We sat in class eating, talking and joking one last time. Near the end the Vietnamese students sang us some beautiful songs! And then they asked us to sing an American Christmas song...so we went with White Christmas. I'm going to miss that class most of all, with all of it's characters. I never went one class without laughing in that room.

Moules marinières et frites- Muscles!

Then after running a thousand different errands to get everything together before I leave, I met all of my friends near Saint-Germain-des-Pres and we got dinner. It was fantastic and we had a really nice last night together. After dinner we ended our night under the Eiffel Tower with a bottle of champagne. I couldn't have spent the night in better company, it was perfect.

The petite rue where we had dinner

But! because I'm not leaving until tomorrow, I had the day to finish all the little things I needed to do and ended up grabbing lunch with two friends who haven't left yet either. We found a nice café near Odéon and ate a delicious meal together. Then I was off yet again to hunt down some last minute presents and walked all the way home. It was grey and dark all day, but Paris was beautiful as always.

Steak haché et oeuf à cheval