Happy New Year!

Hey everyone, I wish you all a healthy new year! I don't think this holiday is long enough for me to get in a true habit of saying that to everyone I see, which is sort of expected. I feel like here it is a lot more normal to have a little speech ready to say to people. You don't really just say "Happy Birthday!" You say "I wish you a happy birthday with your friends and family, and a year full of hapiness and health, and everything good." Or some variation on that, anyway, it's a lot longer. I have seen people give much longer expressions of good wishes on a birthday (and of course you shake the person's hand the whole time) but I havn't picked up on what all else there is to say. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have a store of polite German phrases to say to people on special occasions.

School started back up today, and everyone, teachers included, were sort of dragging. The next week and a half are still normal school, then the final grades for the semester have to be handed in, even though there will be another week and a half before the semester ends. During that last week or so we will either do nothing, or continue with assignments that then count for the next semester. although it technically hasn't started here. At least that is how it was explained to me, I am still a little fuzzy on why that is. All the grades are then collected by a teacher who is in charge of the whole section of students, and then he or she writes up the semester reports. When I told my students about what I remember from my high school days, where the grades were entered into a computer, then sent to the main school computer somehow, and then you were finished, at least as I remember it, they just sort of blinked. It just makes me that much happier that I don't have to grade papers. I did startle my one class today though because I collected what they had written in class to read over. I think they have gotten used to anything they write when I am there not really "counting". Heh heh. It won't get a grade, but I will go over it all with them next week.

I need to get back and get to bed so that I don't oversleep by an hour again (I am just glad it was only an hour, so I could still make a lunch before I left for school, though I did try leaving the house in my slippers) but I hope this finds you all well, and that you find the time to write me an email. I love to hear from all of you!