Merry Christmas!!

I know I'm slightly late on the Christmas update, but technically it's still Christmas here, so it's all good.

The past week has been a little out of control; I've been hanging out with friends in Köln, making new friends at the Christmas markets, playing in the snow, and helping out with all of the usual Christmas preparations and stuff. This past week has really been almost like vacation. Olaf wasn't able to travel to Basel on Monday because of the weather, so he's been home with the kids and helping out with Amelie. Since I haven't actually had a whole lot to do around here, I spent a few nights in town with Elena and Yana and some friends, and I've spent a lot of time at the Christmas markets. I successfully visited all 7 markets in Köln this year, which I had attempted to do last year but failed. I wasn't able to find 2 of them last year because one was in a Biergarten and the other one was on a ship on the Rhein, but this year I knew where to look and I found them.
In particular I spent a lot of time at the Middle Ages Christmas Market, which is by far my favorite. It's small, and apparently every year they have fewer and fewer visitors, but I absolutely love it there. All of the vendors and entertainment personnel are dressed in costume and speak what they call "Marktsprach" which I originally had been told was Old German, but it's not. One of the guys I met at the market explained to me that it was really only developed a few decades ago as a way of communicating at medieval markets and faires to make it sound like they're speaking an old language; if they were speaking true Old German, nobody would actually be able to understand them. I spent all day at the market on Wednesday. I had intended to only stay for a few hours and be home by 4:30 or 5 in the afternoon, but I was having such a great time that I didn't want to leave. Plus, I had befriended the Jester, Götz, and had spent most of the day talking to him and a couple of the musicians, and they all kept telling me about the program for the rest of the evening and how I should stick around. So I asked Olaf if it would be okay if I came home later, and he said not to worry about it and to just have fun. So I did. Götz was a really cool dude. I actually met him because I heard him ask some girl what language she spoke in like 5 different languages, so I asked him how many languages he spoke. The answer was 2, fluently. He was actually speaking to me in English with a perfect British accent, and I thought he was British. He's lived in Germany his whole life and never spent more than 6 months in England. I would never have doubted for a second that he was British if he had told me so. Anyway, I hung out with Götz and the others until the market closed at 9, so I got to see the dancing and their live version of the Nativity, which was hilarious. Then Götz invited me to go to dinner with all of them, so I did. I ended up missing the last train out of where we were and had to wait almost 4 hours for the next one, so once again I didn't get home until almost 6 in the morning. But time flies when you're having fun, and it wasn't so bad. I'm glad that I got to hang out with all of them and have a good time.

Friday it snowed all day. And I thought we got a lot of snow last year! I took Amelie out for a walk and she took off running across the field, and all of a sudden she sunk up to her neck in snow. She is absolutely loving this weather, and so am I. There are mounds of snow lining the streets and the sidewalks from where it has been shoveled to make a path, and Olaf said that the roundabout in Buschbell (on the way to Frechen) has disappeared and is simply a straight road now. I honestly don't even know how to describe how much snow we have and how gorgeous it is. Yesterday afternoon we all went out to play in the snow together, and it was so deep that the kids couldn't even ride on the sled because it just sank. At one point Amelie, who had been a ways down the path with Esther and Olaf, came running at full speed to see me, and as soon as she turned off the path to come to me in the field, she fell flat on her face and disappeared in the snow. It didn't bother her one bit, though, because she just sprung back up and kept right on running. She's so freaking precious. The kids were really fussy, so Esther and Olaf took them back home and I kept walking through the snow to take more pictures. I could seriously spend all day just wandering around in the fields, through town, through the woods, taking pictures and simply enjoying the cold and the snow.

Friday was also our Christmas celebration. It didn't really begin until around 3 in the afternoon when we started getting ready to go to church. We packed everyone in the car and drove to the Evangelical church here in Königsdorf for the sermon at 4:30. Olaf put the kids in the car a little early so that Esther and I could bring all of the gifts out of the basement. That way, when we got back from church, the kids would see that the "Christkind" had been there and brought them presents. That celebration and excitement, however, was unfortunately about an hour delayed because the car got stuck in the snow at the church. No matter what we tried, that car wasn't going anywhere. Eventually Esther got a couple of shovels from the church to help free the car, and a really nice man who was walking by helped Olaf try to push the car around. I say "around" because it wasn't exactly like trying to push a car that ran out of gas out of the intersection where you just push the car forward and have someone steer. It was more like rocking the car from side to side and front to back in an attempt to somehow get the tires to grab something, or just get out of the hole that had been created by pushing on the gas peddle. Eventually the guy from the church went and got a bucket full of gravel to throw under the tires (which, to my credit, I had been telling them to do pretty much from the beginning) and we were finally able to get the car free and drive home.
Once we were at home the Christmas celebration could truly begin. Olaf had to take Amelie for a walk first, so while he was gone Gustav went looking through all of the presents under the tree and separating which ones were his and which ones were Pauline's. When they got back, the kids immediately tore into their presents. Gustav opened his first present, which was a really cool "Cars"-themed electric race track, complete with Lightning McQueen and Chick Hicks. What's the first thing that comes out of Gustav's mouth? "Das hab' ich mir nicht gewünscht!" (I didn't wish for that!) Uh oh, it starts. All in all the kids both got a lot of really cool toys and some books, but that wasn't good enough. When we finally put the kids to bed (after eating delicious fondue for dinner, of course) Gustav called Esther to come up and cuddle with him in the bed. Esther came downstairs crying because Gustav had explained to her how sad he was that he didn't get this one toy from Playmobil that he wanted, and instead got this race track that he didn't ask for. It broke Esther's heart because her child was unhappy, and because she had chosen to get him something he didn't wish for because she thought he'd enjoy it, and he was sad because of it. Olaf didn't really understand it, because as kids they never actually had Christmas wish lists and such and were simply happy to get stuff. Esther, however, vividly remembers having Christmas wishes and how important it was that they came true. It's like my dad. He can still remember the Christmas that he didn't get the one thing he really wished for, and exactly what it was that he didn't get, and that was over 50 years ago. I'm actually slightly torn between Esther's point of view and Olaf's. Of course you're going to feel heartbroken when your child doesn't get his weenie whistle for Christmas. On the other hand, I've witnessed, on several occasions, how simply unappreciative Gustav can be when Esther brings him something (often clothes or something) and he starts crying and throwing a fit because it's not a toy. I think I would have felt more heartbroken if Gustav had wished for one thing all year and had great hopes that Santa would bring it to him and Santa let him down. In reality, Gustav already got his one big wish a month ago for his birthday, and he has a tendency not to appreciate what he does have, so I'm not as sympathetic to his situation as Esther is. Besides, he spent all day yesterday and all day today playing with the race track and commented on how cool it is, so I think he'll get over it.

Yesterday we had goose for dinner, and Jan and Nina came over to join us. After we got back from wandering in the field in the afternoon Jan and Nina were outside in the front yard drinking Glühwein at their "Schnee Bar" (which we had built at the beginning of the week out of the insane amounts of snow that were lying in their yard and in the parking space in front of their house) again, so we joined them. Martin (our neighbor on the other side) was also there, and eventually his wife Delia and Federica, their daughter and Gustav's fiancee (I'll get into that later) came out as well. We stayed there basically until we froze to death, because no matter how much Glühwein you drink, -7° C is still -7° C. And we were able to convince Jan and Nina to come over and have dinner with us, since we were eating goose with home made potato dumplings and we had more than enough since Günther and Silke never made it. They decided it was better to stay in Münster because of the snow, so we didn't have the usual visitors for Christmas. Anyway, the food was, of course, delicious, and we wiped out the goose completely, and it was a very pleasant Christmas dinner.

And there's one really big piece of news: I passed my language test! I finally got the results of the TestDaF exam that I took in November, and I actually did very well. There are 4 sections on the test, and each section gets graded on a scale of 3 to 5, with a TDN 5 being the highest possible score (kind of like the AP tests in high school). My lowest result was in the writing section, and it was a TDN 4. I got a TDN 5 in reading, listening, and speaking! Needless to say, I am very excited. Esther and Olaf are very proud of me, too. They both gave me big hugs, and they bought me flowers and opened up a bottle of champagne to celebrate. So now the next step is to apply to a masters program here at the University of Cologne and hopefully I can start studying in April. Keep your fingers crossed, and wish me luck!

I will never own a female animal that is not spayed, unless she's allowed to have babies. Amelie is in heat right now, and she is the most pathetic creature on the planet. First of all, she has to wear this stupid little doggie diaper while she's in the house, which makes her really uncomfortable, and she gets itchy because she has it on all the time. Then, when I take her outside for a walk, the females all want to attack her, and the males won't leave her alone. Except for Buddy. He's neutered, so even though he seems to realize that there's something different about Amelie, he doesn't know what to do about it. But the thing that makes it so sad is that Amelie gets confused. She knows what she's supposed to do, and she knows what she's allowed to do, and they're completely opposite things. Plus, right now I can't let her off the leash hardly at all when we go for a walk because if she senses that there's a male dog within 500 meters, she takes off like a speeding bullet in his direction. She's so desperate to find a mate that she literally follows me around the house and then stands at the door whining because she wants me to let her out. She even got herself stuck in the foyer a couple of nights ago (she knows she can push the glass door with her nose to get to the front door, but hasn't figured out yet that she can simply push in the other direction to get back into the house) because she wanted out so badly, and we were woken up by the sound of her scratching at the glass door. And she looks so sad, with her big dark eyes and a miserable expression in her eyebrows. Poor little thing.

On another note, I had a hell of a week this past week. Monday and Wednesday I had class, as usual, and Wednesday was the last day for this course. Monday evening I got to play soccer in the snow, too, which was awesome. Tuesday morning I had to get up early because Olaf and I needed to drive to Bergheim to finish the paperwork for my visa. They were only able to extend it until the end of March because that's when my next language course ends, but we can extend it again as I enroll on more courses. When we got home we had breakfast with Esther and the kids, and then I had to go with Esther to take the kids to the doctor in Köln. Gustav had an annual physical and Pauline needed to get a flu shot, and Esther needed me to go with her because apparently the doctor told her that Pauline should not be present during Gustav's physical. I don't get why, but whatever. It had snowed so much the night before, though, that there was snow lying in the street even in the middle of the city, which basically has never happened ever. It's not really supposed to snow here anyway (or so I'm told) and when it does it never lasts very long in the city because it's too warm. Anyway, once we were done at the doctor's office we drove to Ikea for lunch, and so Esther could pick up a few things she needed for her office. We ended up not getting back home until about 4 in the afternoon, so it was definitely a long day. Plus, after dinner I had to stay up and bake cookies and some pumpkin pie to take with me to my language course Wednesday morning. It was after 10 by the time I was finished, and then I had to go outside with Amelie once more because I thought she needed to go to the bathroom. Turns out she just wanted out of the house. Poor thing.
Wednesday was another long day. After I got done with class I had to walk back home to drop off my stuff and then walk to the Kindergarten. This year the Christmas party at the Kindergarten took the form of Advents coffee with Grandma and Grandpa. Each kid was supposed to invite one grandparent to go to the Kindergarten in the afternoon for coffee and cookies and to spend some time playing with their grandchild. Günter and Tante Karin were supposed to drive down from Münster on Tuesday so that one of them could go to Gustav's group on Wednesday and the other one could go to Pauline's on Thursday. Because of the snow, however, they weren't able to make the drive. So I got to go. It turns out that Gustav had actually originally said he wanted me to go anyway, so he was happy that I was his guest Wednesday afternoon. Esther was actually there, too, as Domenic's guest. When Claudia told Domenic that his grandparents were not going to be able to come because they live too far away, Domenic's response was, "Ja, dann die Esther kommt mit." So cute. So Claudia asked Esther if she would be able to go as Domenic's guest, which she of course was happy to do.
Thursday I had to go back to the Kindergarten for the Advents coffee in Pauline's group. While I was there Frau Pfeiffer introduced me to a girl from the Ukraine who is the au pair from a little girl named Lucy in Pauline's group. This poor girl had only been in Germany for 2 days, and doesn't speak a word of German. She only speaks Ukrainian, Russian, and English. To make things worse, her host family only speaks German and French. Don't ask me how she's supposed to communicate with the family, because I know she can't communicate at all with Lucy. That must be really hard, and I feel bad for her. The next time that I see her I'm going to give her Elena's phone number so that she has someone here she can talk to and doesn't have to feel alone. When Pauline and I got home Thursday afternoon we took Amelie and the sled and went out into the field. Pauline wasn't happy about it at first, because the kids always hate when they have to come along to take Amelie for a walk, but she had a lot of fun with the sled so it wasn't too bad. At 6 pm I put Pauline in the car to go pick up Gustav at Florian's and then grab Esther at her office, and from there I jumped on the train and headed into Köln. There was no soccer practice because of the snow, so the trainer arranged instead for the girls to meet at the Weihnachtsmarkt in Neumarkt to drink Glühwein and hang out. It was freezing cold, but the Glühwein helped, and it was snowing, so it really felt Christmasy and festive. It was a lot of fun, really.
Not a whole lot happened during the day on Friday, but in the evening I went into Köln to meet up with Elena and her friend Yana. We didn't really know where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do, so we just hung out at this place called Extrablatt in Altstadt. We had planned to go to Flanagans, the Irish Pub next door, but at 11 we decided we were just too tired and went home instead. Last night I went to the market at Stadtgarten, one of the 2 markets I wasn't able to find last year, to check it out. It was really small, but cozy and nice. Then I met Elena and Yana again at the train station and we headed to Flanagans. Laetitia, who I hadn't seen in a long time, met us there to hang out with us and have a drink, and we also ran into a mutual friend named Johan (also from France) and his friends. We stayed at Flanagans until it closed and then we all went our separate ways. Since it was like 4 in the morning I stayed at a friends apartment in Köln and then came home this afternoon to hang out with the family. It has been snowing like crazy, too. By the time I got home from the train station I looked like a snowman. I love this weather.

I got to play soccer in the snow! Even though it was below freezing, the weather was good so we were able to have practice this evening. There weren't very many of us there, actually only 8 plus the trainer, so we just played a little 4 v. 5 scrimmage. Within about half an hour it started to snow just slightly, and a little after 8 it was really snowing, so we stopped. I made a snow angel before we went into the changing room. I love it when it snows, and being able to actually play soccer while it was snowing was a brand new experience for me. It made for a good night.

What did not make for a good night was losing my freaking keys in the snow while I was out walking Amelie after I got home. We had to take a relatively long walk anyway (at least, longer than we usually do at night) because Amelie was a little sick and was searching for grass to help her throw up. When we got back to the house, I reached into my jacket pocket to get the key, and it wasn't there. Shit. I figured it had to have fallen out when I took my hands out of my pockets to put Amelie on the leash, so I went backtracking. I ended up going the whole route backwards and not finding the keys. Son of a... So I went again, this time slowly (I had hurried on the last round because I wanted to find the keys before they were buried in the snow) and spent extra time in the area where I put her on the leash. Thank god I was able to find them, completely buried and leaving only a small bump in the snow as a trace of their existence. We ended up being out for almost an hour in what according to Southern California standards would be considered a blizzard. Good thing Amelie and I both love the snow.

On Saturday Olaf and I made a little outing with the kids. We drove to Geyen, which is in the way to Pulheim, to the little castle there. Heins and Karin discovered this on the way to Gustav's swim lessons while they were here last time, and were told by the woman who owns it to come by on the Saturday of the Third Advent for the Christmas market and lunch that they have there. So the 4 of us drove over there to meet Heins, Karin, and Karin's sister Gita, and one of Olaf's cousins, his wife, and her parents met us there, too. We looked around the grounds a little bit, ate a delicious lunch of goose, red cabbage and knödel, and then came back to the house to have coffee and cookies.

This weekend was also the first time in a long time that I actually went out and did something. Saturday evening I took the train to Hürth to hang out with Elena and her roommates at her apartment. She had been at home in the Ukraine for a week or two so I hadn't seen her in a while. We didn't really do anything exciting, just hung out watching TV and talking. I stayed the night there at the apartment, and then on Sunday Elena and I went into town to visit the Christmas markets. She had only been to one in the entire time she's been in Germany, so we visited 4. There are still 3 more that I have to make it to this year, but there's plenty of time for that. Although there wasn't anything particularly exciting going on, aside from the fact that the Christmas markets are really cool, we had a great time just hanging out and talking. I really needed the weekend away from the house, too.

P.S.

I forget to mention a couple of noteworthy things in my last blog. First, in addition to all of the cooking and cleaning that I had to do here last week, I also went to the Kindergarten Thursday morning for about 3 hours to bake cookies with Pauline's group. Esther had been asked earlier in the week if she would be able to help out, but she couldn't, so she volunteered me instead. At 9 am Thursday morning I rode the bike to the Kindergarten and was there until just before noon. We had already made the cookie dough (the other 2 mothers and I) and we just had to help the kids roll it out and cut shapes with the cookie cutters. Then they brushed the tops of them with cream, decorated them with sprinkles, and we threw them in the oven. One of the poor little girls has a sever allergy to eggs, so we had to be really careful to make sure that she had her gloves on, and that she didn't come into direct contact with the dough or anything else that the dough had touched. But at least she got to participate. I had a great time, too. A lot of the kids in the group already knew who I was (although they all think I'm either Pauline's other mom or Esther's sister or something) and it was fun getting to hang out with them and bake cookies. Plus, one of the other moms that was there helping is Canadian. She speaks to her kids in English, too, and she actually lives on our street. Who knew.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that Amelie injured herself on Thanksgiving. Olaf took her out for a walk that night, and when they got back she was limping and bleeding. She had chased after a cat and managed to tear one of the nails on her right front paw. The nail was still attached, but it was really crooked and you could tell that it was essentially broken off but still connected to the skin on her poor little finger. Esther took her to the vet Friday afternoon so they could remove the claw, and then they put a bandage on her foot and gave her a shoe so she doesn't get it wet and dirty when we take her for walks. On Monday she got a new bandage, and yesterday Olaf and I took her to the vet again to have it looked at. There was still a little piece of the nail that was attached and they had to pull it off. Poor little Amelie was so tough and such a good girl. Then she got another bandage, of course, but that fell off this morning in the snow when I took her for a walk. I thought about walking with her to the vet, but Olaf and I agreed that if it didn't look bad that we would just leave it, since I'm taking her again tomorrow, anyway. I think Amelie is very happy to be rid of the bandage. She's not walking funny anymore, and she can finally do something about her itchy little foot.