A Very Merry Asnieres Christmas

Today was our Christmas party at Asnieres. Everything was planned. Jan and I would arrive early, we'd set the room up--make it look Christmas-y and festive--, the women would come at 14h00 with their couscous, Jan would tell the Christmas story, and we'd all have a lovely Christmas party.

However, as you can see from the picture on the left, today was also the first snow of the season, and the city shut down. The buses weren't running. The RER A was, unrelatedly, on strike, along with several of the metros, buses, and trams. But pas de soucis. I rode the ever-faithful E line. My train cut right through the snow. My metro pulled up right on time. And I walked into class an hour early as planned.

What wasn't planned was that there was not one bus that drove through Satrouville to pick up Jan...who had the images for the story, the Christmas CDs, and the altogether "know how". She called at 13h00 and let me know that she likely wasn't going to make it.

And so started my panic, because I'm a planner. I need everything that's been planned to work out just right. I don't like change. I don't like surprises unless they come in the form of gifts. And there, surprise, I was standing in the freezing cold room alone with a pile of wrapping paper and tinsel in the corner. Despite the panic, I got the room set up.

And one by one, the women trickled in with their cakes and cookies and couscous. I tried to make everything as normal as possible. I told the Christmas story, put their food on a variety of colorful plates and set them around the tables. One of the women helped me make the Moroccan tea, but something was very obviously missing.

"Where's the music?" they asked.

"Well," I said, with an apologetic shrug, "I don't have any CDs here in France, so..."

"Oh," one said. Their faces fell.

Eventually, one said, "Aren't you going to dance?"

"Well," I said, hating that I was the stick in the mud. "I don't know how."

"And anyway, there isn't any music," another one reminded her.

Finally, one of the women suggested, "Why don't we make music?"

And so, she pulled out a jembe that was sitting in the corner. Another woman took a silver tray of drinks, set the empty cups on the table, turned over the tray and started beating it with two spoons. Several others took their forks and banged them against their glasses. And all the sudden, they were playing their music and singing these high pitched call and response songs in Arabic and Berber.

We continued that way all afternoon--singing between snacking and snacking between singing. And, despite all the plans that never quite ripened, it turned out to be a great Christmas party.

(That is, until I was walking to the metro, slipped on a patch of ice, and face planted into the ground, losing my mittens in the process. But you know what they say? C'est la vie...)