Meeting Hannah's French Family

We had scheduled our visit with Hannah’s French family as our last destination so that we could finish off with an experience that we knew everyone would love and look forward to. And today that day had finally come. We set off at eleven o’clock, hoping to arrive at their house by eleven thirty with some flowers along with us. On the way to their house Hannah kept pointing out things she noticed like “those flowers weren’t in bloom when I was here”, and, “this is where I bought my new camera.” It was strange to think of this being Hannah’s home for three months, as I had never had much to visualize when I thought about it. We were all excited, and a few of us a little nervous about meeting the family, but when we got there we knew that we had nothing to worry about. It was so nice to see Marine again, as it had been two years since we met her, and Hannah said it was really great to visit the rest of the family as well. The parents, Thierry and Myriam, are both very friendly and outgoing. They both speak a fair bit of English, and it was more than enough to keep a conversation going. Marine and her brother, Nicholas (Nico), both have excellent English and were able to translate anything we needed.

When we came inside we were greeted with two kisses from all four of them before we were ushered into their home. We had a little snack on chips, salsa, guacamole and some drinks while we talked and caught up on many things. It was over 30 degrees outside, and we all agreed that it was too hot to do any sightseeing until it had cooled down later in the day. We ate lunch on their outside patio under a large umbrella, and were treated to a style of barbeque we’d never seen before. In the middle of the table they had set up a portable barbeque with a flat grilling surface, on which we were able to cook meat and vegetables. There was much more than enough for all of us and we didn’t even get to the salmon and prawns waiting for us in the fridge. We were all getting quite hot in the midday sun so we headed inside for our dessert of fruit and ice cream. We spent the majority of the afternoon talking, and the four of us kids went upstairs to play Wizard, a game we had given Marine after she had fallen in love with it in Canada.

After it had cooled down, at around seven, we went out into Nancy for a walk around town. We went to a little zoo, not much bigger than our petting zoo in Beacon Hill Park, and looked around at the animals. They treated us to yet another ice cream before we walked down into nearby Stanislas Square for dinner.

Our food was very tasty, and we were able to try some food from the area such as Quiche Lorraine and fois gras (and yes we know how this is made so there is no need to give us a lesson on ethics. Although, the majority of us did think it was very tasty). At quarter to eleven there was supposed to be a light show on three of the buildings located in the same square as our restaurant, but given our luck, we should have known something was going to go wrong. We walked into the middle of the giant crowd that had gathered and waited. It started to get later and later and we would look at our watches seeing 11:10, 11:15, and 11:20. Finally at half past there was an announcement made saying that they were unable to show the lights that night. We had noticed earlier that there had been a man with a flashlight on top of one of the buildings, working with one of the projectors, so this wasn’t too much of a surprise. But the majority of the crowd wasn’t as flexible as we were. People had started yelling and getting upset so the eight of us grouped together and tried to make it quickly back to our cars. I heard my dad say, “Let’s get out of here before anything happens” and I grabbed on to his hand as tightly as I could, thinking we were going to get shot or something. We made it back to our cars in one piece, even after my mom had almost been run over and Thierry had been “misplaced” in the crowd. We said our goodbyes and arranged to meet again tomorrow, and then we finally went home to our stuffy little apartment for a good sleep after a great day.