Count down to Christmas

So I am still way behind on my posts and I have lots of fun and interesting stories to tell so pray that my computer gets fixed soon so that I can share them all with you! I am sitting at an internet cafe right now so I will not be writing it all!

The week before Christmas break at school was very relaxed and a lot of fun. On Tuesday, I was invited to go ice skating with my sixth graders. They are one of my favorite classes because they are always so excited to see me and they are the sweetest kids. We spent two hours skating and then we walked around the Christmas market for half an hour. That was their class for the day! Mine too! That evening I had a ticket to the concert which I got for free, even though I was supposed to pay (let's just say the secretary likes me ;) She told me not to tell anyone though so keep it hush hush, ok! ) The concert was amazing. It lasted around 2 hours and nicluded singing performances and orchestral performances from all levels at the school. This is a stark contrast between German and American schools, when one sees how much importance is placed on the arts here.

The yearbooks also came in that week and i was able to bargain with the secretary again who gave me a big discount on it. There is a really short article written about me with a picture next to it. Two of my students wrote the article and I almost cried laughing. It is very sweet though. On Wednesday, we had a Jule Exchange with my grade 13 class. Unfortunately, I didn't know about it and so my teacher brought a gift for my person and I just had to wrap it for her. I recieved a bottle of Champagne from my person. Class was spent discussing the 'Arbitur' and eating cookies. I know! Strenuous! : ) Thursday, I taught two classes and Friday we had two parties, one with my sixth graders who impressed me with their extraordinary musical talents and one with my tenth graders.

Christmas at the Menz's in Crailsheim was a blast, that is after I finally got there...! Of course things had to go wrong with the train ride! My long train was delayed by about 20 minutes which meant that I would miss the next train that I was supposed to get on and so I ended up having to wait around 45 minutes to catch that one. Once I arrived at the last stop where I had to change trains, there weren't any more trains leaving there to go to Crailsheim...so i had to call Svenni and tell her I was stuck in Lauda, basically the middle of nowhere, and she and her mom had to drive an hour to come and get me. This made my total travel time from Kiel to Crailsheim around ten hours!! You can imagine, that I just crashed when we got there from exhaustion.

Her family fed me tons of delicious food and sweets! Germans celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. This is the day that the gifts are given and then they have two additional days of Christmas, the 25th and the 26th. On Christmas Eve, the tradition is that you eat Bratwurst and Potato Salad and then the big meal is the next day. The big meal consists of a soup and then the main meal with desert at the end. We had Sauerbraten with a delicious sauce, Knödel, veggies, and a type of Spätzle....mmm, heavenly!

I recieved a lot of nice gifts from Svenni and her family. Among them, a book about why men never listen and women can't park. I am reading it right now and I must admit it is very interesting and quite funny. I would recommend it to anyone with relationship troubles...perhaps it will help you better understand each other!

Mostly everything is closed on the Christmas days but some restaurants and bars are open and even some movie theaters. Svenni and i went to the christmas circus in Crailsheim and got our picture taken on a camel. For those of you with Facebook, she has it as her profile picture. We went to the movies with her friends and watched 'Enchanted' another one of Disney's stupid attempts at a funny movie...don't get me wrong, it is probably great for families and younger children but the boys and us weren't too exstatic. On the 25th the women, consisting of Svenni, Heike, Martina and I, drove to Schwäbisch Hall. It is a very beautiful, medieval city with impressive architecture in the heart of Schwabenland. The roads we took to get there reminded me of going to Bethany...the curves were just as bad! In addition to seeing Schwäbisch Hall, we saw some castle ruins and drove through a small village that was also very nice called Satteldorf. I left early on the morning of the 26th to pick up Kim Kelly from the airport in Frankfurt. On the way, I met Janina in Mannheim and we traveled together.

I would love to post about what Kim and Janina and i did in the 10 days that we were together but that will have to come in my next post as there is way too much to write about! Besides, it gives you something to look forward to, ne?