No school! Had a girl's day in Bale to visit the city and Christmas market!
Happy birthday Monika!
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Sunday, December 6, 2015
St-Nicolas
Above: Elise after the St-Nicolas festival at her school with a hat she made, and a traditional St- Nicolas cookie called a biscôme. In the post titled "Signs of Christmas" there are pictures of the biscôme that I made with my host family. To the right is an example of the student artwork that I found around my school St-Michel throughout the week before the festival of St-Nicolas. At the bottom is a picture I took during school the Friday before St-Nicholas of the market preparations.
The market in the courtyard of my school St-Michel the day of St. Nicholas. 
St-Nicholas artwork in another courtyard at my school.
Some of the stands were prepared by classes (students from St-Michel that are grouped together into a "class" with the same schedule) who sold homemade cakes, decorations, and sweets for charity, trips, or pocket money. See and example in the picture below.
My school prepares much of the St-Nicholas festival including our market, staff, decorations, the St-Nicholas himself (a student in 3rd year), the numerous Père Fouettard, the St-Michel choir and band, our school church, the courtyards, the halls and rooms for face painting and story-telling, publicity, etc.However, the markets are all throughout the city of Fribourg: lining the streets with balloons, cheeses, knit hats, Christmas decorations, etc.
The picture below is of a pretty stand on the streets of Fribourg.
To the right is the stand my choir set up in the lower part of Fribourg with homemade cakes and hot tea. I think we ate more than the customers...
To the left is my school's church where there were performances all day, and when we sang for the last performance before the parade it was so full that people couldn't get in the door! We all wore matching brown cloaks with red or white scarves and hats.
(I am the farthest to the left in the picture below...)
Left: A St-Nicolas in a store window along the route of the parade. Center and right: the same building at my school before and during the parade.
St-Nicolas Parade!
In the picture below you can see a student dressed as Père Fouettard, a companion of St-Nicolas. St-Nicolas gives the good children a biscôme or mandarin orange, and the Père Fouettard spanks the bad children with his baton of twigs. Behind him you can see the hoods of the St-Michel band who were all playing an annoying St-Nicolas tune on penny whistles. They were rehearsing that song for weeks in the room next to my tech class... The rest of the pictures are of the long parade through Fribourg along streets packed with people. An estimated 30,000 people came to see the parade this year.
Once we arrived at the cathedral of Fribourg (dedicated to St-Nicolas), the choir gathered along the steps. Throughout the entire parade St-Nicholas had thrown biscôme into the crowd from giant baskets on the backs of costumed students accompanying him, and it was then that we had the good fortune to know some of the students porting those baskets of biscôme. St-Nicholas climbed up to the balcony where he gave a speech in French and German. It was like the scene in The Polar Express when Santa first appears and the elves go crazy! We all pushed back into the crowd, but the most we could see of him was his pointed hat. Above is a short clip that I took during the speech.
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