Winter in Deutschland

So you're saying it's been about a month since I last posted. Well here I am again, in case anybody else is still here too. Finally finished my semester in Freiburg on Thursday, and left on Friday...although "finished" is a tricky word, since I actually still have one short paper to write in the next few days, haaaa ha crap. All in all it was amazing, I can't really believe it's over, which is helped by the fact that I'm staying in Germany until Jan. 11 now. I'm at Thorlef and Brigitte's house, arrived on Friday, and I'll be here for a couple more days probably, before I go to Britta and Wolfgang's for Christmas and perhaps New Year's.

I'm really lucky I get to stay longer--I don't think I would have been able to go straight home, it would be such a shock to the system. Now I get to just absolutely relax (well, except for the babysitting hundreds of little kids part, but I enjoy that too), drink lots of wine and Schnappes, and speak more German. It's nice to actually be able to do that now, whereas at the beginning all of my relatives were pretty much forced to speak English with me. It's good to see relatives again, too, and I'm seeing more than before--Michael and LaNon and their 4 and a half kids were here from Saturday to Sunday, I hadn't seen them for 6 years. And then I have plenty more time, so I'll hopefully see others at some point.

And this is my first time seeing such familiar places in the Winter--Thorlef and Brigitte's is beautiful in this season too, with a dusting of snow, especially when viewed through the glass-wall from the comfort of the hot tub. We've gotten a lot of snow recently, but the ground's still too warm, so it hasn't stuck. They took me to a classical music concert last night in Frankfurt, which was really cool.

I'm gonna go for now, but enjoy the last few hectic, ridiculous days leading up to Christmas.