Fulbright Hamburg 2010-11.: A Happy Christmas I Wish You

Well, it's 11:00 AM on Christmas Eve over here in Hamburg. We've got about six inches of snow on the ground (very unusual for Hamburg), it's a cold but tolerable 28 degrees, and good old Wilhelmsburg is sleepy and quiet (which isn't really any different from the norm around here, but whatever). This will be the first holiday season in my life that I've spent away from family, which is a bit of an odd sensation. I can withstand about two weeks of SLC before going crazy over the winter holidays, but at least those first two weeks were really nice--fireplaces, Christmas trees, friends, family. It's quite a different experience to be out on "the end of the limb" as my Dad puts it; out in far away, distant lands, miles away from the familiar.

It is a bit sad on one hand, but then again it's not like I'm totally 100% removed from everyone back home. There's phone calls and emails and video chatting and international shipping for gifts, so if I can't be right back there in the action at least I can say hello from afar. Nor will I just be huddled up with my computer alone in the dark on Christmas Eve: tonight I'm going to be having dinner with one of the teachers at my school and her family, and then on Christmas morning I'll be having lunch with the Ketels. So I'll be celebrating at least, with a new crowd and thousands of miles away from the usual venue, but celebrating none-the-less!

The school week leading up to the break was pretty nice. A lot of classes were taking tests, so for a few periods I didn't have to show up, and then when the students had finished with their work the pace slowed down a lot, so class was pretty informal. On Monday night I actually went to a movie night at another teacher's house to bake cookies and spend some time with her 11'th grade class. It was a bit of a trip hanging out with a bunch of 17 year-olds, but the evening wasn't half bad. We drank hot chocolate and made little Christmas tree and angel shaped cookies, played this karaoke game for a while, a couple of the guys brought guitars over and we jammed for a little bit, good times all in all. Tuesday was our traditional game night at Sausalito's, a restaurant down in the city center, and that was a good opportunity to get together with everyone for one last time and say goodbye for the holidays.

And finally, on Wednesday there was a big "Weinachtenschulfest" (Christmas school party), so all of the classes spent the whole day playing games and hanging out. I got to play musical chairs on two separate occasions with the sixth and seventh graders, proctored a make-up test for some of the upper-level students who had missed the in-class test, ate a ton of snacks, it was a good time. At the end of the day there was a big faculty party in the teacher's lounge, and that was a good opportunity to just hang out with some of the other teachers and breathe a collective sigh of relief that the holidays are finally here! One of the teachers from one of my favorite seventh grade classes also gave me a little Christmas gift at the party--a 11x17 piece of paper with little messages from the students in the class. That was a great gift, and all the messages were really, really nice. Some of my favorites:

"He is a best teacher :P"
"He love beer"
"I heart you x4"
"You are sehr witzig and hilfsbereit" (you are very funny and helpful),
and "hat schnell Deutsch gelernt" (learned German quickly. At the beginning of the year we told them that I couldn't speak German, so I guess whoever wrote that thought I learned the whole language in the past three months.)

Happy holidays from the Vaterland everyone! Or, as one of my well meaning but slower 10'th graders phrased it to me, "A happy Christmas I wish you!" I'll be sure to fill you in on holiday activities and New Year's goings-on. Be merry, stay safe, eat lots of food, and enjoy the company of your friends and family!