Christmas/ New Year

Dear friends and family,
Happy belated Christmas and New Year! My father informed me recently that I have quite a few more than 11 followers on my blog, so I will be extra careful not to make gramatical errors. I will also try to make it a little easier to read. I have not written in a while, so this entrywill be a bit long. A lot has happened since Decemeber 15th.

GOOD-BYE FELIX KLEIN GYMNASIUM
My program works as follows: Half a year in a german high school to learn german and get to know some german students. Half a year with a new host family working as an intern in a vocational field. My verdict for the first six months is: First two months in Bonn--awesome. Next 4 months in high school again--not so awesome. My host family has been absolutely wonderful. I have had only luck with host families through my entire Argentina/Germany exchange experiences. The fact is I was completely done with the whole high school scene and I was in no mood to try to break my way into the tightly-formed groups of german school girls. The last day before the vacation, I performed "Ride the Chariot" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" with the school choir during the school church service. It was a little chaotic, but everything seemed to get pulled together in the end. I passed out earrings that I had made out of Sculpy to some friends the female students who a least bothered to introduce themselves to me and say hello to me in the hallways. Even though a good portion of the students have done an exchange program at some point or another, very few of them cared one bit about making the exchange students in their own school feel welcome. Luckily my fellow foreigners are always there for me. Despite the negative tone of this paragraph, I am walking away from the experience with some very nice memories.
CHRISTMAS
This holiday is celebrated a little differently in Germany. First off, the actual festivities take place on the 24th. My host family and I spent the morning tidying up the house and relaxing before the guests came at three. My "host aunt and uncle" arrived punctually, as is typical for Germans, along with Oma, my 89 year old "host grandma". We had Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake)and chatted for a bit. Then we sang some Christmas songs and read a Christmas story (Grandma recited a poem--it was the most adorable thing)and then we opened gifts. I got some nick-nacky things and some really useful things like a warm scarf, warm stockings and a travel mug. Afterwards we ate dinner constisting of 2 different types of potato salad, red beet salad and some bratwurst for the meat-eaters. I found it very strange that they do dessert, then real food. I was not at all hungry for dinner. At 11:30pm my host sister, host mom and I walked in the freezing cold to midnight mass at the evangelical church in our village. It was very well done I thought. Not too long, good music and a thought-provoking homily. The next day was just a chill-out day where supposedly most Germans visit family members, but we packed for our trip to the Canary Islands and left at around 3pm.

FUERTEVENTURA
I was very lucky to have my host family take me to Fuerteventura (strong wind in spanish) with them. It is one of the Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco.They have been going there for Christmas break for about 20 years now. The weather is very dry and hot there, but it is a wonderful break from cold, wet Germany. We were there for 10 days and had an absolutely marvelous time. A regular day there consisted of breakfast with the fam, laying on the beach and reading, swimming in the crystal clear water (no fish, no sharks!)participating in some hotel activities (archery, riflry, beach volleyball) and then dinning with the family at 6:30. The second day we were there I had to climb the mountain behind our hotel. This picture is a view from the top. On New Years we ate a big meal and watched fire works on the beach. My New Years resolution for 2010 is to read a least one book a month independently. I think it is one I can actually accomplish.

INTERNSHIP/MOVE
I am starting up my internship with the Biologische Schutzgemeinschaft and the BUND (Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland)next week. The first project we are jumping into is a paper conservation presentation for elementary students. We will be going to the elementary schools to teach the kids about paper and where it comes from, how it is made and try to make them aware of how often we use paper and how we can conserve it. I am pretty excited about it but I feel really unprepared! I will be moving to another family so that I can go with my new hostfather/coworker to work everyday and get to know a different german family. I have already met them and they are really nice. They have a daughter my age who is now an exchange student in Utah and a nephew who is also an exchange student in Arizona. Luckily they will be back from the US a few days before I leave so I will get to meet them!

There are many things happening this month. 2010 has hit the ground running and it doesn´t look like it will slow down for a while. I hope the time doesn´t fly by too quickly! Hope you all had a great holiday. As always, I love to hear from you, even if you were only in english class with me sophomore year, I still read your comments/emails/facebook messages. :) Until the next entry! (sometime soon???)
Elena