Weihnachtszeit

13.12.09
I went over my friend’s house. His mother made „Carne Salada“, or something with the word „Carne“ in it, and it had so much meat! I really liked it. I also played Wii with him, then „Singster“ with both him and his mom. I was terrible, and the game was giving the players feedback after they sang a little bit, and I swear it was making fun of me. I even lost to him in chess. I was SO close to winning too! All of his good pieces were gone, but then my brain decided to take a nap. But, it was a lot of fun, and now his mom wants to cook fish for me ^^.

14.12.09
I just had an almost regular, normal day today. After school I dropped a truckload of books off at the library, and bought my host mom something at the Christmas market. I got her a candle made out of folded sheets of beeswax. I think it’s really pretty, and it smells nice too.



16.12.09
I look forward to Wednesdays because that’s when I have my first English class of the week. So, I was waiting with my class in the classroom for the teacher to come. We waited... and waited... and waited... and left. The teacher just NEVER came, so we got to go home early.

After school I went with my friend and his mom to an Italian restaurant to celebrate her birthday, and I ordered Schweinschnitzel mit Fleischsoße, and it was SO GOOD! It was basically a piece of fried swine meat with a cheese and tomato (I think?) sauce. And French fries. I could hardly finish it. Afterwards, we went back to my friend’s apartment, and hung out... and well, now I have a boyfriend. And he’s a lifeguard. And he speaks French.



(Normally he’s not wearing a pink cowboy hat. He just tried this one on at the Christmas market in Spandau.)

17.12.09
„Today, I was assaulted by white balls. They were very small things on the ground, and in the air... I figured they were dew balls or something falling from the plants... but then I realized they were falling in places far away from the trees too...“ behold, my first experience with snow actually falling on me o.O

18.12.09
This was my last day of school. I couldn’t find my teacher for the last lesson of the day, and then I realized there was a huge concert thing going on in the entrance hall. Some of the younger kids were playing instruments and singing, and when they were done, we were released to go home almost two hours early ^^. Then I talked to the Columbian exchange student on the bus. It’s really interesting to talk to him, because I got used to how the Germans are, and now I think he’s kind of different, but in reality he acts sort of like an American ^^. Basically, my own culture is starting to see different to me... ^^.

19.12.09
It was really cold, snowy, and really pretty, and we (I and my host family) cut our own Christmas treeeeee! :D We just sort of drove for a while to I have no idea where, and went to a Christmas tree lot, and cut one down. The biggest question was ‚how are we going to get it back home?’, but eventually, it all worked ^^. At the lot there was a canal, and I REALLY liked it, because... it reminded me of jumping over the canals back in Arizona.

20.12.09



My host parents took me to the Christmas market at Schloß Charlottenburg, and IT WAS SO PRETTY!!!! Despite the cold, I really had a nice time there. The cold itself was pretty cool, because I had just never been THAT cold. I had like five jackets on and three pairs of socks, but I was still freezing. There were also a few dogs that were there, but their owners had put them in little bags and carried them around and it was soooooo cute! There was also these really cool birdhouses, but picture taking was forbidden, so... ya. There was also this really pretty Christmas tree set up, and just as we were leaving, some musicians were getting ready to play. Here’s another picture of the Schloß after it’s gotten a little bit darker.



Afterwards, we were walking back home when we found these street artists who were giving a display with fire. It was actually really cool.

21.12.09
I went with my boyfriend to Kudamm, which is THE shopping street of Berlin. If a business is successful, they have a shop there. It also is home of one of the most expensive malls in all of Germany, the KaDeWe. The whole mall looked pristine, and sooooooooo expensive. You actually aren’t allowed to take pictures in it, so... ya, no pictures for my blog ^^. But believe me, the whole thing looked like it was out of one of those really nice magazines. They also had a very nice Christmas thing going on in this amazingly huge entrance room, and I thought the decorations were really nice... until I realized they weren’t really decorations because they all had price tags on them. Basically, you could buy like everything there. Anyways, then we went to the Europa Center (it had a really cool water display by this little café), and to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche. The Germans have a nickname for it, which in English is „hollow fang“. Here’s why.



It was destroyed in WWII, and then rebuilt as a memorial to the Catholics who died in the war. It’s really a beautiful church though, and there are even some wall paintings left over from the original.

One last thing, we went to a Döner Shop (a Döner is a Turkish... thing) and I was speaking to Georg, my boyfriend, in English... so the Turkish cashier started to talk to Georg in English, and Georg told him „I’m the German, she’s the American“. Then the guy said „and I’m Turkish“. It was really cute!

23.12.09
Today it was just a lot of getting ready for Christmas... It’s actually tradition in Germany to decorate the tree just a few days before Christmas. So, now our pretty tree is sitting in the living room.

24.12.09 Heiligabend
Germans open their presents today. One day before the Americans. Ha ha, Americans!

But anyways, I had a really nice time with my host family (and my host grandparents that live in Berlin came to visit) during Christmas. And in Germany, Christmas is three days long. The first day is Heiligabend (holy evening), and the next two are basically called „Party Day One“ and „Party Day Two“. What do Germans do to celebrate? EAT!!!!! I felt like I was going to explode the first day, but the food was just sooooooo good. We also set up a little train that went through the living room and under the tree. Afterwards we went to church, then went home to unwrap the presents. My host sister and I divided up the stack of presents between whom they all were sent to, and it was all just really nice. I really had a nice day, maybe I like Christmas in Germany more than Christmas in America. I got some nice presents too; a t-shirt with all of the sectors of Berlin, a pen set (with a real leather carrying case), a calendar with tips in it on German from Duden (this company produces a lot of books on school subjects, including a list of German words (no, not a dictionary, just a list of words with extremely brief notes on each one)), a Donald Duck comic book (in German), CANDY, a cutting block with the Tischregeln on it (table rules for the sloppy American), and lots of other stuff. Including paper (two notebooks, and one set of five really nice pieces of paper with matching envelopes and stamps from my community representative). I know it’s weird, but I was REALLY happy to get paper. I have a thing for writing, apparently ^^. After we unwrapped the presents, my host sister and I started putting together a puzzle she got for Christmas. It was a map of the world, and it had 1,000 pieces.

25.12.09 Erster Feiertag
My host grandparents left today, but not after my host uncle came over and we played games together. I swear I ALMOST won a game of cards. It’s a really weird and sort of complicated game that I totally didn’t understand at first, but it’s SO MUCH FUN! I just realized, I really like playing card and board games. My host family has some really interesting ones. But anyways, the puzzle of the Earth was a pain in the neck, because there were about 50 pieces that were all the same color of gray (a map of Earth is elliptical-ish and the puzzle was rectangular, but the designer decided to make the part outside of the Earth all gray, except for a part that was the flag of every country in the world), and then the ocean is all pretty much the same type of blue, so it was a lot of fumbling around in the dark, but we were able to finish before we went to bed! Well, I was in bed when they finished it, but I could hear my host sister screaming, and figured she had finished it ^^.

26.12.09
There wasn’t as much eating and having fun today, only because my host grandparents, host uncle, and host sister were all away, but I still had a nice day. My host parents went with me to the Neue Museum on Museum Island in Berlin. It had a special exhibit of Egyptian artifacts, and it was really interesting. I saw sarcophagi, a Book of the Dead, and it was overall just really interesting...

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Ok, I took forever to write this, so I sort of forget what happened on what day, and so... To sum it up, I celebrated New Year’s Eve with my host family, and we set off fireworks in the snow. We had a friend of my host mom and her family over, and it was a really nice time. I also went to go see Avatar with my boyfriend, and it was really an amazing film... I liked it so much because most films these days don’t have a real background idea like some books do, such as „Animal Farm“ and such... but Avatar does. To me, it raises the question of what people are willing to give up, or even destroy, to get something material. Then, on January 2nd, I went to the airport with my boyfriend and his parents, and her flew to America for a semester long exchange year.

The school is going really well for me now. I feel like I belong there somehow; like everything’s not so foreign anymore. I’m also hanging out with people more, I went to the Deutsche Geschichte Museum (German History Museum) and the Berliner Bär (Berlin Bear) exhibit with another exchange student from Switzerland. I also hung out with another kid from the CBYX program in Spandau. My host family and I also went to an ice hockey game together, the Berliner Eisbäre against the Hannover Scorpions... the Berlin team lost 3-4.



Anyways, the Berlin Bears are huge bear statues from I believe 144 different countries. I’m not sure how many there are, but the bear is the „mascot“ of Berlin, and artists from all of these different countries were asked to make a bear that best represented their country... then all of the bears are supposed to be holding hands to show global acceptance and cooperation.

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Ok, so I wrote the rest of that a while ago, and didn’t get around to actually posting it until the date stamp on this blog post... but a lot has happened since then. I’ll write about it in my next post.