Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years have all come and gone, I have survived the holidays away from home! It wasn’t without a fair amount of challenges though. But mixed in with the homesickness was great joy, lots of laughter, and God’s love.
Thanksgiving
So if you didn’t realize it, Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in Germany. This wasn’t something that really crossed my mind until I was here and there was no advertisements and talk of Thanksgiving. The day was just another day here for everyone, except for Beth, Kelsey, and I. We started the day off eating stuffing for breakfast (a tradition in my family) and then went to language class. After language class we headed back to our flat and began cooking. We made all the traditional favorites (some of which were quite hard to acquire): turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, corn, and broccoli. And when Jeff and Robby arrived they brought with them sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pie, and a fruit yogurt dessert. Shortly after the guys arrived so did our guests. We had different people from our language classes come. In total we had 10 people from various countries: the USA, Germany, Cyprus, Albania, and the Philippines. For many it was their first time experiencing an American Thanksgiving and everyone seemed to love it. We all went around the table and talked about what we are thankful for. This is a highlight of my time here so far, many cultures all together and sharing a meal and laughter.
Christmas
Christmas was a little more difficult. After coming off an intensive 3 weeks of language class we were all exhausted but still wanted to make the most of Christmas. I personally was also feeling very homesick. The 5 of us arranged a Secret Santa with each other and got dressed up and went out for a nice dinner when we exchanged gifts. Kelsey went to visit a friend over Christmas so Beth, Robby, Jeff and I planned a Christmas Eve lunch before going to Church. The church service was all in German but I was still able to understand a good portion of it. After church we joined that congregation for a Christmas dinner of Raclette (if you don’t know what this is look it up, it was so good and so fun). It was really fun being with a bunch of other people and sharing a meal. On Christmas day we had pancakes and opened gifts (what few we had from gifts in the mail and what “Santa” brought). We watched movies and played card games until the evening when we went to a co-workers house. They invited anyone from the team to come over and spend Christmas with them and their family. This was another really great evening. We ate wonderful food and played games. It was a wonderful home away from home. As I previously stated, I was rather homesick and it was really hard being away from family, but looking back I don’t think there is any other way I would have wanted to spend my Christmas away from home. I’m so thankful for the people God has put in my life here in Berlin.
New Years Eve
Between Christmas and New Years Eve we took an impromptu trip to Munich. Munich was a lot of fun and I loved it, but it also gave me a different type of appreciation for Berlin (in another blog post I will tell more of our Munich trip). We left Munich at 3:30pm on New Year’s Eve and traveled by bus back to Berlin. We were a little afraid we wouldn’t make it back in time to bring in the New Year. Lucky for us though we got in at 10:30pm and rushed off to a café where some friends were celebrating. Our trip to the café was very interesting, EVERYONE in Berlin shoots off fireworks, and they shoot them off from wherever; so fireworks were going off on train platforms, in roads, off balconies, walking down the street felt like walking through a warzone. At midnight we went to the square by the café and watched people shooting off fireworks from every direction. It was an interesting experience, maybe next year I’ll even be brave enough to go to Brandenburger Tor (like Time Square but even bigger).