yesterday's skype exchange report from Romain Galati

Skype Best Practices Exchange – December Celebrations

During this skype meeting, we discussed about December celebrations and how the language exchanges groups celebrates them within their groups.

Hungary
Two celebrations: Jesus (24 December) -> presents
6 December > santa claus
With families > Christmas dinner > big dinner
The most important religions are: Catholics / evangelists

France
The religion is not so important. Some families are going to church and some child sings in Chorus. But the most important aspect is the gathering with the family. Christmas aims to gather the family members and the in law and share a nice moment with a big dinner and sharing presents.
In the menu, French people often have seafruits, foie gras, turkey and buche de noel.

In England > lot of presents

Enormous bag

Argentina
On the 24 > dinner with families and going out. At this time, this is summer and people enjoy barbecues and going to the beach.
There are some special cakes for this day.

How do you celebrate December Celebrations within the language exchange group?
Valence > A special language café will be organized, where the café will be all for the group. It will be possible de select the music (Christmas songs) in several languages, bringing decorations and specialities and share it all together.

North of France > Karaoké party + meal. Last year, a dinner had been organized and this year, a karaoke had been organized for a change.

Argentina > meeting with friends and go out

Budapest > museum, dinner, visiting

Do you organize meetings for New Years Eve and during December holidays?
In Valence, most of the people are away at this time and the meetings are not officially taking place.
In the North of France, the meetings are still organized during this time. As this is a region with a lot of people passing by, some regular participants will be away while new participants are joining.
In Budapest, the meetings are once a month, so there won’t be any gathering at this time.
In Rosario, the meetings will still be organized during this time.
At the end, every group decides if it is worth to organize a meeting during December holidays and New Years Eve, depending of the city and the participants.