So much to write about, and so many technical problems!!!
This will be short, as I'm writing from the médiathèque de tergnier, because at the moment my laptop charger is broken, so I cant use my computer. I ordered another one, but it might not arrive for a month :( I'll be praying that it arrives sooner, because that's a long time to go without skype and blog and modern family. I did find the first twilight book in french yesterday, which has been very entertaining so far. Should broaden my vampire-werewolf vocab significantly!
A lot of really awesome things have happened in the past few weeks, and a lot of them happened with awesome grinnellians. Two weekends ago my friend Libby came to tergnier for one night from Santander, Spain, where she is living for a year as a fulbright fellow. The night she arrived Tabea and I threw a small xmas party, and invited our friends from Chauny, coworkers, and neighbors- Tabea made mulled wine, I made egg nog, and people brought wonderful French speciqlties like tarte aux maroilles and the 13 traditional desserts of xmas. The night ended with a Claude François dance party- Libby introduced me to CloClo, who you should check out on youtube if you don't know him already. Two of my favorites are 'Belles, Belles, Belles' and 'Alexandra, Alexandrie'. The next day Libby and I went to Paris and saw the catacombs, took a boat trip on the Seine, and met up with a friend of hers for coffee (pictures when my charger arrives!!) I was sad to bid adieu to Libby, it was so nice to spend time with a Grinnellian who was as excited as I was to walk around a maze of underground tunnels filled with human bones stacked to eye-level (catacombs!! awesome!)

On Thursday of this past week, I made my way into Paris again to meet up with 3 more grinnellians from the class of 2013- Zoe, who I waitressed with at the phoenix, and Hannah and Carla, two frisbee players who I had never met before but am very happy to know now. Hannah is finishing up a semester abroad in Paris, so she graciously hosted us all and showed us around- Zoe and Carla had just gotten off a plane from Tanzania when I met up with the group on Thurs- they studied abroad there last semester, and were tanned and full of parasites (literally). I stayed with them for 2 nights, in which time we saw a photo exhibition, the xmas market on the champs-elysee, saw a fantastic exhibition called 'the invention of the savage' at a museum near la tour eiffel, climbed the eiffel tower, saw the louvre, and went dancing til 4am. phew! Was sad to say goodbye so soon to such great people, but I hope our paths will cross again soon.

On Saturday morning, I went to Gare du Nord to meet up with my mom; (!!!) we had made a pretty straight forward plan, which was to meet at a certain platform at a certain time, and which, unfortunately, went wrong. My moms flight was late 2 hours and she was 3 hours late meeting me, and had no way to contact me, nor I her. Long story short, I spent several hours frantically trying to figure out what the deal was with her plane (didnt know airline or flight info), and started crying after armed guards roped off half the train station because someone left a suitcase unattended, which they BLEW UP after about 20 minutes (I had no clue what was going on), and then miraculously! my mom appeared! and now we are together, making our plans to spend christmas in london and new years in geneva. Looking back over the past few weeks and forward to the holidays, I am overwhelmed with THANKS for the good fortune I have to be here and have the opportunity to see so much (and so grateful that I found my mom. good grief.)

Oh yes, and the last few weeks of work were great as well, high points being a christmas pageant at bleriot where the preschoolers I work with sang 'we wish you a merry christmas' and 'if you're happy and you know it', and making gingerbreadmen at condren.

Missing you all, much love to you at the end of the year! will post pictures asap when charger arrives (unless world ends jan 2012; hope not INSHALLAH)