Merry Christmas 2004

Bonne fêtes et joyeux noël.
I had a good christmas in Chartres. Nope, it was not snowing yet. In Chartres, there is a high chance that it will snow in January but in Paris, snow never stays long. There is just too much pollution and it warms up the atmosphere. So for my friend who wished me to walk under the snow along Champs Elysee, that is very unlikely. :)

We bought a small real Christmas tree at home. It feels good to have a real one unlike the plastic one back in Singapore. When you walk along the streets, if you look up, you will most likely see sapins of all shapes with their christmas deco and lighting in almost everybody's living room. But too bad most people forgot the real meaning of Christmas. To kids, it is the time to write to Papa Noël to ask for gifts in return for being nice for the whole year. And adults help the kids to write letters and paste pictures from catalogues to send to grandparents, uncles and aunties.

For me, I hope to educate my kids on the correct meaning of christmas. Indeed, it is a time of giving and sharing. Indeed, there was a Santa Claus somewhere up, up north of France who once went around giving presents to nice kids. Still, the beginning started with baby Jesus being born on this day or somewhere near this day. And 25 December is the day to remember about our Lord Jesus who came to live and die for our sins. If you are interested to find out more about this, just search in the internet for an online bible and start reading from the new testaments.

Apart of that, I had a new lambwool scarf, 2 french books I asked for, a thick French-English dictionary, a pair of leather gloves and lots of cold outdoors and warm indoors and from Seb.