PHOTOS of the last day of school and first Christmas!

This is, from left, Chloé's friend, Chloé's boyfriend, Chloé, Laure and Alice. This is going back a while to Wednesday 20th December when I had lunch with them on the steps of the Opera/Comedie in Montpellier.

I left out of my blog entry the fact that the next night Alix and I went to a Junior Opera show at the Opera that Chloé invited us to. It was like a concert of Opera performed by young singers (probably 16 to 25 or so) and I think Chloé's friend was in it. It was incredible...two of the girls had absolutely magnificent voices, one of them belonged in actual Opera her voice was that beautiful! Alix and Alice both loved it too!

This is all of us at the new Rugby Stadium they're building in Montpellier just for the Australian Rugby Team to train at during the Rugby World Cup next year. We were taken on a tour of it and I later found out it was -2 degrees! It felt like it too! That was Friday 22nd December, last day of term.

P.S. I absolutely love Mia's bag!

This is one of the mini models of Montpellier that are on display in the, I think, Town Hall. They were very cool!

Haha! The new tram Ligne 2 trams with their flowery 70s patterns! Ligne 1 trams are blue, Ligne 2 trams are flowery. So you know which ligne it is (ligne is french for Line). How cute is that?!? The pattern is a bit interesting but all the Montpellierians are so excited about their new tram line I guess they don't mind what it looks like. Plus I think they kinda like it!

Friday 22nd December - We walked down the long arcadey thing in Montpellier's new quarter, the Antigone. And we took lots of photos!

awww! Monique and Simone being friendly! From what I remember Simone told me not to post this one!

All of us at Haagen Dazs outside the Polygone, Friday 22nd December. The end of our afternoon of shopping, as you can see by the shopping bags lying around!

The random Santa's at school on the last day (excluding Saturday morning). It would seem that some of the students at least got into the Christmas groove! Most of them didn't seem that interested despite the fact that it was three days away! I guess it's because it's not during their long holidays so they don't have time to be excited or something...

This is, from left, Eléonore, Alix and their aunty who took us around Avignon. In the background is Avignon! In the water are some ducks. Woo hoo! It was really cold there.

This is a part of the Avignon town creche. It was a very big creche, and very cute! One of the best creches I've seen I think. Whenever people talk about a creche, this is what they mean, although this is a town one. The creches set up at home have the little people - Santons - but generally not the backgrounds. Some people make their own backgrounds, others just lay out the santons. This is the window paintings I was talking about before. You can see a whole set of them here, but they're not very clear because it was getting dark and they were down one side of a thin street so they were hard to photograph. Also note the very cool lamp post!

This is the front of the Palais de Papes at Avignon. Unfortunately I didn't get to go inside, but the outside and the door were still incredible. You can just imagine the history surrounding a place like this.

Finally Christmas!!!

We had dinner on Christmas Eve at Nimes at Alix's Grandma's house with Alix's mum's family. This is the dining table just before we started, with the dish of oysters and the bread. Françoise had written a short note about each persons name and put it on their plate. It was all very cute. The little cream things on the table are nuts...almonds maybe...I'm not sure what sort of nuts.

These are the 'green' bins we got from the 'Green Santa'...one of Alix's aunts dressed up in a green Santa suit in between the main meal and dessert and brought everyone a bin with little stickers on it. Faustine, the little girl, kept stacking them up and making tall towers of containers before someone would come over and kick it down. It was pretty funny watching them rolling around amid all those bins.

This is most of the presents just before the unwrapping began. This doesn't include the wheelbarrow of presents for the two children, which had already been opened and devoured. Yes the suitcase was a present too!