Bonjour !

I just would like to say how happy I am to enter the Maletz blog, and pretty soon the family (and the family address book)! Yes, yes, yes, I am extremely exited about our wedding :-)

My first contribution will be a funny picture from our engagement party ! Yes, I LOVE chocolate, and we all sure did eat a lot that night. My friend Alice was hosting the party at her place in Virginia. She also is a girl from the North of France, but we met here in DC. She just got married to a Sedwish-American guy, and... she is four months pregnant ! So she, unfortunately, won't be able to attend our wedding in March, but we will have someone to represent her "physically" as she is my bridemaid -in France, we do not make a difference between the maid of honor and bridemaids; we all call them "temoins" (litteraly "witnesses") and they are all on the same level. It's required to have at least two "temoins" at the church, but it could be more if wished. My second "temoin" will be my best friend Marie, whom I also met in DC even if she is from the North of France too ! The world is definitely small. For those attending the wedding, you will get the chance to see her super cute baby girl Chloe, who turned one last September. To close the subject about "temoins", we will have our "meeting" with our four "temoins" (Alice, Marie, Andrew and Steve) this Sunday. We are not sure yet what we are suppose to say exactly... The deacon, Xavier, who will marry us in France, will send us some guidelines. He is a very nice person, and we enjoy his flexibility, his modernity and his understanding. We are doing the religious preparation through emails and via Skype ! New technologies are indeed very useful and nice.

We, of course, will keep you posted about the wedding; and our website should be ready pretty soon. It will be a good occasion to practice your French a little bit ;-)... do not worry, it will be translated too.

Once again, I wish to tell you all through the blog how much happy I am to know you. I do and did appreciate the way you welcomed me into the family.

I look forward to sharing many, many more moments with you !

Here is a fun link

I found this cool link and Deborah and I tried it out. I would be curious to know what other family members get. I was a mid-venturer and it seemed about 75% correct.

www.besttripchoices.com

The Thomaskirche in Leipzig

The Thomaskirche
Originally uploaded by Papa, aka Don

Here's a photo of the Thomaskirche where Bach was the chief organist and choir director for 23 years. The set of photos (clicking on this one will take you to the batch at flickr) is from a day trip to Leipzig. As impressive in a different way was the Nikolaikirche in the same city. This church is the one where the meetings took place that led to the famous rallies and demonstrations in October, 1989, that then brought about the opening of the infamous Berlin Wall, the fall of the DDR government, and the reunification of Germany. The demonstrations were entirely peaceful: the citizens (70,000 were said to be in the demonstration on October 19) marched with nothing but lit candles and the massive police forces that were on hand chose not to use their weapons but to let the march proceed.

a daily celebration of the golden age of upper lip hair

When I just opened blogger to comment on Chris's post, my eye was caught by this featured blog:

Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century

Which I thought might be of interest to certain individuals in this family!