Could tomorrow please be Christmas?

Okay, I don't really need to write ANYTHING about how great the Christmas vibe is in Lille, because this picture pretty much says it all:

Spicy mulled wine and a FERRIS WHEEL. I felt like a grown-up 25-year-old and a giddy 10-year-old all at the same time, and it was AWESOME. (warning: this post may require the use of LOTS AND LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS AND !!!! POINTS)

Lara and I started the madness at an afternoon art market, which was Overdose Number One. So many fantastic bags and buttons! So much handmade jewelery! Display after display of teeny, tiny clothing for tiny, tiny hipsters who haven't learned to walk yet! I died and woke up again in a child-rearing fantasy about thirty times (because kids aren't any work, right? you just get to dress them in miniature corduroy jackets and show them around at parties, right??).

The art market (took this shot for you, Jen... you would have LOVED it):


The art market was in Roubaix, which is a smaller town glued onto the edge of Lille like a piece of elbow macaroni. When we finally got to downtown Lille to check out the Christmas action, it was evening. Saturday evening. Which meant fifty thousand people, most of them tourists, squashed into the tiny Lille streets. MY tiny Lille streets. Seeing all those people, most of whom were tourists from Britain by the sounds of their accents, made me feel a surge of patriotism, or at least possessiveness, for my city.

Hey! Hoards of people! What do you think you're doing? Stop blocking my access to the mulled wine! I got here TWO MONTHS AGO! I earned this city!

The good news is that most of these tourists were nervous types and walked a wide circle around the Ferris wheel. Which meant we only had to wait twenty minutes to get the most terrifying/beautiful view of the city I'll ever have!

Lille, from above (way, way, stomach-turningly above):


I kept getting these little electric jolts in my soft tissue, and the thought kept crashing through my mind that THIS IS UNNATURAL. Human beings aren't meant to be sitting dozens of stories above the ground in a little metal bowl. And that's why, when we are foolish enough to do it anyway, our brain starts tipping all kinds of little panicky chemicals into the bloodstream to try and STOP THE MADNESS. But I had paid four euros and darn it if I wasn't going to ride in that metal bowl and take all the madness I could get!

This video is kind of lame, mostly because my camera does this weird focus-unfocus thing whenever I try to shoot film, but I think I captured one complete revolution on the wheel without dropping the camera into the crowd below and that deserves a showcase:




I am trying to make the Christmassy-ness last right through until next week, when I get into another very unnatural human contraption and cross the Atlantic yet again for a brief visit with the homefolks. My students are being very good sports about playing Christmas Jeopardy with me, and singing along to round after round of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."