frohe Weihnachten! und alles gut für neues Jahre!

Merry christmas everyone! This will probably be the last blog post before then, so...

Alright, we are now OFFICIALLY on Winter vacations! Today, to kick it off, it's snowing, and I'm going to the movies! Yay! Should be insanely fun!

Tomorrow is the main day of Christmas, on the 24th, which is VERY different than in America, where the main day is the 25th. But that's ok, here we celebrate from the 24th-26th. 3 days of Christmas! How AWESOME!

New Year's is mainly not a family holiday. I should be going out with friends, but our plans aren't set in stone yet. Hopefully they don't fall through! Otherwise I'll be sitting home... alone... on New Year's Eve (called Silverster here, like the cat in the cartoons :] ) But I'm pretty much certain that won't happen!

I wrote a math test on Friday, and I did VERYYY badly. I got a 4,75 which is like, a C- or a D+ in California... But don't worry, it doesn't matter for me cause I don't really get grades! And I couldn't really read the problems, they were in German (obviously) so of course it was difficult. I did much better on this than I did on the last math test.

We watched the Hangover in English class on Monday, and Step Up in Math on Tuesday. It was pretty sweet.

I had a choir concert Monday night and last night (Tuesday night). It went well, I think :] My choir friends and I are pretty cool! We sing in German now, no more English Beatles songs!

So that's pretty much it! I'll update again later, but I gotta eat lunch and then get to the Kino! Oh, our dishwasher's fixed, so I don't have to wash by hand anymore! Whoo-Hoo!

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone!

Until 2010!!!!!

snow is amazing...

Just a short blog post...

Snow is awesome! I LOVEEE it! I had a VERY epic snowball fight with my host brother yesterday. I lost, but you have to remember, I don't have NEARLY as much experiance as him. He's lived in the snow his whole life. I haven't.

So when he started pounding me with snowballs, I just HAD to get back at him. Unfortunalty, I don't have such good aim, and almost hit an old lady casually walking down the street (this caused Kai to laugh INSANLY hard, but I'm sure the old lady wouldn't have found it very funny, had I actually hit her).

There wasn't enough snow for a snowman, or for a snowman, and my jeans aren't waterproof, so I wasn't about to lay on the ground and make a snow angel. Sledding was out of the question cause 1. Not enough snow, 2. I don't have a sled, and 3. I live on a pretty flat part of land. Skiing and snowboarding is out of the question, because I like being all in one piece and not breaking my leg/arm/head, thanks.

But still. Snow was SUPER exciting for a girl from California.

In other news, our dishwasher broke, and guess who's on dish duty this week? ME! Kai is counting his lucky stars that he doesn't have to handwash them. I'm learning how to handwash dishes, and guess when it gets fixed? When Kai has dish duty. UGH!

I'm updating this simply to tell you those two small insignificant things! But you know... I don't update enough, so...

Until next time! BYE!

The adventures of Nicole and public transportation!

Yep, like the title says, I'd finally gotten used to public transportation...... well ok, 2 quick stories....

Once, I thought I was going to Stuttgart but I actually ended up going the wrong way, to Tübingen. So, I figured out (when it said that this was the last stop, and it certainly wasn't Stuttgart, I realized I went the exact opposite way....) And got to Stuttgart. And nothing went wrong since then.

Well, this weekend, I was going to meet with the other exchange students, to go ice skating and shopping in the christmas/middle ages market in Esslingen. WELL, I was walking to the bus stop... and SAW my bus drive away. "Whatever!" I thought, another one came in 15 minutes, and I'd only be about 20 minutes late (the train to Stuttgart (and goes over Esslingen) comes every 20 minutes or so) Well, bus came 20 minutes late, and then the train 15 minutes late. I am now an hour late. Luckily, the two boys from Brazil were nice enough to wait for me! Thank you, Fernando and Eric! Anyways, we ended up going on the wrong train, then waiting to get back, then we couldn't find the ice stadium... So, we get there (2 1/2 hours late) and... everyone's done ice skating. Yep, I drug my ice skates from my house to Esslingen for no reason. It's actually quite a funny story... I think it is NOW, at least (wasn't so much at the time...)

Anyways, then, Thursday, I lost my bus card that gets me all around Stuttgart. I was SOOO afraid to tell my host family, but luckily they just laughed, and I get a new one VERY soon. So no worries. I really do love public transportation though. I can go anywhere I want, whenever I want. It's quite nice, and good for the enviroment. America really needs to get up to speed with it.

So... Esslingen Weihnachtsmarkt on Sunday... with the exchange students.... so fun, but anything with exchange students is fun. I bought something for my mommy, and something for my host daddy. And me and Hayley decided to make candles, which I gave to my host mommy. My first one... sucked. But the 2nd two were AWESOME!

And this week, absolutely NOTHING in school was cancelled. It's the first week in the 3 and a half months I've been here that nothing has been cancelled!

Anyways, we celebrated Saint Nikolas day in Teeniekreis, it was soooo fun! My friend Tobias and I went a little bit crazy. We drank to much Kinderpunch... which has no alchohal in it, by the way, so.... You know, we were just having fun!

Today someone asked me if I spoke English. I guess I don't scream AMERICAN quite as loud as I used to! I guess my accent isn't quite so bad anymore, either, because they didn't notice it. This made me excited, as did the fact that I realized a couple days ago that I was thinking mostly all in German now! And I had my first bilingual dream, in both German and English, but mostly in German, just like my brain. It was really cool, I've finally arrived as an OFFICIAL EXCHANGE STUDENT!

Speaking of exchange students, I hope everyone knows that Wednesday, the 6th of January is International Hug an Exchange Student Day. I am expecting hugs! And you all in America should also hug your local exchange students!

DRK is amazing, I'm actually LEARNING first aid! Maybe I won't be quite so useless at first aid when I get back! Although, my friend Sven and I (yes, his name REALLY is Sven) "killed each other". We both failed epically at saving each others lives. I couldn't STOP laughing.... it was sooo funny. And Sven (when we were demonstrating, and I was laughing) acted like Dr. Frankenstein, looked up at the sky, and said "ES LEBT!" If you don't know what that means, look it up.

Christmas is coming up! I can't wait! I'm so excited! It's celebrated on the 24th of December here, not the 25th. I love that, because it's interesting and different!

It's going to snow again here tomorrow. I love snow, I can't wait! I'm going to a family lunch thing. Which reminds me... I ate fruitcake. Yes, you read that correctly. I ATE FRUITCAKE! Did I like it? Not at all. Did I choke it down for my super-nice host Oma's sake? Yes, yes I did. You outta be proud of me!

Alright, I will try and update more often! Ok? But for now I gotta go! So, until later!