10 days til Christmas! 12 days till Amy gets here/Prague! 16 days til New Years!

I'm drinking a tea right now that has a main ingredient called Fennel. That is right. I'm drinking a vegetable. Very strange. It tastes good though! Just thought I should share. This is a picture of Katie and I on the bear statue in front of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. We thought it would be great fun to get a picture on it. It took a couple tries to get up and it was freezing. And I'm bearfoot. Ha!

We - Claire, Lucy, Katie, and I - went out Friday night but started the night out at Katie's. It was a late night at Waxy's and O'Reilys!

Sunday I woke up feeling a bit sick but got it together and biked as fast as I could to the train station to meet up with Katie and Becca to go to Heidelberg for the day! It is a really cute town about an hour away that is known for it's cuteness, the University there, and there is an American army base there too. On the train we saw that it had snowed outside of the city - so pretty! And then it was lightly snowing while we were wandering around the cute town! Loved it. It was freezing though. The high temperature for this week is 0 degrees celcius and the high on Thursday is -7. So basically it's really cold, but there is now precipitation aka no snow. LAME. Anyways. . that was a total side note. So our friend Claire comes and meets us in

Heidelberg and we grab a beer/tea/bloody marry/hot chocolate and sit and chat about how much her au pair family here stinks and how she needs to run away to one of us. She is leaving next Sunday though so that is good news for her! But now we just have to convince her to not work all day Saturday and instead go play with us! I mean - c'mon it's her last day in the country! Sheesh! So we walk through the xmas markets some more, I got a delicious spinach cheese crepe and hot apple cider wine. Yummmmmm. Claire got soup in a bread bowl because she had never even heard of it before.
Our train is at 5:24. We leave the markets at 5 thinking we can grab a taxi easy peasy. Not so much. We can't find one anywhere! So we start running. One passes but it is full of people. Another passes but doesn't see us. Finally we catch one jump in likitysplit we are off. The driver thinks we are from Sweden. Umm no.  As we are driving I'm trying to get the money ready to pay and just keep adding coins to my hand and I can barely carry everything, we keep hitting red lights, and then I see that it is already 5:24. Bad news Bears. We pull up to the station I through the money at him and we run inside at 30 after. Running through throngs of people down the stairs and there we see our train - JUST PULLING OUT aka if one of those damn lights had been green we would have made it! I ended up just buying another ticket - only cost 9.50 and got a quicker train back so that I would be back in time to take the car to pick up the fam (who had been in Dresden for the weekend) from the other train station. So since I was already feeling kind of ill I think after all this crazyness I can't be surprised that I got sick. My German teachers Mom died last Monday- Sad day! And she had to teach classes all last week. SO strange. How could they not just find a substitute for her?! Anyways, yesterday was the funeral so I didn't have class which ended up being very very nice since I spent almost the whole day in bed with a slight fever!


Baking Party!!! Since I can't bake a bazillion mas cookies at home I'm just going to have to try and bake a few here! Katie and her friend visiting her, Becca, came over and made/decorated sugar cookies with me on Saturday after we wandered the city and Christmas markets. It was a nice way to end the day! Katie made some potato wedges and I made guac and we feasted! lol.

Why do I like Vegemite now?

For some reason it has grown on me. And if Vegemite can grow on me you'd think that beer could. But alas, nope nope nope!

Santa came to Andrea's work on Friday and he brought all the kids there gifts - including me! That was a surprise. It was cute and we all ate a lot of chocolate. Surprised?

I babysat for a baby this morning and I've decided I do not want a baby. Not that any of you were worrying right? Ha! No thank you, not for a long time!

I went and saw New Moon on Sunday and that Jakob Black is one hotty with a body. Damn. Jail bait. I loved the movie (Kayleen you're expectations are just too high!). Going to see it again next week. Woot!

I've been off milk products for a month now. Sure I've had a little bit of butter here and there and of course a lot of chocolate but I stopped having yogurt and cheese everyday and I think that is a huge change. But I do not feel any different. We'll see what happens after I bake Barbara Maloney's delicious banana bread that has yogurt in it. Eeeck!

Missing the family. My momma just sent me the recipe for Hot buttered rum (thanks mom!!) so I'm excited to make that and the kids and I made sugar cookies and had fun decorating them.


The kids are away tonight at their school's country house doing something with baking and a lot of playing. So the parents and I are having a nice evening - big kid dinner and then watching Mama Mia! Maybe some wine? Oooh or popcorn! I ate a whole bag of chocolate covered popcorn that I got at the Christmas markets on Sunday. It just smells so good. Mmmmmm.

Dinner time! Lovelovelove C

WEINACHTMARKETS!!!!!!!

 The Christmas markets started last Wednesday aka I've been a few times! :) I love them!!! I have missed the Glühwein. Katie is getting right into loving it as well! They also have a eggnog liquor drink that looks amazing. I will have to try it soon. Maybe today. lol.

It's raining! Ah! I went for a run and it felt great having the rain on my face. I made a pumpkin soup this morning before 9AM. I'm turning into my mother. I'm going on a hunt for almond extract today so I can make the yummy sugar cookies we always make at x-mas time. Then I will make the dough and eat half of it.

The last au pair for the fam go in on Friday and she will be leaving to go back home on the 7th. She seems nice but as one of the cleaning ladies put it - "you are like day and night." The kids have been good and healthy and very happy the past few days since the 24 days of x-mas have begun and that means every morning they get a gift in their stocking-ish from der Nikolas! I got Advents Kalander Tee which means everyday I get a new tea! It's super cool. We have continued working on our snowflake collection which just keeps growing! We have almost covered 6 windows now. And we finished all of our styrofoam ball ornaments.

I made a pumpkin cheesecake pie on Sunday! It was delicious. But seeing as I haven't eaten milk products (besides chocolate) in the past two weeks I got a little sick that night and in the morning still felt a little bit like crap. But Katie felt sick the next day too so maybe it was something else. .  No turkey was made for our faux Thanksgiving- me being a vegetarian and all. But my friend Katie made some yummy potato wedges and I did a roasted onion dish thingy. The pie was the yummiest part naturally.

Mr. Pakistan got a little too interested for my liking. Kept on crossing over onto my desk and popping my bubble. Sent me a poem in English (we normally talk in German) about people being beautiful or something. Creeped me out. I blocked his number but then I answered the phone when I didn't know the number and it ended up being him and he was like I called you yesterday a couple times when I got off work to see if you wanted to hang out and I then told him I have a boyfriend and he is just okay with that idea. He was nice in class on Monday, still sat next to me but I think he got the hint. He is a bit too old for me and just so not my type!


Tickets for Prague have been bought! Yipee!!!!!! We are going the 27th through the 30th and it seems that our group is continuing to grow and we are up to maybe 13 people? It's going to be crazy!

Going out tomorrow night to the Irish pub! I'll be looking for the guys in suits. lol. Or just having a lot of un people watching. Karaoke. OH DEAR. Shall be a lot of fun I'm sure. :)

24 DAYS TILL AMY GETS HERE!! Gotta love her. So excited!