Happy New Year! - Frohe Neues Jahr!

New Years Eve in Germany feels very similar to New Years Eve in the States. There’s drinking, good food, fireworks, pretty much everything you could ask for in a celebration. 

We packed up Mathis with all of his necessities and headed to the Kückmann household. Kara came too. She's very afraid of the fireworks. Just like Gretchen! Really, the only difference between them is approximately 70 pounds. 

Kara trying to eat Tom.

Gretchen trying to eat me. 

We ate dinner (oh, pink herring salad) and played with a few fireworks before Ben had to go to bed. We were informed to wake him up at 11:45pm to see the whole street shooting them off, but at midnight that task proved very impossible. The kid sleeps hard. To pass the time, we played a game called Activity, which is really fantastic and I hope we have it in America so I can buy it and play everyday! It’s Charades, Taboo, and Pictionary, all rolled into one game. It's especially hilarious if you play it in a language you barely understand. The boys team kept having to take me out in the hallway behind several layers of closed doors in order to explain the word I was supposed to draw or act out. Even with our handicap of me, the girls team dominated. 

Julia and Ben and Fire

Baby Phones of all the Boys

Losers!

It is very important for Germans, even if they don’t know English, that they make time that night to watch a black-and-white, ten minute British play called “Dinner for One.” So important that this scene plays at least 10 times on TV on Sylvester(German for New Years Eve). It involves a senile woman, her eager butler, and a lion rug. And that’s “Dinner for One.” 

At midnight, we shot off fireworks. We drank champagne. We spoke with neighbors. We went home. It was the first time in a long time that I had spent New Years quietly in a family setting, and I really enjoyed it. 

First New Years in the Snow!

My new year has gotten off to a solid start. I was the star of a very interesting middle-school English report entitled “The Life of an American Au Pair.” A wonderful topic if I do say so myself! After a couple of rehearsals here, I went one early Monday morning to the middle school girls’ English course and answered a series of questions in front of the class. I spoke, they stared with open mouths, and then there were no questions to follow. I love it! I discovered middle schoolers are exactly to same everywhere, in which they are all way too cool for school. It was really a lot of fun, and I hope that I can start to tutor some students in English. 

2011 is great in other ways too. My German course started back up. I’ve stuck with my New Years resolution to do yoga every day. Mathis is learning to crawl. I’ve been planning a lot of trips. I’m going to Poland at the end of the month and the Netherlands and Belgium in February. I had plans with friends three nights this week! I made cinnamon rolls from scratch!  I’ve been playing a lot of piano lately. I’ve been eating a lot of cinnamon rolls lately. 

Wishing you strong beginnings, plentiful adventures, and sugar comas in 2011!