Christmas in Montreal!

So, after having no idea what to do for Christmas as late as Friday, the offers just poured in over the weekend, and I ended up with too many options! So here's what I ended up doing:

Around 5ish, I went to a place called the Co-op sur Genereux to help cook for an orphans' christmas that I wish I could have stayed for - it was great to see the place, as I'd heard a lot about it, and to meet more interesting people.

About 7pm, I went to Leyla's new place (she the person I'm currently subletting from) to meet her flatmates at her new place: Romain, an ever-so-cute-Parisien, and Rosie, an entertaining American who hasn't been here much longer than I. An hour or so later, and we set of to the 'loser's christmas party' at Romain's old host-family's house, which turned out to be full of architects and their teenage kids. Enjoyable, but definitely different to the sort of company I've been keeping for the last few months! And the food was delicious, but entirely meat-based, which unfortunately rather disagreed with my mostly vegetarian stomach, which made me a little antisocial for the last hour I was there.

So around 11 I took my upset stomach away from that party, taking Rosie's keys with the plan of napping on their couch for a while. On my way back, I passed a church that was ringing bells, so I stopped in for the last 15 minutes of their mass (which had been going over an hour already, I gather - glad I just caught the end!). But that nicely satisfied my vague traditionalist's desire for a little bit of church at Christmas. And I had a revelation about the purpose of organs in churches. I don't know the name of the piece the organist played for the recessional, but played on that massive organ, it sure put the fear of something or other in me!

When I got back to the apartment to find Rosie already back there much earlier than planned, Leyla just arrived home from her other party thing, and everyone wondering if I had dropped dead while walking home. I really thought no one would miss me when I dropped into the church!

As I was soon feeling better, Rosie and I went upstairs to our next party - one that we could already hear most of anyway, in the form of elephants on the ceiling. Their upstairs neighbour Marco was also having a late-night orphans' christmas party, and we arrived just in time for the massive turkey, which had been planned to serve at midnight. Despite not knowing anyone there, managed to find so many interesting people to talk to, that it was 4am before we went back downstairs to bed!

So that was Christmas Eve, which is the more important day here (because of the French tradition, I think). While I enjoyed the parties very much, they were interesting parties, didn't really feel christmassy enough. Christmas day solved that:

I stayed at the apartment for the night, and this morning (by which I mean, at about 12.30pm) we opened the few little presents from under their little tree (well, they did) while listening to Christmas music (the one day a year it doesn't grate), and ate french toast (which is apparently pain-perdu, en francais) and fudge and cookies.And then we set of to got ice-skating. Outside. On a bit of frozen water! In a park! About 5 minutes walk from their house. AND I didn't fall over and break a leg. (That's me on the bench in the background - I swear I was skating for all but this 5 minutes!)

And then we came home (to their house) and had tea and more fudge and cookies, and toast with pesto and olives and cheese, and more tea, and I spent about 3 hours explaining my entire life's travels (well, they did ask!) and then we invited Marco from upstairs down for more tea and a tarte au citron that Romain had whipped up while Leyla was making the french toast earlier.Finally, I came back to my little flat, so that I could feed the cat and sleep in what is currently my own bed. Which I should do about now, as I see it is now nearly 5am!