Around Thanksgiving first of all: On that Wednesday, Kerstin, my cooperating teacher, invited me and some other teachers over to her house for a traditional Thanksgiving feast. It was lip-smackin' fantastic! We had a huge bird, lots of delicious apple and ground beef stuffing, sweet potatoes, green beans, corn, real wild rice from Minnesota and fresh cranberries. It was delicious! For dessert we had an apple crunch. I tried to make the pumpkin crunch that my dad has mastered over the years, but I couldn’t find the yellow cake mix to really make it crunch! It was a really nice evening with some of the German teachers from my school.
Christmas in Germany is the best, really! I mean the time leading up to Christmas. No, the houses aren’t nearly as nicely decorated as we Americans may be accustomed, but the Christmas Markets are awesome! In nearly every city stands are set up selling food and hand made crafts and almost anything you could think of. You get your Glühwein (or Glogg as some of you might know it as...basically hot spiced wine) and walk through, looking at what people are trying to sell. The cities are decorated with green garland and lights. The street musicians are out in full force, playing all of our Christmas favorites. And each market is different. Leipzig has a rather large one, which is impossible to walk through on the weekends. This past weekend I went with Kerry and her friend Emily to one in Wittenberg (the city where Martin Luther put up the 95 Thesis which started the Protestant branch of Christianity) and we found ourselves in a Christmas market with more elbow room and just as much charm. I’ve baked cookies with friends, gone to Sneak Preview movies (where you buy a ticket and don’t know what movie is coming), had dinner parties, went to Erfurt to celebrate Caroline’s birthday, went to Ikea for a few hours and played interior designer for an imaginary house, went to a museum about the human body that had real plasticized human bodies to look at, took walks in the park, drank my share of glühwein and ate my share (and your’s probably, too) of chocolate covered fruit! I have been having an all around great time, most of which thanks to my British friends, who teach me something new everyday!
My work at the school is getting to be more and more fun as I get to know the students more. This past Friday I did a really fun lesson about an article I found on CNN about a woman having her son arrested for playing with his gameboy-christmas present early. It went really, really well! And today I taught one of the 11th grade classes how to electric slide! What a blast! I really love my cooperating teacher! She makes it fun to go to school every day and I feel like I am learning a lot from her as the time goes on.
Things have been exciting here. I have a really good placement which keeps me busy. I know some people whose schools have not really accepted them and they have little to do. My school is great and I love working with the kids. It has been a lot of fun living in Germany. I have two German roommates and I hang out with them all the time. Other than them I hang out with British people in Leipzig as well. I do a lot of traveling, which long weekends and holidays make possible. I just got back from an 8 day stint in Turkey. Before that I was in Prague, Hamburg, Salzburg, Lyon, Paris, Athens, London and the Black Forest. It has been wonderful.