The Christmas season has begun

I do believe it's officially the Christmas season here in Germany - we have snow on the ground and the Weihnachtsmarkts are in full swing - glühwein and sweets and all. There's lots of tea and christmas songs and decorations and I really don't think anyone does Christmas like the Germans - it's serious business. My host mom has been planning out her baking for weeks. Our house is completely consumed by decorations. It's quite pleasing.

I have been cooking up a storm lately... in addition to cooking thanksgiving dinner and generally helping out my host mom, I also made homemade vegetable soup for the first time! I had to fudge the metric/American measurements a bit and I added and subtracted certain vegetables, but I think it came out well! I surprised my host mom with it for lunch and I also brought some to Pati since he was home sick for half the week.

I've been still attending my German course with Frau Zimmler, and we've been tackling some really tricky German grammar... Subjunctive (Konjuktiv) and such... which is the conditional future, as in 'If you could pick me up on Friday, I would gladly come with you to the movies.' It's tough but I think I may finally be wrapping my head around it.

I rode my bicycle in the snow for the first time in my life. I've also started blowdrying my hair, because my host parents won't let me out of the house with wet hair anymore.

I took a test in music class! The teacher is really sweet but doesn't really understand that I don't want to speak English, so she translated the questions for me and everything... but I wrote a mini essay about relationship between the plot of an opera and the musical arrangement of the Aria in German! Of course I needed almost two full periods when the others only needed one, but still! I wrote an almost-essay in German and it actually went reasonably well, I think.

I managed to not get completely homesick on Thanksgiving, despite the fact that I had to go to school. Ramona and Bruno and I skyped with Mom and Dad and Grammy and Aunt Clarissa and Uncle Jeff, and it was really lovely and my dad practiced his German out on Ramona ('zwei Bier bitte'). Most Germans don't really have much of an idea of what Thanksgiving is, so I've had to explain it a lot. And Frau Rennert asked me about turkeys in German class and I explained I was a vegetarian and she had a good laugh with that one. :)

Just when I thought my German was getting good I managed to embarass myself in front of various customers at the stationary store in Spremberg... I bought a new journal (my old one is full!) and an eraser and a sheet of nice purple paper, and didn't understand what the cashier when she asked me if I wanted a recipt... Bah...But now I know: die Quittung - Recipt

We didn't have school randomly on Friday (I guess all schools in Germany, or at least Brandenburg, get three random days where they can cancel...sort of like staff development days in the US, minus the staff development) and I spent it with Pati :) It was quite lovely.

Last night I went to Simon's birthday party! He had a bunch of people over to the 'Schokiburg' - or the 'chocolate castle' - his parents own a Belgian chocolate factory, for those who may have forgotten. A bunch of my friends were there, including Daniela, Ewa, Vanni, Anna, Erik, Pati, and Max (well, there were actually three Maxes there). We ate lasagna and quatsched and listened to Simon's band play and played guitar hero and twister and such. In Germany it's bad luck to wish someone happy birthday before their actual birthday, so we all waited until midnight and then sang Happy Birthday to Simon in cute German accents. Then we all gave him his gifts :) I gave him the Alternative Press magazine that my mom had sent from home, and I also made him a card with pictures of us. I wrote about how much I appreciate his friendship, since he was actually my first German friend and through him I met virtually all of my new friends :) Without him, my life in Germany would probably be really, really different. He seemed to really like it :)

Today I went to an antique shop in Spremberg with my host family. It was really cool to see all of the old things and compare them to antiques in the US... especially things from the Nazi era and the DDR. Of course Germany shouldn't be defined only by these time periods, but since I've learned so much about them in school I find such relics quite fascinating. Jörg bought me a few pieces of really old Germany currency... Deutsche Marks from the 1903 and 1923. also stumbled upon a copy of Mein Kampf, which was admittidly quite creepy.

Also, I finished reading Brecht's Die Gewehere der Frau Carrar for the second time, and now I've moved on to the German translation of 1984. I really hoped I can manage to get through it... it's pretty hefty but I love the book auf englisch so we'll see how it goes.

I am quite tired, so I'm going to finish uploading my photos to smugmug and then relax for the evening. Das Leben ist schön in Deutschland :)