stockings | Not Wed or Dead

I decided to stay in France for Christmas. This time last year I was in Thailand spending my days partying, sunbathing and scuba diving. With the weather a lot colder here my bikini was firmly packed away! But I had my santa hat, loads of presents and my French-English family to spend my time with.

In France the tradition is to celebrate Christmas on both the 24^th and 25^th December. Meaning double the amount of food and wine, luckily I have got super stretchy pants! On Christmas eve I spent the day doing last minute shopping then it was round to my Uncle’s mums house at 8pm and the fun didn’t end until 3am on Christmas day.

Interesting spelling of my name!

We shared presents, ate so much food including an impressive aperitif with champagne prepared by my cousin – check out the cute penguins and snowmen made from carrots and olives! The entrée (starter) was salmon and lobster followed by a calvados drenched sorbet to you know clense the pallete aka get even more alchohol into your system. The main course was guinea fowl and potatoes followed by cheese then tirimusu. I was so stuffed!

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Some of the differences between an English and French Christmas are that in France they don’t do stockings. Last year even being thousands of miles away from home I still made sure that Adam and I had a stocking (made up of one of his socks hanging from the tv in our room). So this year being closer to home my mum sent me one over which made me very happy indeed.

From these to this!!

Another strange difference is that I had bought a few boxes of Christmas crackers and party poppers to put on the table before dinner. When I got these out they looked at me like I was some crazy English girl as these don’t exist in France. Trying to explain to the French family just how to pull a cracker and make a party popper work was harder than you think. After using lots of hand gestures to show that you don’t pull it with one hand on each end and that you need to be careful where you aim and fire a popper, they loved it!

You know how awful Christmas cracker jokes are? Well try translating them into a foreign language and see just how badly the punch line fails to deliver.

“What lies in a pram and wobbles? – A jelly baby”

Followed by the type of silence that should have involved tumbleweed. The rest of the day was spent eating, more drinking and basically being a human sloth – I guess French and English Christmases aren’t so different after all!

Hope you all had a great Christmas!

On Christmas Eve we all meet up at the dive club that the canadian guys are part of, as it was throwing a huge free BBQ on the beach then a bar crawl into the town later. With festive Santa hats, that I tried to co-ordinate with a red vest and denim shorts,the atmosphere was fun and very friendly.

We ate well then went to get buckets at the fish bowl bar, watch the fire show and dance the night away with a group of Thai teenagers who had some very interesting dance moves! At midnight everyone hugged each other and said merry Christmas to whoever was around them then back to the bar for more hugs and drinks.

The next morning me and Adam exchanged christmas stockings. The day before we had got each other little presents so we had something to open and popped them inside his socks hanging underneath the tv. He got me a lovely bracelet, lilo and a beautiful dream catcher as I had been having some very vivid dreams ( I blame the buckets). I got him a snorkel set, multi box of plasters for our mangled feet and a baseball cap with an A on it.

We dragged our hungover bodies to the beach and met the other guys to sunbathe and swim. I hadn’t given much thought to Christmas Day and how I would feel without being around loved ones back home. I figured that after following the same pattern for Christmas day for the past 27 years it would do me good to have a change. When I heard of friends driving round the country like maniacs trying to fit in seeing everyone and buying last minute gifts I knew I had made the right decision. Out here the only decision was what to eat and when. We decided not to go for the traditional turkey dinner as they wouldn’t make it as good as our families could so instead of all the trimmings I had a calzone pizza and a cold beer, which tasted so good. Shame I missed out on crackers and rubbish jokes though.

I knew when I quit my job, sold everything and left the uk that I wanted to be somewhere far away on a beautiful beach for Xmas day. I felt really proud that I had stuck to my guns and made that happen and I was having such a great time. Merry Christmas everyone!! Xx