A True German Thanksgiving...er, what?

Well, as I'm sure you all knew, yesterday was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is probably one of my most favorite holidays of all. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, it's awesome, but I also really love Thanksgiving. I love that all my extended family gets together in Berkeley to spend time together and be loud and rambunctious, and I love that I also get to have a Thanksgiving with my other side of the family that is smaller and I love that my mom, stepdad, brother and I now have a tradition of serving Thanksgiving in the City (San Francisco).

Enough about how great my family is, let me tell you what thanksgiving is like in Heidelberg: anticlimactic. I got up, went to work, went to my internship (where I got to make a bear hand puppet out of a brown paper lunch bag and I got to color and it was really fun). I watched the Macy's Day Parade online with Haleigh which was awesome because it was so traditional and

American, and we laughed at the cheese factor of Matt Lauer and Katie Couric. Matt Lauer actually said "what's more American than Pizza?"- there was an actual pizza team! What did they do? twirl pizza dough.

Our program had a dinner for us at a restaurant in the area (fun fact: they've had Thanksgiving in the same restaurant for 24 years), which was a lot of fun- we dressed up a little, and got to talk in English with our professors who pretend like they don't know English the rest of the year. My table was especially fun- Aaron, his parents and his Pfarrer, Frau Heckmann (our resident director), Herr Doerr (the most amazing German Professor ever), Brian and Dan.

Dinner was pretty good for it being a German Thanksgiving, but it was nowhere near as good as a real Thanksgiving dinner!

It snowed on Thanksgiving, although it was only for a little while, and it didn't stick. It was still really exciting for me. As you can see from the pictures, it's Christmas in Heidelberg! The last one shows the show on the top of a mountain in town. It's unbelievably beautiful here right now. I'm loving the snow!

France again and Harry Potter

So last Friday Dan and Brian and I were going to go to France, but Dan got sick on Thursday night, so Brian and I went alone. It's free for us through our semester pass which lets us use public transportation for free within a certain area, so it became a premiere destination :) It's about two hours by train, and I created a handy-dandy googlemaps image to show you how you'd get there if you drove.

It was a ton of fun! Wissembourg is a pretty little town, but we knew nothing about it, so we spent a few hours walking around. I guess you could say we got lost, but because we had no idea where we were going, we didn't count it.

Brian had been craving a Big Mac, so we looked for the McDonald's that we saw as we were pulling into Wissembourg from the train. It became a game of "Find that McDonald's!" We found it, so yes, I ate McDonald's in France. It's not my proudest moment, but Brian enjoyed it so

much that I don't regret it!

We kept walking around after McDonald's, trying to find the Old City. Thankfully, Wissembourg has a bunch of handy maps of the city all over the place, so we were able to check our progress often enough that we eventually found it, and it was very cute!

Funny thing about us wandering around...we eventually wandered into Germany. No joke. It was awesome! We hopped the border a few times for pictures, and to be able to say we walked to Germany from France and back. It wasn't a particularly warm or good day for tourism, but it's cute and free, and I'd go again!

On Wednesday, Harry Potter 7 opened in Germany, and you can bet (especially because I'm telling you) that I was there! A group of us went to Mannheim to see it, and it was totally worth it. Not only because it was fun to be out with friends, but also because we got the bragging rights of seeing it two days earlier than those plebeians in the US!

Overall, it was a good week, even though yesterday I had to spend 6 hours at a choir practice for our show next week. The choir that

no one wants to be in anymore...but hey- joy, right?

Catch up!

Hey guys,

Sorry it's been so long. Some of you need to cool it and calm down about my 3 week hiatus. I've been busy, and I wanted to stay chronological with my posts.

A few weeks ago, I got to go to Wiesbaden which is near Frankfurt to visit with some friends from home: The Osiers (who are from Folsom but are living in Wiesbaden), my friend Michelle and her husband Daniel (they live in Cologne, but I know Michelle from middle school youth group where she was my small group leader) and another friend, Diane. We all know each other from Folsom, and joked that we were having a Lakeside reunion, since we all went to Lakeside Church in Folsom. It was a great time! I also got to visit the commissary which was nice, where I got some (and by some I mean a lot) of American food.

We also found a great Mexican place! It was seriously so delicious

The week after that was Halloween, and I worked at the DAI's Halloween party, which was a blast. I got to work the pumpkin carving table, so I was up to my elbows in pumpkin guts all night, but I got to hang out with some cool kids, practice my German, and meet some Germans, so it was a success. I made friends with a family I met there, which was really fun, and we spoke in a mix of German and English which was an added bonus.

I visited my friend Ashley in Mainz the next day, where she's teaching English through a Fullbright there. We played some Tischtennis (okay, she played some Tischtennis) and wandered around Mainz and went to the Gutenberg Muesum (GO THERE! I'd completely go back, we didn't get to see it all because I had to catch a train). It was great to see her, and also fun to be shown around a town by someone who lives there, as opposed to touring with a guide, or alone without any real idea of what's up.

The same day, when I got back to HD, Dan and I went to a game night at the church we go to, which was really fun. I didn't necessarily get to know as many Germans as hoped, but I definitely had a good time (I even made it into the message the next day).

Halloween was the next day, and Haleigh, Anne, Annika, three other girls and I (although really, everyone else did a lot more work than I did so I can't take credit) made some delicious pumpkin soup and had a mini Halloween party.

My grandparents came the next day, and my week got super busy! Monday my grandma and her friend Diane got in, and then my step grandparents got in on Tuesday night so I didn't see them until Wednesday. On Thursday, they all cooked dinner for my friends and me at my building, which was really nice; everyone got to meet everyone else and eat delicious food. We spent Friday shopping (I got a very nice coat from my grandma, but was unable to find shoes. It seems large footed women are prejudiced against even in Europe) and then I met up with some friends later to try (operative word here) to go bowling.

Ah, bowling. In German, Bowling, or Kegeln. We knew where a place was, so a bunch of us met up and walked there, but since it was a Friday night, the lanes had all been reserved. Megan remembered a different place in a different part of town, so we walked around HD for about 3 hours looking for a place to go bowling, and ended up stopping at Rewe (a grocery store) to get chocolate, and then heading back to the Wartburg (my building) for leftovers and talking. We talked for a long time, and it was a lot of fun, though bowling never was achieved. We have plans to make it happen though.

The next day my grandparents and I went to Baden Baden which was a nice town, and we basically just spend the day at the baths. It was certainly an unexpected and interesting experience for me. We went to a Beethoven concert the next night, and it was a really good decision. The room was beautiful, the orchestra talented, and the tickets were reasonably priced. On Monday I had breakfast with everyone and said goodbye, which was sad, but I had a good week with them!

Stay tuned for my adventures in France!

Salzburg through photos