I'm Dreaming of a Whiiite Christmas....

Merry Christmas everyone! So now that it is four days after Christmas I think it's time to make a Christmas post, right?

We made the newspaper!

On the 24th my mom and host brother and I went to a friends house for Coffee time at three. Right away the father there was like "You are decended from the Irish aren't you?" and then he said I was tall. First ever time I have been called tall (: Wohhooo! After Coffee we went to a tiny church where a Nativity play was going on. It was very cute and reminded me of back when I used to be an angel in those.

The church was full so we got to watch from the top.

When that had finished we went home and made dinner - chicken, potatoes, and broccoli - and opened presents. All in all I would say it was a pretty good christmas! The next morning we had brunch at our house and a lot of people came over. I ate SO MUCH over the course of those days, it was ridiculous! I got to skype with my entire family after that, it was so nice to see everyone (all eleven of them) in one place, even if I couldn't be there in person. My christmas package to them had arrived in time so that was good (:

 The tree with presents underneath (:

Yesterday Rebekah finally brought me to the Berlin Wall, something she'd been saying we gotta do since I arrived. She leaves in a week so I am happy we got around to doing that finally!

Last night I got my package from my parents - cheetos, pie flavored gum, thai noodles, brownie mix, fritos, pop rocks, a pair of earrings (: We got a letter from the Deutsche Post saying I needed to go pick it up from somewhere. I looked up it on google maps and was like "right, I can DO this!" I rode my bike to the address but somehow ended up in a semi truck parking yard thing, very sketchy in my opinion. But, I biked all the way there and I wasn't leaving without my package! I tried to ask some people for directions but found out they only spoke Polish. My mom helped find it later that day after we called for better directions. And now I have my package! Yay!

Last Friday

Today is Friday and the first day of Christmas Break! I am really excited. One full week off of school! Last Friday I went to Rotarys Advent Celebration. It was very cool. First we met at a restaurant and then walked over to a church where someone talked a bit about Christmas, and then we sang a few carols. Then we went back to the Restaurant and there was a buffet. I was really excited because the food was absolutely AMAZING. Coq au Vin, ginger/pumpkin soup, rice, wurst.. it was delicious! After dinner a dance team from town performed a bit, it was very cool.

The Essen.

Schnee! On my way to school, was geil but melted before 9 :(

Then on Sunday me and my mom went to buy a christmas tree, I was expecting the average fir tree but my host mom wanted me to have more of a typical german/east german christmas experience and its a different kind of christmas tree.

Our tree, inside finally two days before christmas (the norm in D-land) to be decorated tonight or tomorrow. On the tv is Last Christmas, by Wham.

Ours is a bit smaller than the ginormous one at Hauptbahnhof. Thats me, the red speck to the right of the clock. And all I can think of is where in the world they keep these things in the off season??

Let's see... two weeks ago my music teacher asked me to read a poem for the schools Christmas Party. The first Thursday that I did it was for the teachers, and the second time (yesterday) was in front of the school. Rebekah is an amazing singer so they asked her to sing. Yesterday after it was all finished up Rebekah and I were like "right, no we can go home" and then the Mensa starts filling up with more students and that's when we find out we have to do the whole thing over again! The poem was very seriously Danglish. I read it with a girl from my class and she was a little nervous so she read it pretty fast and I'm right next to her reading about twice as slow so that I don't mess up my German (or English). Since it was English and German together I ended up with a german accent when I spoke the English and a pretty decent English accent when I read the German parts! The poem was called "Merry Weihnachten"

Taken from inside school, a portion of Fürstenwalde. I love looking out of the window and watching the sheep. They are awesome.

Merry Weihnachted
(the stanzas I read)

Aber auch zu Mum und Dad

ist Old Santa pretty nett;

denn die Gifts aus Peter’s Shop

sind Prime Collection , - einfach top;

From Heaven high, da kommt er her,

und bringt der Goodies mehr und mehr.

Grandma, Grandpa, ach Ihr Alten,

Weihnachten könnt Ihr gern behalten,

X-mas providet globally

Corporate Identity;

Joy to the world, bald ist’s Zeit

again für Silent und für Holy Night.

Wenn wir daheim schon nicht verstehen,

wie soll’s global dann besser gehen?

Nicht, wenn Ihr fremde Wörter stammelt, -

doch wenn Ihr unterm Wort Euch sammelt,

strahlt in die Welt so weit, so breit,

der Friede dieser Weihnachtszeit.

The other night in Berlin I had to take a picture of thise, a smartcar, epicly parked. I love it.

One last thing, since I won't be seeing anybody from home for Christmas so I hope everyone has a very, merry christmas! Love, Rose

Weinnachtsmarkt

Last night for dinner we had... something... I forgot the name, but the important part is that it had Sauerkraut in it! I was realy impressed. It was the first time I'd eaten sauerkraut in Germany, and probably the first time ever! Usually this meal has more big chunks of meat in it, but it was really good, especially with a bit of sour cream! MmmMmmm!

I went to Berlin the other day because I was craving KFC, here it's called just "Kentucky" so at first I was really confused when people were telling me how they'd been to Kentucky the other day! We stopped by a Christmas Market in Berlin Alexanderplatz. I couldn't find any cotton candy there which I LOVE.

But on the bright side I was asking some lady what she was making (they were like inch wide pancakes) and she responded to me in German even though I could hear that she had an Irish accent! I love that I can hear when people have foreign accents now, because before it was all just German German German!

An Exchange Students Ode to Her Dictionary

This is how I manage to stay sane after four hours of Math in German.

Today was Saint. Nikolas Day, which I had no idea existed until this morning when I came down stairs and to my surprise found a bowl of candy by my cereal. Apparently what the little kids do is clean their shoes and leave them outside and if they meet Saint Nicks standards then he will leave them candy. How cool!

Sachsenhausen

On Saturday my distrikt traveled an hour out of Berlin to Oranienburg where a concentration camp is. It´s called Sachsenhausen. What it was, if I understood right, was not a concentration camp with the objective of killing people, but more focused on working people to death. For example, the camp would make people walk around in circles, sometimes pushing various heavy objects for hours every day. It was so sad and it was raining which actually was really fitting. I was told that this was one of the smaller concentration camps, because only 100,000 people or so died of starvation, exhaustion, diease, mistreatment, etc.

At the entrance to Sachsenhausen

The toilettes.

A painting of potatoes in the kitchen. I read that their food consisted of bread and potatoe soup. It said in the kitchen the stench from the potatoes they had to peel was so bad they could feel it in their heads.

This is the table where they would observe the dead bodies, figure out the exact cause of death, see if there was anything unusal present that wasn't there before they came... creepy, right?

This is what is left of the the cremation site. Apparently years after Sachsenhausen was finished people found very very high amounts of human ash in the roads. It appears as if they had coated the roads in human ash at one point in time because there was so much of it.

To end things on a lighter note, here are my double chocolate chip cookies I made on Friday(:

Thanksgiving!

Something has come to my attention recently, that something is that my host mum doesn't make eggnog during christmas! We were talking about warm drinks, because we were making Glüwein (fill you in, in a second) and I asked if Germans happen to make eggnog for christmas. She says "what's that?"

Glühwein: warm up wine not quite to boiling that is very typical of Germany. Now that the christmas markets have opened up and christmas is around the corner I am hearing a lot about it. I wasn't very impressed, but I guess it beats drinking cold wine outside in the winter, right?

Now for Thanksgiving...

Thursday felt a little weird, knowing that all my friends in the states were celebrating and had Thursday and Friday off. Here in Germany everyone just went on as usual. I mean, of course they would because they dont't celebrate it, but it felt lt weird to me, especially because I wouldnt make thanksgiving dinner until Sunday because my host mom had a meeting.

On Friday a bunch of us American exchange students (plus a frenchie, kiwi, and aussie) celebrated Thanksgiving together. I'd say it was very successful. All in all there were about 12 of us I think. We all brought our own dishes.

Here are the guys with the turkey just outta the oven - they were pretty impressed.

Frenchie with her Ratatouille

 There were potatoes, spinach dish, two stuffed turkeys wrapped in bacon, pumpkin pie (mine), pavlova (kiwi dish), and shephards pie. We even did the proper "I am Thankful for...", and a toast, and maybe I might've heard someone trying to say what they could remember of the thanksgiving prayer!

The Meal.

Even though it wasn't the same thanksgiving that I have had back home, I think all of us were happy to be together and celebrate something that had been so important to us back in the states (: Besides we are basically family to eachother.

The Group (with a few germans)

On Sunday I came home and made Thanksgiving for my family. I managed to put together, with a lot of help from my mom, a chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots, and green beans. Success!

Today my host mom and I made christmas cookies. I made chocolate-chocolate chip cookies. She says they are Ultra American cookies. Tomorrow I go to Berlin, hopefully I will send off my Christmas package for my family before I get on the train. Then I will meet with my distrikt and we will go to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen and later to a Weihnachtsmarkt. I want to get good sleep tonight because we will have a long day tomorrow!