It's snowing!

Yay for the first snow! And it's so perfect that it happened today, since after Thanksgiving yesterday I have been feeling all christmas-y.

The dinner went off without a hitch. And whatever was left over from the dinner was eaten up by my students at conversation hour right afterwards. Except for maybe one third of one of the pumpkin pies, and the teachers are polishing that off in the teacher's lounge now. I managed to make a pumpkin pie, and am proud about that. The crust was from a German crust mix, that tasted like sugar cookies. and I could not convince the teacher who was cooking with me that you make it thin on the bottom, not like a German pie, so it was a little like a layer cake. Top layer pumpkin pie filling, bottom layer, sugar cookie. But it still tasted yummy. And I also couldn't convince her that you cut the pieces out of the pie pan. so she took it out of the springform pan, and miraculously, it held together. (this was about ... 20 minutes after it came out of the oven. the recipes reccomended cooling it at least like, an hour.) then she tried to take the bottom of the springform off. and it all fell apart. naturally. she decided to let the other one stay in the pan. Everyone wants the recipes I used, so they can have a "real American turkey dinner". Ooo-kay.

Conversation hour was not as well attended as I expected, but it worked out anyway, and everything got cleaned up. Then I had chorus practice, and that went well, too. And at the end I told them that on Thanksgiving everyone is supposed to say what they're thankful for, and that I wanted to tell them how thankful I am that I can be a part of the chorus for this year. Well, you can imagine how much everyone loved hearing that, and I got a round of applause. This is sort of a regular thing though in the chorus, every so often someone has an announcement to make about someone's birthday, anniversary with the chorus, or praise for how well we've done about something, and then everyone applauds. And shakes hands afterwards.

This weekend is the first Advent weekend, of course, and Christmas decorations are well underweigh. At least half of the houses on our street have had lights up since Monday (The custom is that Christmas decorations can go up immediately after Totensonntag (dead sunday) here, which was last sunday). Tomorrow afternoon I am baking Christmas cookies with a lady from Choir and her Ukrainian friend, and Sunday hopefully I will go visit a Weihnachtsmarkt with Familie Florschütz. I want to see about getting some decorations for my windows, too, but I have to either get something goofy I won't want to take home, or something that will fit well in a suitcase... sort of a tricky match. we'll see.

I am almost completely over my cold now, and in part thanks to another crazy German medecine: Klosterfrau Melissengeist. It is a distilled form of a lot of different herbs... and 79% alcohol. It cures everything, according to the package. Nerve trouble, headaches, muscle aches, and colds. Pretty much any problem, either rub it on, or dilute it and drink it, and it will go away. It's what little old lady alcoholics use to calm their nerves. The bottle has a picture of the award it got... from Queen Victoria. It was a present from a teacher who also sings with me in choir. She said "Don't go to the doctor, all they can do is give you more crap antibiotics. This is what My grandmother used, my mom used, it helped me, and it will help you." For a cold you're supposed to drink a cup of tea with a couple of spoons of this in it before bed, and it will help you sleep. Noo kidding. I don't think I could have gotten up if I wanted to. But since I hadn't been sleeping for all the coughing the couple of nights before, it was exaclty what I needed. The packaging it too good to be true, and it is definently coming home with me.

Alright, I want to get home and get my weekend started, after a busy week with a cold, there's plenty I still have to take care of. Hope you are all well, and that you had a nice Thanksgiving.

PS - I have only gotten one Thanksgiving report. I know that it's still early Friday morning for you all, and that not everyone obessively checks here for news from me, but I mean it! I want to hear some Thanksgiving stories, from you!