Joyeuses Pâques!

You might be wondering how that Easter egg hunt turned out and I have to say it was a huge success. In fact, this Easter was one of my favorite ever.

I went over to Krissy's house Sunday morning to decorate eggs and since we hadn't gotten any Easter candy yet we biked over to the supermarket and grabbed some stuff. The bike was wayy to tall for me and I had to stand on the pedals the whole time. (Also her host family's house is five stories high and looks like a museum inside. But unfortunately they aren't very nice people.)

Krissy, Mitchell, Nolan and I decorated all 52 of our hardboiled eggs. Nolan even had egg dye that his brother had sent him. And I'd bought a bottle of cidre for the occasion and shared it with everyone. We also heard Nolan’s story about how he missed his train this weekend and got the very last room in a youth hostel. Unfortunately, he had to share with some really creepy guys and barely slept at all. I’m grateful I didn’t have to deal with anything like that. And speaking of unfortunate events, Krissy’s entire house flooded from the fourth floor (in the US this would be the fifth floor) all the way to the rez-de-chaussée (the first floor). And Moe didn’t get to see the Garnier Opera house and Yuka didn’t either because she got sick and had to take the train to Angers from Paris. So I wasn’t the only one with problems this weekend.

After decorating the eggs, Mitchell and I went to the Jardin du Mail park to hide the eggs. We hid them amongst the flowers and trees surrounding the gazebo because there were about 15 different signs saying you can’t walk on the grass. I have to say my eggs were very well camouflaged. About eight other people showed up, so we told them the rules and let the hunt begin. More people were supposed to come, but honestly it didn't matter. Even if it had just been us decorators it would have been a blast.

We’d hidden 50 eggs (since we ate two) and at the end of the hunt we were still missing 7 eggs and couldn't find them because they were that well hidden. Nolan found the most (11 eggs) so he was declared the winner and given a bag of chocolate money (euros, of course). We’d also bought three other bags of chocolate—not Easter eggs—but fish, shrimp and turtles (leftovers from Poisson d'Avril). Afterwards we just hung out in the park eating chocolate and hard boiled eggs and doing bike rides in imitation of the pony rides. It was a gorgeous day, though it did rain for about 10 minutes right before the Easter egg hunt.

Then I went to 6:30pm mass at St. Maurice cathedral and it was so beautiful inside! I actually understood the majority of what was going on and got to sing along and take communion. I just wish I knew all the proper responses. The music was accompanied by an acoustic guitar (I adore acoustic guitar) and the songs were led by a group of French Africans who really livened up the place. At the end of the service they were dancing and singing and they kept going until all the lights were turned off.

I decided that the only thing that was missing from this Easter, other than family and friends of course, was the Polish sausage. But I think Grandma told me she'd freeze some for me.

Happy Easter!

Joyeuses Pâques!

Heidi