Dreaming in German...

Hello everyone! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and I wish you all a blessed new year! Sorry that it has been a while. However, as a new years resolution I want to try to post more often. I am thinking once every two weeks, possibly even once a week.

And now moving on to some great news! I made a goal for myself before I came to Germany, and that goal was to dream in German by Christmas. In the first couple months that I have been here, I know that my German has improved greatly and I reached a point in November where I didn't have to translate most things from German to English or vice versa. However, that wasn't my goal, but I had a problem... I wasn't dreaming at all. Well, at least I didn't remember my dreams. But, on the night before Christmas eve I finally achieved my goal! It was actually a pretty weird dream but at least it was in German! And the reason that I know it was in German was because in my dream there was a girl that said I was American because of my accent. :(. Now that is my next goal... Get rid of my accent! Oh, and speaking about accents, two people asked me while I was helping out at a ski lift if I came from another country. I said yes and both people said they thought I was from a country in Europe! (the one said Spain!). Yeah! I was very excited, but then my host brothers assured me that I still sound like an American and that I cant pronounce the word "brötchen". The only good thing, is that here in the Blackforest they use the word "wekli" instead of "brötchen".

Right now I am on an ICE train heading to Leipzig to visit my mom's cousin for four days! I am so excited to go to Leipzig!! However, my train is late and I am going to miss my connection in Fulda, but hopefully everything will work out.

Also, I have vacation now until the 8th of January. As for Christmas... It was spectacular! Although I celebrate a German Christmas with my family in America, it was still neat to be here for Christmas in Germany! We celebrated on Christmas eve and we also put up the Christmas tree on the same day. What was really cool, was that my host mom put real candles on the tree! I have to convince my dad to do that now too! And we had a very typical German meal for Christmas dinner: meat and potatoes. I also went to church with my host Oma in the traditional evangelical church. That was really neat and beautiful. They had an amazing organ player and a great choir, so needless to say, the traditional German Christmas carols that we sang were absolutely gorgeous! Than we opened presents! I got a sweatshirt and polo shirt from my school from my host mom. I have to admit, this was the one year where I didn't expect a lot gifts and then I received so many! It sounds a bit stupid that I just figured this out now... but this year i was really able to see what Christmas is about and that the presents are just a way of showing people that you love them. I realized this Christmas that it isn't necessarily about how much you give a person, but instead, the thought that you put into the gift, even if it is only a card. It's not always about buying someone the biggest expensive gift, rather giving them a gift that shows you care about them. It also snowed on Christmas eve!

On to New Year's Eve (which is called Sylvester here)! I spent Sylvester with my friends at Anne's house. Anne lives next door to me in a big building that is like an apartment building, only that there is a big kitchen and people eat meals together. Around midnight (only 6pm for east coasters!) we went up to her balcony to watch the fireworks. I must admit, this was more exciting than watching the ball drop in Time Square! In Germany it is illegal for people to set off fireworks on every day, except Sylvester. So you can imagine that things began with a bang! (pun intended). All around me people were setting off fireworks. Some even launched some on the streets! It lasted for half an hour and the old church bell was clinging too. Definitely cool! And to top it off we toasted the new year with a glass of Sekt, like champagne. (which was legal, no worries). :).

Tschüss!