It’s the Happiest Season of All!

9 December: I slept in a little this day and woke up at around 10:30, then at 12:30 I rode my bike to Megan’s apartment and I had initially planned to just go there and pick up my notebook that I had left there, but I ended up staying there almost the entire day just hanging out with Megan, working on my theater group stuff and just chilling. Then, at 5:30 or so, Vera came over and the three of us baked a cake for our friend Phillip’s birthday. I think the three of us ate like half the mixture, but butter and sugar taste so good together! At 6:30 I met my friend Maximillian and we went to the Christmas market and ate Lángos which is a Hungarian dish and is basically funnel cake with pizza ingredients on top. We also got hot chocolate and Belgium fries, so my belly was full! Afterwards, I went to my theater group and it was my first rehearsal where I had my big role as “Mr. Collins” And I think I played him very well and I am very excited to bring the character to life. After theater group I went out with Maximillian, Vera, Megan, Phillip, and Jonas and we all went to a restaurant together and celebrated Phillips birthday and I really enjoy spending time with them.

10 December: I woke up and I rode my bike to the city center because I needed to buy a present for a giving tree event at my university, but I didn’t end up finding exactly what I wanted, so I rode my bike to the mall and there I found what I wanted. I don’t know if this is a thing in America, but I really like how in Germany, many stores have free wrapping paper for you to use to wrap the presents you’ve bought from their store. Also, this was a beautiful, sunny day, so I was very happy about that. After I was at the mall, I went home and watched a movie and worked on my german as well. Then at 2, I went upstairs and Oma Inga and Opa Günther were there, as well as both of the boys. The younger boy refused to take his nap, so he was very temperamental, but overall it was okay to play with him and it was also nice to talk to Oma Inga and Opa Günther. In the evening, the younger boy went to his gymnastics class and I stayed back with the older boy and we read and snuggled for about 2 hours and I really enjoyed it. Sometimes when I read for so long and am so cozy, I start to fall asleep, but the older boy doesn’t really mind. For dinner we ate bread and cheese and I was going to go to my friends house, but it was too cold for me to want to leave my house. So I watched Netflix and went to sleep at a decent hour.

11 December: I woke up on time and rode my bike to my creative writing and free speech class. I really like the friends I’ve made in there because there really only are four or five of us who are consistently there every week. Me, a girl from Russia, a guy from Czech Republic and a guy from Slovakia. I love when they pass around the attendance sheet and mine is perfect! I always find that class fun so even when I don’t want to wake up, I don’t regret waking up. On this day, I actually decided to go to my completely in german lecture that I’d been skipping, but when I went to the classroom I was so confused because I’m pretty sure it was over the same topic, but it was a different teacher! I just stayed in the class and hoped the teacher didn’t say or ask anything to me and thankfully, he didn’t. After the lecture, I went to the cafeteria and got a cappuccino to warm me up on this freezing day. My culture class was really fun and we are going to Nuremberg together on Monday to visit the huge Christmas market there, so I am very excited for that! I didn’t have to babysit this Wednesday so I was happy when one of my friends invited me to go out to lunch. He’s from Syria and taught me a lot about Syrian culture and traditions which was very interesting for me because I haven’t really had a lot of exposure to people from that part of the world. We ate falafel at the only Syrian falafel place in Bamberg and then went for tea and hot chocolate at one of my favorite cafes in the city. Afterwards, I did some window shopping and I just chilled for about an hour at the university until it was time for my choir rehearsal. Rehearsal was really nice and I have a friend who has curly hair like me and I love it. We speak german together which is really good practice for me and she’s one of my only friends who is the same age as me and not several years older than me and it’s good to have at least one of those. After choir, I rode my bike home in the snow! It was cold cold cold!!

12 December: I woke up and got ready and went to my grammar class. Sunrise is at 8:05 now, so it was pretty dark when I was riding my bike to class. It went better than it has in past weeks, but I still don’t necessarily love the class. After class, I rode quickly to my American Studies class and there were moments where I could hardly keep my eyes open because I was very tired. I do however really like my friends in that class. I have one friend who always wears American sports apparel and shows it to me which I think is funny. He said, “Avery, I have something to show you.” And then showed me his Chicago White Sox shirt to which I responded “Ew, the White Sox! You need a Kc Royals shirt.” We talked about Manifest Destiny this day and I was not entertained. After class, I rode quickly home and ate lunch with my host family. We had tortellini. The younger boy refused to take his nap this day, but his mom insisted we at least have a quiet hour, so I spent an hour reading to both the boys and it was really nice because we all just snuggled up and read some good books. At 3:30, 6 more kids came over for my host mom’s music class and ALL of them were either rowdy or had no desire to be there. I could tell my host mom was stressed and I myself was getting stressed just observing the class. After the class, we waited another 30 minutes for 3 of the girls’ grandma to pick them up and they were all saying “ugh when will Oma be here?” And to that I responded “I know! When do you think my grandma will be here?” and they said “You don’t have an grandma, you’re a grown up!” And I said “Yeah-huh I have two grandmas” and they just didn’t believe me! Once we finally left, we all ate dinner together as a family and then my host parents went out for date night and I put the boys to bed and it went really well. Nobody woke up, not even the baby, so I was satisfied with the evening.

13 December: I slept in a little on this snowy day and around 12:30 I took the bus to mall because I didn’t want to ride my bike in the snow. I ended up going to McDonald’s for lunch and working on some school stuff there for a few hours. I’m sure they know me by name there now, but it’s always good to have a place that feels just like home! After McDonald’s, I walked around in the mall for 10 minutes or so and then I walked to the bus stop to wait for the bus home. I ended up waiting for 30 minutes and my bus never came. So I walked a mile home which really wasn’t so bad. It had stopped snowing by the time I had to walk, so it really wasn’t so bad. When I got home, I went upstairs and the younger boy and I played together while the older boy was at his sport class. At first, the younger boy wanted to read and I was so excited because he usually isn’t as enthusiastic about reading as the older boy is. After we read for a while, we did some “cooking” in the play kitchen. When the older boy came back, we all played together until it was time for dinner. We ate some bread and cheese, played for a while, and then read for a while as well. At 7:30 I was free to go and I went downstairs, put on my Christmas sweater, and rode my bike to the city center to meet my friend Mark and a group of his friends at a bar called Fässla. Every year in Ireland, they participate in the “12 Pubs of Christmas” and they go to 12 pubs in one night and each pub has a different rule. The rules for the pubs that I went to were: switch shoes with someone, down a “rauchbier” (I didn’t do this one because I hate the taste of rauchbier which is basically beer that is smoked and tastes like meat), you can’t drink your own drink instead someone has to feed you it, you have to take a shot of baby Guinness (baileys and tia Maria), nobody is allowed to swear, and nobody is allowed to speak English. It was so much fun and I talked to so many people who I know of but who I haven’t had the chance to talk to yet. It was one of the most fun nights I’ve had.

14 December: I woke up at 7:30 AM and rode my bike home from my friend’s house. I had to work at 9 and I went upstairs and the younger boy was screaming and crying so I stayed at home with him while my host mom and the other two kids went to the bakery. He cried for about 10 minutes, but eventually he calmed down and we played with duplo blocks together. When the others came back home, we ate breakfast together and it was delicious as it always is on Saturday and Sunday’s. We played for a while after breakfast and then brushed our teeth and got completely ready for the day. It had been raining all morning, but at about 11 there was a break and we all went into the forest for a hike and it was so much fun! It gave me flashbacks of my time as a junior counselor at wilderness nature camp and I loved that so much. We found a really weird house with no windows, but with a bench outside and the boys also showed me where they had played when they had “forest week” in kindergarten. We stayed in the woods for about 2 hours and then we went home and just had a tiny lunch. The younger boy went down for his nap and I watched fireman Sam with the older boy and afterwards we played with Duplo for a while. Once my host dad came home, I was free from work so I went down to my room and did some last minute preparation for my English speaking theater group Christmas Party. I arrived early at the party, but I wasn’t the only one, so I talked to some friends for a little while. The party was so much fun! One of my favorite things is that I started a casual game of telephone around the table and we ended up sporadically playing telephone the entire night. I also introduced everybody to the game of White Elephant which nobody had ever played before, I was really happy to bring my tradition to them! The party lasted for 5 hours and we drank a lot of hot chocolate and laughed a lot and just enjoyed each other’s company which made me really happy and I was also so happy to have been the one to plan it for everyone. After the party, I went out with a few of the girls to a bar called “Catwheezle’s Castle” and it was a quaint, but really cool looking bar and everyone there was very nice. It was a really great opportunity for me to get to know some people in the group better.

Now it’s Sunday and I am going to Erlangen (a nearby city) with a huge group of international students to the Christmas Market and ice skating as well and I can’t wait! I will write about it in next week’s blog if I remember.