Christening and USA-Italy

Saturday was the Orthodox christening of my colleague P's second daughter. There were five languages being spoken among the guests: French, German, English, Greek, Spanish!

And my oh my, they actually dunk the whole baby in the water! And, as one of the other guests pointed out to me, the symbolism is unmistakeable: the godparents hand the baby over to the priest, which doesn't happen in the Catholic ceremony.

Tired baby:



The baby's older sister:



And, btw, my colleague B and her sweetie Jn:



The baby did remarkably well with the whole ordeal, and the day was quite fun (for the rest of us anyway). The reception took place on the Seine, with super-yummy food, champagne and mimosas and wine, and lots of kids running around. I was at the Babar table!



And there was a talented five-piece band that started with jazz standards and ended with traditional Greek music, to which the Greek-British men, old friends of the baby's daddy, danced, traditionally.

Here is a photo of the baby's daddy dancing.



The highlight of the dancing was when one of the Greek guys went onto his back and then jumped dramatically up -- after which the two-year-old boy thought that was a good idea to lie down on his back on the dance floor!

Afterwards I hung out a bit with some of the Greek-British guys and their British wives -- all of whom were a hoot -- watched some football with them in a bar in the 4th I'd never been to. Heh, betcha thought that there weren't any of those left. But there are. This one was the local bar/resto of one of the couples, who lives on rue St. Antoine, as it turns out.

Later, JD came by, and we headed over to the 6th to meet up with our excellent American friends Tn and Mk (no Roscoe tonight!) for the USA-Italy game. It was standing room only in a bar full of noisy Italians and equally noisy Americans. (I was satisfied to root for the US, even though I may be getting an Italian passport eventually... :) The Italian players are masters of the dive, meant to fool the ref. And one of their players got a red card, which means that they were one man down for the rest of the game. Then we thought we might win... but then we got two red cards, so we were two men down. But, we held them to a tie. Atta team.