Today, January 6, is the Feast of Epiphany. The word epiphany itself means “appearing.” The Feast of Epiphany then celebrates the appearing of Jesus as the Son of God. How was Jesus shown early on to be the Son of God? Through his baptism, the miracle of changing water into wine, and most notably for Epiphany, through the arrival of the magi, who were gentile oriental kings who traveled far and wide to worship the newborn Baby King Jesus.
L’Epiphanie is apparently a pretty big deal here in France. To celebrate, all the bakeries and supermarkets sell galette des rois or king cake. “King” in the name, of course, refers to those magi we just talked about. Imagine a festival about kings in a country that so cheerfully deposed their own some centuries ago!
Here is the galette des rois I picked up from the bakery just down the street from us. And what a tasty opportunity to practice my French!
The cake itself is a sort of flaky pastry with a layer of frangipane in the middle. Though that’s not all. Hidden inside is a fève, a trinkety little porcelain or plastic prize. The person whose slice contains the fève is crowned king or queen and gets to wear the Burger King-esque golden crown.
All during dinner Poppy could hardly wait to dig into the cake and wear the crown. In fact, she prematurely crowned herself queen of our petite ville.
After dinner and once the cake was apportioned, the lot was cast and and we waited to see who’d be our king or queen for the evening.
Who will it be?
Poppy?
Mummy?
Granny? Granny!
I mean Queen Granny. Grandad was a good sport about it, knowing all along who the real boss is.
Our fève was a mini box of movie theatre popcorn. So, apparently the three wise men brought Jesus gold, frankincense and popcorn!
Meanwhile, Henry longs for the day when he’ll be king and can drink all the milk in the world.
Bonne année! Happy New Year! We’ve arrived! After a cancelled flight on Thursday, we finally arrived in France Saturday morning at 6:30am local time–that’s 12:30am on the east coast in America. We then proceeded to stay up as long as possible in order to get used to the time change. Err…we’re still tired! And…Poppy is still waking up at about 2am and staying awake until 5am. Fortunately, Granny and Grandad are here to help with the kids.
We wanted to blog and post pictures sooner, but it has taken a couple of days to get internet setup in our apartment; our French isn’t that good after all! We went through orientation at the French school today and classes will start tomorrow. Adjustment to life in France overall has been smooth and we thank you for your continued prayers as we learn this language! Merci!
Here are just a few of the things that we’ve been experiencing:
- Goat cheese pizza
- Pink toilet paper
- Gendamarie (police) with machine guns
- Bonne année – “happy new year”
- Granny and grandad’s help with the kids
- Princess bubble bath–Disney princesses no less
- Chocolate milk (called “Candy Up”), cheap cola
- Letting agent made the mistake of telling the landlords that we speak French well
- Landlady speaking French 100mph
- Big block of cheese and cakes from our landlandy
- People wanting to practice their English
- Women on bus asked me how to get to the prison
- 2 and 12 sound similar thus we’ve accidentally said we have 12 kids!
- Pizza place across the street from us!
- Lots of dogs as pets
- Fresh bread on the cheap
- Shoot in the cupboard for trash
Papaw saying “tater tot” was all it took to get Henry laughing.
We're Drew and Emily Maust, a linguist and nurse preparing to serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Cameroon. Read more about us and what we'll be doing. Poppy is two. Henry just arrived.
