Vendredi, 23 Novembre 2012: Thanksgiving Dinner Party

Since my event was today Céline took care of dropping off the triplets. I took Gregoire to the creche and as soon as I got home I started making a wreath. I collected all of the elements from the yard. I made the frame out of dead branches and filled in all of the gaps with various leaves. It turned out fantastic! I'm again surprised. 

  Céline arrived home with Camille soon after I finished. Camille had two of her wisdom teeth extracted today so Céline decided to take the day off from work. Céline had ordered a 9kg turkey for my dinner party. I rubbed it with extra virgin olive oil, freshly cracked pepper, basil, and salt. I then filled the cavity with rosemary, thyme, a couple of wads of butter, and dry white wine. I threw the bird in the oven around noon. Céline and I spent the rest of the day cleaning.

By the time evening came around, I started to get stressed even though everything was finished. I drove to campus to pick Vanessa up from the cuques (dorms). Neither one of us knew the area well enough and there was a huge traffic jam so it took awhile for us to find each other. 

The stress of the "bouteillage" got to me so as soon as we got back, we cracked open a bottle of wine. An hour flew by and my first guests arrive. It was my language prof and her boyfriend. They mingled with my host family while I tried to direct the CEA girls on how to get here. It was a huge ordeal getting those girls in the right place. They got on the bus that I told them to get on but then immediately got off because they asked the wrong questions. I had told them to ask the bus driver if he could take them all the way up my neighborhood instead of just stopping at the bottom. The stops directly by my house are only reached by request. They took the driver's answer of "no" as in they were on the wrong bus...I spent hours making sure they had multiple line/route options to get here just in case and they really didn't use any of the information I gave to them. The only one that paid attention was Maggie. Poor girl. No one listens to her. 

The girls eventually made their way to Meyreuil. They ended up having to walk even further than they were supposed to, but 'shit happens'. The girls were still having trouble finding their way to the house so I got in the car to drive down the hill and see how many people/how much stuff I could fit in my car. I knew they had had a long day so I wanted to help them as much as I could. I had already been drinking for awhile but I literally just drove 3 houses down. When I got to the girls they were all walking separately and it looked like there was a lot of tension between them. Some of the girls gave me attitude but I know that it wasn't anything that I had done so I wasn't worried, though it did irritate me a bit because I basically threw this party for them. I wanted everyone to have a good Thanksgiving especially since I knew they were all feeling really homesick. All of their troubles this evening were basically self-inflicted though and they seemed like they realized this later on. After they ate they seemed to cool off but there was still something weird going on between all of them. Though these girls are college-aged, it seemed like teenage drama to me so I just ignored it and went back to the party. My host parents were concerned about them though and pulled me aside separately to find out what was going on. Céline said the girls looked like they were having a bad time and I started getting stressed that their negative energy would be contagious. Didier came up to me and told me that I should give them more wine, ha haha. I'm glad he found the humor in the situation because it made me feel a lot better and I could see that the girls were relaxing a bit even though they were all congregated on the couch. I was still a bit upset afterward because I was really looking forward to spending time with Danielle, she's kind of my bestie here and I didn't really get to hang with her because she was babysitting the girls. Oh well, you can't have it all.

 

After the CEA girls got settled at the party a hoard of my parents' friends started flooding in as well. The party basically blew up. As soon as the food was put on the table, I put serving utensils in all of the dishes and everyone helped themselves. Though there were a lot of people here, there was also a monstrous amount of food. Everyone brought a dish and at least one bottle of wine so we were all content and drunk. I kept a bottle of wine in hand at all times just to make sure everyones' glasses were filled, socializing at the same time.

Half of the guests were my friends and the other half were Céline and Didier's friends. Such a good mix of people! All of us Americans were able to practice our french. It was such a great time getting to know everyone and learning more of the french language. Around 22h00 the last group from my class showed up. They had driven to Meyrargues because they got the towns mixed up. Ha haha, poor guys. No worries though, there was still plenty of food and drink left for them. 

At one point Céline discovered one of the young girls sang really well and made her give us all a sampling. That evolved into a fashion show with all of the kids. It was pretty entertaining :-) Overall, it was a very good night. The last guests, the group that accidentally went to Meyrargues left around 1h30 which seemed so early for me. I was having such a good time! But alas, you can't party all night long...Unless you're in a big city, ha haha.

My first dinner party was a success!!! In a foreign country no less!!! I'm so happy!!!