Christmas Markets & Teaching Hanukkah

Recently, downtown Montpellier has transformed into a winter wonderland of holiday festivities. Most notable, the Christmas markets which I have now grown to love and frequent. There are about 40 little blue huts set up all over the downtown "quad" for lack of a better word. Each hut (or mini-house in my opinion) contains different items of note for sale. Jewelry, wooden kids' toys, leather articles, tons of different liquers and wines, foie gras, chocolates, candies clothes, scarves and other exiciting knick knacks are all for sale. This is not to mention all the little vendors set up for little snackies including crêpes, cotton candy; warm spiced wine, coffee, cookies and hot cocoa. Can you tell how much I love it already? I went last weekend to their official opening night and enjoyed some really great live music on Friday night sung by an American band, of all things as well as a Grand Marnier crêpe. I thought the crêpe would be way better but instead, the alcohol was a bit overwhelming and not too flavorful. Alas, live and learn I suppose. I especially enjoy going to the market to just browse like crazy and comment on all the silly crafty items for sale. To be fair, there are some really great items for sale as well. I particularly like one of the hat shops with really funky furry hats in funny shapes. There is also an ice skating rink set up downtown now which is super cheap to use and even has skate rental. I think I am trying that out really soon.

In school, I have already started teaching toys (in the vein of Christmas). We have now learned: doll, car, train, ball, skateboard & bicycle/bike. Almost all of my kids mispronounce train. They always say tree. It makes me giggle. This week, in the hopes of teaching them something completely new, we are also learning Hanukkah and some vocab words associated with that. I must admit, teaching Hanukkah is really difficult. The kids have never heard of it nor have many ever heard of Jews. Imagine the difficulty in not only explaining a holiday but also a religion. I haven't really explained the religion though. I mean, come on. They are 2nd - 4th graders. Anyway, notable Hanukkah words are:

• Menorah
• Candle(s)
• Cookie(s)
• Present(s)
• Dreidel
• Gelt (the chocolate foil-wrapped coins)

I can't tell you how exciting it is for me to not only teach my culture but teach the little English girls in my classes completely new words. Finally, they get to learn at the same level as the other kids. I take a little pleasure in that. It's very challenging but it was very important to me to teach a little bit of my culture to the kids here. I actually doubt I am going to teach much about Christmas. I am going to run out of time anyway since I only have 3 more lessons in each school before vacation. I think all the kids are restless and it's getting harder and harder to keep the kids' attention. I also figured that the kids are going to learn about Christmas in English for the rest of their education. When will they ever learn about Hanukkah otherwise?

Finally, a picture for you. Here is one side of downtown with our cool LED-lit Christmas tree. The building behind the tree is the Opéra Comédie. The words in lights "Joyeuses Fetes" means "Happy Holidays".


Your British word lesson of the day: strop = tantrum. In a sentence: She's too old to have a strop like that.