Happy Thanksgiving

Yes,  I know, Thanksgiving was actually two days ago, but some of us aren't so lucky to have the week off of school, so I'm celebrating today. 

Last Monday, in the thanksgiving spirit, I cooked a pumpkin pie for my language class and gave a short presentation on the holiday. Everyone thought the idea of pumpkin pie was incredibly weird and they were surprised when they found it delicious. (Nora, thanks for that crust recipe everyone thinks I'm like this incredible baker but really I just have the gosh darndest greatest crust). Fun comments that I got were "Wait, was Pocahontas part of thanksgiving?" "I thought people dressed up on thanksgiving? What about the candy?" and my personal favorite, "How can thanksgiving have been founded in the 1600's, if America has only existed for like a hundred years?"

Today, we invited Alex's parents, Gisela and August, over for thanksgiving dinner, and since yesterday afternoon I've been slaving over a hot stove, except not really, because I actually ended up having a lot of fun. Yesterday I made Aunt Jenny's famous cranberry sauce and I baked a pumpkin pie (and I cooked up some pumpkin seeds and let me tell you it's amazing how fast those disappear around here). Today I made green bean casserole, stuffing, and mashed potatoes while Alex cooked a turkey and Julia decorated the apartment for Christmas. I spent most of the day cooking and it was actually incredibly cathartic and I feel as if a baked all my problems away. I gotta say, it's beautiful, our thanksgivings at home, when everybody makes a little bit of the meal and it's shared with all your loved ones, but there is also something really wonderful about cooking the entire meal by yourself for the people you care about to appreciate. I dunno, it's all nice. I love thanksgiving. 

Things I'm especially thankful for today:

• That I've always been surrounded by family on thanksgiving, usually my real family, but two years ago my exchange student family while in Patagonia and this year my wonderful german family. Family is a beautiful thing. 
• That I've always had dads/uncles around to cook the turkey because wow 'honey can you please answer the door for me, I've got my hand up a turkey' is something I would like to never say ever. 
• Yeah that's all I got

more things that happened

First of all, just so everyone is aware, cough cough, the reason I cannot update this more often is because currently I'm in langauage class during the week, and so weekdays, my life consists of school until four or five, a few minutes to relax do my language class homework at home before I leave for language class at five thirty, and then not home until around nine thirty at which point I scarf down some dinner and go to sleep. Which leaves me with only the weekends for doing everything else.

What I have done since last time: gone bowling with James and his host brother and lost horribly (just like old times!). Climbed the top of the Kölner Dom. Went to the Köln Zoo. Oh! Went to the Chocolate Factory in Köln on the day of the 20th anniversary which meant literally A BAJILLION free samples and I found out that yes too much chocolate is actually possible. I spent halloween with friends from school and there were no costumes and no candy but I had fun anyway. And the day after halloween Julia and I carved a pumpkin together, so there was that. Let's see, last Saturday I went shopping with James and Anna and their host siblings in The Big Mall in Leverkusen. The next day Julia and I went to Monheim to check out the St. Martin's festivities, and then we met Alex's sister and parents for coffee and kuchen and then we thought about going to some other fairs but it was raining incredibly so we just went home. St. Martin's is a kid's holiday where kids go out with lanterns sort of like halloween I guess and I'm not sure exactly what they do but Monday it took me forever to get to language camp on the bus because there was an endless parade of little kids with lanterns crossing the streets. Thursday night I left sprachkurs, sorry, language camp, early, and took the bus to Benrath to go iceskating with James and his host brothers. Okay, actually, I tried to take the train but for some reason all the trains for like the next four hours had been cancelled so I made friends with some nice guys from the Congo who showed me a bus that would take me there. Ice skating, I found is not really like rollerskating so much and more like rollerblading, which I cannot do, and I'm sure I looked pretty silly but I feel like for it being my second time ever I was pretty decent. The five of us made friends with this hilarious seven year old girl named Tiffany who asked me a question that I didn't understand, to which I answered "sorry, I'm a foreigner, I cant understand you" and her reply was "No, you aren't a foreigner, you speak German, don't lie to me!" Then she proceeded to 'arrest' me by dragging me around in circles while she tried to get her five year old brother, who was probably the best iceskater out of all of us, to try and catch everyone else, and it was literally the most cutest, entertaining thing of my life. Friday, I went out with school friends, and yesterday, me and James and Anna from Wisconsin went with Lina and Anna and Isabel from Germany to see Fack Ju Goethe at the movie theatre in Leverkusen, and the movie was really funny and sweet and some of the jokes went over my head but otherwise I understood the whole thing and it was incredibly exciting. This morning I made banana chocolate chip pancakes and eggs and bacon for breakfast with Julia's help (you would not believe how much bacon my parents can eat, they make me look un-american ahah :) ) and now Julia and I are going for a walk I think, and pictures will be up later today. I love you all, keep on keeping on.

  james and mark in the kölner dom tower. so manyyyy steps

 jamie is scared of heights.

 pretttyyy, pretty pretty

 the bells

 chocolate peacock

 chocolate fountain

 making chocolate

 me and julia's pumpkin

 ice skating with tiffany and tamino

 pictures from our walk at schlosspark (castlepark) benrath

also i have a million bajillion pictures of super cute zoo animals and if you want to see them let me know

Fall break

Hello hello hello again.

Since I last wrote to you all, I started my fall break from school, and last week Julia and I decided to travel to the north of Germany to visit my host grandma and host aunt. We went to the town of Lübeck, which is about 30 minutes from Hamburg and an absolutely gorgeous town. It's well known for it's famous skyline with seven church bell towers. Julia, her sister, Martina, and I spent a day wandering around the downtown old town area, and it was incredible because the weather was actually really nice and we even had sun (I forgot that sunshine was actually a thing, what is Germany doing to me!).  We went up into the tower of one church and had the most amazing view, and we toured Marienkirche (St. Mary's church, translated) which, I must say, out of all of the old churches I have ever been in anywhere in the world, is probably my favorite. I'll post some pictures to show you why. Another day Julia and I woke up at five in the morning and drove into Hamburg for the Sunday Fisch Markt. We got there around six am, and about half of the crowd was still drunk from the night before, and quite a good deal of people were still drinking in the hall, and at ten or eleven when the market shut down, the party was still going strong. Only in Germany! We walked around the market, had some coffee and some fish sandwiches for breakfast, and watched the crazy salespeople. The fish vendors would throw every kind of fish imaginable into bags and see how much they could get for it, and if no one was interested they'd put all the fish back and start all over. Then there was some really funny Nederlanders auctioning exotic plants out of this huge truck

("I've got the last plant right here, who wants it? 10 Euro! Okay sold! Now, here's the very last one, any takers? Okay great, now this plant is the LAST one we've got--"
"And, here, we've got the last plant!!"
"Wait, we didn't sell the other last plant yet--"
"Oh sorry.. NOW, here's the last one, guys!")

After the market was over, we took a ship around the Hamburg harbor, and apparently our tour guide was hilarious but hetalkedreallyfastlikethis and I didn't understand most of it. But it was really cool, and we saw all the huge container ships being unloaded and all the crazy expensive apartments on the shoreline. Then in the afternoon we went back to Martina's house and I slept until dinner and then woke up for the most delicious assortment of fish and eel and then went back to sleep for the night. Haha.

Let's see, the other things we did were spend some time with Julia's mom, who does not speak English but tried really hard to speak english with me anyways and was just completely adorable. Julia and I took her to a restaurent in Lubeck called the Kartoffelkeller (potato cellar) and it was very old and very cool and I ordered a pan with roasted potatoes, tomatoes, pickles, onion, cheese and bacon and it was quite possibly one of the best things I have ever ever eaten.

Before we left for home, we took a detour to the Ostsee/Baltic Sea, which was amazing. We had really really nice weather again, and we spent a few hours walking along the beach and it was really nice. For me, it was crazy to see all the trees with fall colors right along the ocean, and it was gorgeous.

I still have half a week yet before school and language classes start up again, and I've just been relaxing, meeting with friends, watching movies. Tomorrow is Halloween, and I'm going to celebrate with some friends from school. Everyone told me that I can dress up and ask for candy if I want to, but apparently thats something you can only really do in elementary school here, so I've got to wait for carnival to bring out the costume, I guess. Julia and I bought a pumpkin to carve but we haven't been free at the same time, so maybe we'll have a november jack o lantern but that's okay.

So yeah, everything is going really good here, the weather hasnt got too unbearably cold yet thankgoodness and I finally bought a winter jacket and shoes so I'm not ready at all for winter to happen but at least I'm prepared.
Anddd, that's all folks.

Here, have some a bajillion pictures

 ocean!

 hamburg

 hollandischer plant salesmen at 7am

 fischmarkt

 the beer hall

 fischmarkt

 cargo ships unloading

 der butt. ahhaha

 kartoffelkeller

 fisch plus potato salad, all of these pictures downloaded in a weird order, im sorry for that

 really really really good

 lubeck

 lubeck gate with me and a statue of oddyseus riding aslan

 art at marienkirche

 "grace, give your twin a hug!" said julia. gosh i love her

 the white wall is from 1200, the black wall is from something like 1400, both were preserved, thats cool.

 gate

 side view of the gate, all lean-y because its old

 back at the church

 photographs of the church during ww2, it suffered a lot of damage

 i really liked these old skeleton pictures because they had a bunch of them and all the dead creepy skeletons look much happier than the stodgy medieval people and i think thats great

 most of the church was restored and the damage in the war was fixed but they left this broken bell as a memorial i guess

 i just really like all the skeleton love. to be a skeleton man with wings is my new goal in life

 marzipan cake from the marzipan factory

 marzpian factory

 i cant rememberrrr the englisshhhh worrrddd, craaapppp. city hall? yes that is it.

 again, city hall. cool, right?

 our walk to the ocean

 hello, sea!

 fkk = nude beach. there were no nude people. none. its winter, guys.

 swans in the ocean!

 look its me

 julia

 me on a ramp for dogs, i guess. i'm not a dog, for the record

oh, who is that fine looking young girl, wow