I have had some unique New Year's celebrations... Urbana 06, making a wedding cake all night for Sarahrae and Daniel Smith, babysitting... and this year France...
Visiting Summer always presents the challenge of embracing French culture, but also providing space for her to celebrate American tradition. New Year's presented the same challenge. So, we decided to embrace both. After doing the ever American thing of going out for Chinese with our French friend, Claire, we decided to properly celebrate being in Paris by going to the Eiffel Tower for midnight... We spent so long talking over dinner-- recounting our 2008 and looking ahead to 2009 that we barely made it to the French landmark before the tower stopped sparkling... then, of course we spent several hours in traffic trying to make it to the other side of the city to join in a New Year's celebration which we were invited to which included several other Americans in Paris and a full night of dancing.
When we finally climbed into bed around 7 o'clock the next morning-- we were ready to put the old year behind us and step into 2009 with a good long nap! Bonne Annee and Bonne nuit!
