Merry Christmas!!

I'll catch you up on my life and share some pictures, but first I want to wish YOU a very Merry Christmas! I'll be thinking of you.

This time I'll start off with the pictures. So enjoy!

This is the top shelf of a book shelf in my room. I've bought quite a few Christmas things here, but that makes sense since Germany pretty much equals Christmas. ANYWAYS...I felt rather festive and since the Germans don't put up their trees until a few days before Christmas OR even on the 24th, I wanted something Christmasy in my room.

I absolutely LOVE this guy!!! He doesn't have a name yet, but I love him and I know he loves me too! You see a lot of these guys at the Christmas Markets. I had a really hard time finding one that I really liked. (I fell in love with an antic one in the toy museum....) (They are called Räuchermann.) However, I really like this one! I bought it in the Nürnberg Christmas Market, which is the most famous Christmas Market in all of Germany!!!

I also bought this in Nürnberg. These are also quite typical. They are called Pyramiden and when you light these candels than the hot air rises and moves the spinny thing on top which causes the little figures to move around in a circle! Excellent??? HECK YES!

I feel a little bit like Mrs. Claus! (These are my presents to different people! Aren't they excellent! GO CANADA!) Apparently Santa Claus doesn't have a wife in Germany and they think it's funny that there is a Mrs. Claus in North America.

I thought I'd give you a close up! Oh and those are sooooo maple candies! Believe it!

Deneige here comes all of that Art stuff I promised you!! So this is my wire rose which I fell in love with and bought in Trier for 2 Euros and I pretty much think it's one of the best souveniors ever!!!

And if you didn't fall in love with the rose, then here is the little bicycle. It even has a kick stand!!!!

This, in case it's not obvious, was my attempt to sketch a lemon. It's one of the first things I have ever really drawn.

This is kind of random, but I really like it. I painted this with some water colours back when I lived in Oberellenbach. I think it's rather cute.

I love drawing eyes. Sometimes my papers will just be covered in drawings of eyes. This is by far my best.

This picture has a funny story behind it. I drew this in art class and I have to say I'm pleased with it considering I have never taken an art class and we don't have a lot of instruction in my current art class. I drew this and as I went to put it away in the drawer where we leave our papers after class this one guy asked if he could see it. Of course I didn't want to show him. I mean the German kids have had art classes for years and of course I haven't. I reluctantly said yes and he looked at it and asked me who it was. I honestly answered no one, because it wasn't based on anyone. Then he asked if I liked black men. I'm sure my eyes were completely wide with shock and I'm surprised I was able to speak. I said, 'It didn't matter.' What else could I say?? It's just a picture! How does drawing one picture of a black man translate into I really like black guys. Well it's a funny story, at least hahaha.

This is the first German book that I've read. There is quite a bit of text in these books, although they are children's books. The vocabulary is also quite clever at times and the pictures are BEYOND adorable. Anyways, Katrin gave this to me to read the first day I came to live with them. The title of the book translates roughly to How Findus came to live with Petterson. She said that it seemed fitting because I was coming to live with them. Cute? Oh ya. So I would read the book with my dictionary beside me and during some evenings Katrin would listen while I read it and then she helped me with my pronounciation. That has really helped me.

I'm sure many of you have heard about the legendary Haribo gummy bears. This is a tiny package. It was sooo small and cute that I thought it deserved a picture. (Oh and the green ones are the best.)

This is a picture of one of my scarves close up. I think it's so cool and I've talked to a few of you about it so now you can see it too!

So this is my agenda for school. I covered it with Canada things, now before all of you think I've been converted to become a Flames fan or I've fallen in love with the Canucks you are DEFINETLY wrong. The only reason that Montreal stickers aren't plastered all over this baby is because Montreal didn't send me any free stuff to take with me. The Flames and the Canucks did. There, now you know!

Here is the best German movie of all time. I don't know if you can find it in Canada, but I've spoken about it before. It's sooooo funny!!!

Now I'll get onto all of my news!

On Tuesday one of my teacher's pulled me aside and asked how long I would be here in Germany. He thought I left in January, so he wanted to make sure to say goodbye. That really really touched me. He's a very nice man. That same day my math teacher took all of us to the Rotenburg an der Fulda Christmas Market and bought us something hot to drink. That was pretty excellent! On that same day I almost bought a small poinsettia for my room. I was feeling rather festive and we always have a poinsettia in our house at Christmas time. So I would have liked one, but the ones that I saw were kind of weak and a bit sickly looking. Needless to say, I didn't buy one, but I was still pretty cheary.

While I was drinking tea and eating Christmas cookies with Katrin the phone rang and it ended up being Johannes' English teacher. She was wondering if I could come to Johannes' school on Friday and give a small presentation for her class about Christmas in Canada and the School System in Canada. I would speak in English, because it was an English class. I ended up saying yes. There wasn't as much pressure because it was in English and it would be nice change.

This is kind of random, but you would not believe how many times I have watched the movie Kung Fu Panda. I never watched it in Canada, but since I have been in Germany I have seen it 3 times. One of these times was this week in Art class. Craziness.

I sang Christmas carols in the choir in the hall on Thursday. It ended up being pretty fun and I thought fondly of Christmas caroling with you Tannis. I'll miss that so much this year. There were a lot of good singers, so that was good! Hahaha while singing can be fun, I definetly don't have the voice of an angel.

My presentation went really well on Friday. I brought the class some Canadian presents and the presentation went really well. We ate breakfast together and I wanted to laugh when one of the girls brought out a package of butter. Only in Germany, seriously. I've found that people butter their toast before putting on jelly or other things. For snacks they will eat bread smeared with butter and then with some cheese or meat inside. They eat a lot more butter than I eat back home.

The teacher handed out secret Santa gifts and she had made one for me. I thought that was so incredibly sweet. So I received some sweets and a mug that says Bad Hersfeld on it. (That's the city where Johannes' school is.) Later that day I went to another Drama Rehersal.

On Saturday, my most family and I went to cut down a Christmas Tree. It rained on us. I have to say that I had imagined a bit of snow. Many of the trees were also more bluish than green. I also have to admit I imagined very green trees. We ended up finding a nice tree although it is more bluish than green and it will be my first real Christmas tree that I remember anyways. I don't think I had one as a young child, but maybe. I'll take lots of pictures once we have decorated it. Promise, promise.

That evening Johannes and I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It wasn't Johnny's best performance, but it was still rather cute. Sunday was a pretty chill day, but I did end up going on a long walk with Katrin, Eberhard, and Mira. Even though it rained it was nice to get outside.

We ate sour crout and let me tell you it was acutally really really good. It is so much better in Germany. OH and we watched Ice Age 1, because it was on TV. It's sooo cute! I've seen it before in English and I think that Sid's voice is better in English, but it was still really good.

Today I had Drama from 10 am until 2:30 pm. It was suppose to be until 6 pm, but Herr Meyer saw the light. Thank goodness! It's hard to concentrate for so long. The play is slowly coming together. We haven't rehersed all of the scenes yet, but we've made some pretty cool ones so far. I'm starting to memorize my lines in German. (The ones I know, we still don't have a script.) It's a little hard core, because if I forget my lines in German it's a bit difficult to improve on the spot especially in front of an audience!!! So I hope that doesn't happen, but I still have quite a bit of time, so I'll try not to worry about that yet.

Now I will do my blurt about Art classes in Germany. Now unfortunately Deneige I don't really have much to report. Since the begining of the year we have been drawing with special pencils and paper and our topic has been drawing people. Or people's features like eyes, mouths, etc. People have put together presentations about different Art periods, but other than that we are just working by ourselves. So I haven't really recieved much instruction. After Christmas I think we will change to a new topic. However, now you can see a few things that I've drawn or painted. I wish I had more to tell you!

Either tonight or tomorrow we will decorate the tree. I'm pretty excited about that. I'll tell you all about Christmas in Germany once I have lived it. I won't be writing again until after Christmas so Merry Christmas and I'll save the Happy New Year until later!

I want to dedicate this post to all of my readers. That's right, this one is for you! One of the things that I've learned while I've been over here is that I am soo lucky and grateful for the people who are in my life. Thanks for being there now and then. So until we meet again reader, this one is for you...