Christmas time in Toulouse!

Oh, I love Christmas. And the city of Toulouse goes all out, with lights and decorations everywhere! It's so charming and cheerful to walk around at night and have everything all lit up! This picture is of Place du Capitole on Saturday night. And every year (well, I actually don't know seeing as how I'm only here right now for the first time, but I'm assuming) there is a christmas market on Place du Capitole. They set up these elaborate little cabins (you can sort of see them on the right side of the picture), and then each cabin has different types of food to buy, or crafts, or whatever. And it's set up all these two weeks before Christmas. This afternoon, Annie and I went to check it out, and apparently so did everyone else in the city! It was packed, but that kind of just added to the exciting feel in the air. And we tried some regional food for lunch, namely "aligot" (a delicious potato and cheese mixture), and something that started with an "E" (I forget the name and tried to get it out of my host parents, but they didn't know what it was called either) and was toasted bread with a bunch of different cheese and oil on top, all melted and made delicoius. To quote Annie: "Did angels make this?", cause no kidding, it was that good. We shared one between the two of us, and probably set a record for fastest eating ever. Then I bought a soft pretzel, a speciality of Alsace (or actually, as it's called in French, a "bretzel", which is just silly), and then just to top it off, we each bought a chocolate crepe with hot cider. Total damage for the afternoon: 8.50 per person spent on food alone. Ouch. Oh well, it's Christmas, and it was delicious and warm and cozy in my tummy.
Also this afternoon, we went to another Christmas market that was held in the Parc des Expositions on an island in the Garonne. This one was pretty classy, with lots of artisans and crafty people who had pretty awesome stuff. You had to pay to get in, but Annie's host mom got free tickets from her bank and gave them to us. Look, host parents can be really useful sometimes! :-)
So on Friday night, we had our cultural outing for the month of December (every month, Laura at the Dickinson Center plans a different outing for us, usually theater or a concert, or something that will make us more cultured). This outing was to the Theatre Sorano, which is a very modern theater. The play was "Peer Gynt" (which is pronounced kind of like "Pair Goont", but the French totally made that up because the play is by a Norwegian guy). Anyway, the play was incredibly weird and strange, and the fact that it was being put on at this incredibly modern and avant-garde theater didn't help the fact. And the play is not exactly about happy things either, so this all added to a kind of creepy atmosphere. It didn't help that I was sitting in the front row, on the end, and characters in the play kept coming down these stairs at the front of the stage into the audience. I didn't realize it at first, but soon I learned that there was an entrance door directly kitty corner behind me, so I nearly had a heart attack when these pilgram/puritan/norwegian characters ran in from that door, right in front of Shana and me! And there was barely any room between us and the stage, so we had to move our legs all out of the way, and it was incredibly awkward and kind of scary because these actors were RIGHT there, and I was afraid that they would touch us or yell in our faces. Oh wait, then the main actor (playing Peer Gynt) exited by way of the door right behind me and touched me (he was kind of lurching around and being drunk the whole play, so it was a kind of "I'm trying to look authentically drunk and grab onto things for support", one of the things being my leg/butt area (my legs were crossed, and I was turned sideways trying to let the people by, so it wasn't as impossible a feat as it sounds), and then the same guy crept back in and scared me again by grabbing onto my shoulder! Totally scary, and also I couldn't stop laughing and neither could Shana and we were probably incredibly inappropriate. But helloooo, don't grab me if you don't want me to laugh, Peer Gynt guy, because stuff like that is funny.
So that was our weekend, in a big nutshell. And this is my last weekend in France (I am leaving next Saturday for vacation to the USA!), and most likely my last entry before Christmas, because I don't foresee anything exciting happening this week, so Merry Christmas, Happy Hanakah, Joyeuse Noel, etc. and see you after break! <3