This Race Demands A New Pace

Hello blog readers!

Christmas was fantastic. For a present to our grandparents Nadia and I baked cookies, specifically plätchen if you can remember from my last post.  They were more of ‘experiment plätchen’ because we only followed the recipe from the beginning and changed the dough to taste afterwards. The cookies turned out surprisingly simple, but simple is good which is why they were my favorite cookies this entire Christmas season. Upon our arrival at our grandparents we brought them to the second living room.

My chocolate plate :)

But my surprise didn’t end at the fact that they had a second living room (let alone a third which I found later that night). I was in awe at the six or seven platters full of different chocolates! I made a quick surveillance, which really means I tried as many as I could in the time that I realized we weren’t supposed to be in that room yet and we had to go. As we were leaving, and filling our pockets, we met Grandma on the way. Nadia swallowed (literally her chocolate) and said ‘Don’t go in, we were just bringing your present’. Grandma nodded with an all-knowing grin, as Grandmas always do as she led us back to the kitchen . There we socialized for an hour then moved into the next room, the chocolate room, to socialize until dinner was ready. Here we talked about politics, the future for Nadia and Marcus, and briefly about the American Christmas dinner. Afterwards we enjoyed a wonderful fresh smoked fish and Würstchen dinner. Würstchen is the same shape of a hot dog but it is unbelievably better tasting and I’m hoping healthier too. The fish is simply smoked then handed to the customer in a bag, which means that I had to skin and de-bone it.

Considering it was my first time ever attempting such a task, it wasn’t very successful. The fish was really lecker (tasty) but the extra crunch of the bones which I somehow missed gave me the heebe-jeebies. My family was smiling at me and waiting for my opinion about this fish, the German tradition. With a strained smile I gave a sincere nod, two thumbs up, swallowed and gave the rest of the half de-boned fish to my host brother. Next time, I’ll take a würstchen please. We ate until we were content and went back to the chocolate room. We talked a little bit more about the future and played word games. I’ll explain my favorite game;  I say for example ‘chair’, then the person the right of me has to say a word that starts with ‘chair’ and ends in something different. For example, ‘chair leg’. The person to the right of them would say ‘leg cream’, then ‘cream sauce’ etc. At any rate this game was extremely fun, I love to learn new vocabulary and play with words! The night was slow paced which was a change from my busy school week schedule.

Playing monopoly with Nadia and Oma.

What are the odds of all of us being in jail at the same time?

Which brings me to my next topic, schedule and time management.

My schedule here is much different than in Connecticut. In America I go to the gym before school, afterschool I work or productively socialize and learn with teachers. On a normal night I get home at five or six p.m.. By then I’m so tired that I have to either drink a coffee, which is a synthetic energy boost, or put on my sneakers and go for a run for natural energy. Eighty percent of the time I choose the natural way because I refuse to make coffee a stimulant. By the time I’m done with my run and eating dinner its half past seven and I haven’t started studying for tests and completing my homework. My free time is on the weekends but I have to admit, when I’m doing the things I like to do during this ‘free time’ my mind is always thinking about studying more. But here it’s a different game. I attend school, and laboriously during every class write and translate every word I hear or read that I don’t understand. I come home, take a nap for half an hour and begin to review the words. That is my workload, other than that all of my times is ‘free’. After a week of being confused with so much free time, I asked my teachers what was expected of me. They said that I must attend and pay attention in class, the last exchange student wrote letters home to her friends and family the whole time. One teacher told me I could relax in her class and simply listen. I had a discussion with a teacher, one of my favorites, and she said that I will learn the language no doubt. But approaching it with such vigor and intensity will not profit my mind or body. And I must agree, I have the same determination as I did the first day I landed in the Frankfurt Airport to conquer the German language. I have realized, as with every truly successful thing, it requires a process.

There is a process to learning a language, to losing weight, to making friends, to completing homework, to understanding, and to living (all of which I plan to accomplish). What I’m learning, or more specifically what God is showing me, is that no process can be forced or rushed if one expects a good outcome. If I want a perfect love relationship with Jesus that means every day, my first hour I have to commune with Him and diligently seek His face. If I want to make friends that means I have to be vulnerable, make the first move, and let one person more hear my grammatical mistakes as humbling as it is. If I want to learn a language, that means I have to ask when I don’t understand rather than passively say yes. It means I have to study, learn, and read but also make time for myself because everything is a process. I can’t lose my sense of balance between busy and down time.



Very commically receiving a hand baked

cookie present from my friend Kerstin.



In retrospect, this last year I have been given many new friendships and challenges. Now God is showing me as I walk into 2012 it’s up to me how I develop them and let them grow in my life. Every person is given the same amount of time in a week, but its’ what you invest this time in determines what you will later reap. Every action brings a reaction. If you look at any divinely talented composer, singer, or artist their talent was not born overnight. It was a product of time invested every day. One can only realistically choose two or three things to dedicate themselves to. For me, first is God and my second passion is singing with accompanied cello and guitar. I ask as this last post in the year 2011 that you think of what your priorities are going to be in the new year. I pray that you join me in making God the first priority in your life. With this decision one can’t go wrong, it only gets better from there. This doesn’t mean that difficulties won’t come in the new year, but if we see our difficulty the way God does then we can handle it how He does.

Questions and comments are welcomed! I would be honored to answer them.

Blessings and Joy, Genevieve



Gratefully enjoying a warm tea on the floor of a mossy German forest.



Simply Christmas in Germany

A small wood Christmas scene.

Like a warm breath in a winter morning, the soft smoke from chimneys puff into the crisp December air. Gingerbread colored roof tops are lightly sprinkled with a thin powder of snow. It’s just enough to have your heart swell and know that it’s Christmas time. A time to reflect on one’s worth, to begin the journey of understanding the great price that was paid for the human race. Christmas is a time of Lebkuchen, Stolle, Spekulatius, Marzipan and colorful straw stars hung in frosted windows. A German Christmas is not excessive, but what is shown and communicated is of sentimental value (most likely hand-made) and of importance. This Christmas I won’t be sipping on warm eggnog instead I plan on trying a German favorite, eggcocoa (raw egg and hot cocoa). In this post I would like to describe to you what I have experienced as a German Christmas. To start, here is a picture of Boizenburg, the biggest village in my area that is about a fifteen minute drive from my house. In the large empty space you see in the middle is where our Weihnachtsmarkt takes place.

To state the differences, Christmas is celebrated on the 24^th which is called ‘Heilige Abend (Holy Night)’. Here one would attend church, open gifts after enjoying a meal of duck, red cabbage, and potatoes. The day after is called the First Christmas Celebration Day where one celebrates with everyone outside of the immediate family. The  day after is the Second Christmas Celebration Day which is another day to share meals, and commune with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandpa's and grandma's. Another large difference I noticed a week into December..the Christmas tree is put up and decorated the day before Heilige Abend. 



Boizenburg Church

 

Adventskranz



Every Sunday a candle is lit in an ‘Adventskranz’ which is a wreath with four red candles to create a geometric square shape. The lighting of a candle only represents the amounts of weeks until the three day Celebration of Christmas. Specialty Christmas foods include; Spekulatius (vanilla cookies with ‘festive’ spices), Stolle (dense vanilla cake with rasins and powdered sugar), Lebkuchen (gingerbread almost always chocolate covered..no problem) and Gluhwein ( offered with and without Alcohol). I tried the alcohol-less Gluhwein and if I had to compare it to anything it would be cranberry, apple cider, and ginger. Every small village and big cities too, such as Hamburg, Leipzig, etc.. have a Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market). Here one can buy candied almonds, straw stars, Christmas tree ornaments, Gluhwein, Quarkballchen (little puffs of fried dough) and small hand made collector items. A very traditional and very dangerous decoration are live fire candles, now it is common to have electric powered candles instead. A film that is played throughout the Christmas time is ‘Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel’ , which is a twist of the classic Cinderella. That is a sum of what German do have, here is what they don't; no nativity scene sets in front of houses, no coffee flavors (whatsoever), eggnog, Christmas movie marathons or extravagantly decorated houses.




Adventskalender: each number is a little door that one opens on the appropriate day for a piece of chocolate!



Last week I was honored enough to be asked, among four other AFS students, to participate in a radio interview with the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern radio station. It was not a live interview (phew!) but it will be sent out this week for the entire state to hear. The interviewer asked me questions about a 'typical American Christmas' such as 'what do you eat?' and 'do you and your family go to church together?' Then she asked me for a very common song, and to my confusion seconds later I was singing ‘Dominque the Donkey’. Honestly, don't ask me why, I find it annoying 98% of the time it's played on the radio. Thankfully, not the whole interview will go out. ‘Only a few sentences that sum up the energy of your homecountries’ Christmas’ she said. Hopefully doesn’t include me singing ‘clinkiti clink he-haw-hehaw’. The picture here was after the interview, a fellow AFSer and I lip sang just for kicks to give the appearance that we were singing on the radio. :) I chose this picture to sum up the interview experience which was fun and relaxed. 

 Here is a quick story from last week. Friday I baked Christmas plätzchen (cookies) with a friend Kerstin. We made the traditional dough but I got to choose the forms. You know me :D Afterwards I created a little cookie scene on the cutting board and explained the Orgeon Trail! Do you see it?

 In America the traditions differ within every family but here I am apart of traditions that date back hundreds of years. Because of this, I found it hard to explain what a 'typical' American Christmas is to my host sisters English class. What I was able to describe was that the main focus of Christmas, aside from the 'holiday hype' ,is still about Jesus' birth. I asked my host parents what their celebration of Christmas entailed in the former DDR time. More than anything it was a time to get together with what family you could and simply celebrate being together (not neccesarily Jesus' birth). What I’m looking forward to within this next week is being home with the family, rest from school, enjoying (hopefully) the snow to come, and baking with my host sister.

In the meantime I'm reflecting on my time so far here. Yesterday marked the 100th day since I arrived in Germany. I have learned so much since then. As I mentioned in the latest article (about writing down what you learn everyday) I cherish every snippet of wisdom I receive. With six months and counting I cherish every moment I am with my new friends and family. I pray that you all also have a wonderful Christmas. I would love to hear your comments on a German Christmas, or answer any of your questions.

God Bless, Genevieve!