Saturday, December 31, 2011

Frohe Weihnachten!


In Germany, there are three official days of Christmas:

December 24th – Heiligabend
This is the big day. The 25th in America = the 24th 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 25th – 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 26th – 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.


Sunday, December 4, 2011

Es sieht aus wie Weihnachten!

(It looks like Christmas!)

Christmas season in Germany is just as good as everyone claims it to be. Maybe even better. Hannover has several Weihnachtsmarkts (Christmas markets) that opened a couple weeks ago. My favorite market is the one in the old part of the city, where the all the cool buildings and tiny brick streets are. They have booths that sell ornaments, and little Christmas things, but mostly food – potato pancakes, bratwurst, crepes, chocolate covered stuff, etc – and drinks. Glühwein is the traditional Weihnachtsmarkt drink, and is really delicious. It’s a hot drink made out of red wine, rum, sugar and spices. They also sell eggnog… Linda, Noah and I decided to get some but little did we know it was 90% rum. We couldn’t drink more than a few sips, so we got rid of it but got to keep the cups.

This picture was taken before the first taste.


The whole city is decorated with lights!


Decorating Christmas cookies with Oma

Before

After

In Germany, Advent calendars are taken to another whole level. They have the ones with chocolate here, but more than just two choices to choose from. A whole section of the department store is dedicated to advent calendars. Some are huge and have toys or makeup instead of chocolate inside.
Instead of chocolate advent calendars, my family has little individual presents for each day. We hung them up on the ceiling of the kitchen, all 72 of them. So far, I’ve gotten gum, warm socks, nail polish, and little chocolate sticks.

Opa and the presents after we finished hanging them all

Other than Christmas stuff, everything has been normal. On Friday, I went to my first night club with a couple AFS friends in Hameln. Ask me if you wanna know more about that night.
Lastly, my latest great accomplishment. In Germany, 10th graders have to do an internship for two weeks at some place similar to where they might be interested in having a career in. Since I’m in 10th grade here, I have to do this too. In the beginning of October I started sending out applications to marketing companies. My host mom and opa helped me write it and make it look really professional. Since then, I’ve sent out 15 applications and finally got a response from a company inviting me in for an interview. I left school early on Thursday and my host mom took me to the company. The idea of being interviewed in German kinda freaked me out, but it went really well. The guy asked me a few questions like why I want to work in marketing, how long I’m staying here, and what I would like to do for my internship. After about five minutes he said we were done and that I got the job! He showed me around the place, introduced me to some people, and that was it. So for two weeks in February, I’ll go to this place instead of going to school.

That's all for this update. The next one will probably come sometime after Christmas!