Frohe Weihnachten!

In Germany, there are three official days of Christmas:

December 24th – Heiligabend

This is the big day. The 25^th in America = the 24^th in Germany.
We put up the tree during the day.

Luca and I tinseling

     In the afternoon, we went to church to watch the Christmas play and sing German Christmas songs.

In the evening, the grandparents and my host aunt, uncle, and cousin came to our house to celebrate.

 Lots of presents!

Waiting to open presents with my host uncle Mike, host mom, 

Chiara, host aunt Marina, and host cousin Cilia

In the process

Happiest kid ever with his new

 helicopter (nice work, Mom)

     After presents, we ate dinner: pork, red cabbage, and croquette. For dessert we had homemade chocolate mousse. Everything was delicious.

Playing our traditional game of Rummy

Opa & Oma dancing to Feliz Navidad

Vito's Christmas present: My sweater 

that was shrunken in the wash

December 25^th – First Christmas Day

     During the day we hung out at home, and then my host grandparents came over again during the evening. My host dad cooked Italian food for us – shrimp scampi, and then rabbit, asparagus, and potatoes with gravy. Dessert was vanilla ice cream with hot cherries. Another delicious meal.

     We skyped with my family in America, which turned out to be a quadrilingual conversation – English, German, French, and Italian were all spoken at some point.

December 26^th – Second Christmas Day

     We woke up and ate breakfast late, then went to a Christmas open house in the afternoon. The house was almost a mansion, and belongs to a friend of my host dad’s. We met a bunch of fancy people and ate fancy hors d'oeuvres like fruit on a stick, duck, and bacon-wrapped dates. The word got around quickly that I’m an American exchange student, so a bunch of people made the effort to say “hello” instead of “hallo” to me. The host told me that I had to help out with the “show act” later on. Turns out I just had to sing Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

Later on at home:

Chiara on the acoustic, me on the bass, and Luca on the African drums.

And that was the end of my German Christmastime.