beginning, at least, to sound a lot like christmas
No snow here yet--actually it's been really warm--but the city's beginning to look rather Christmasy too, with all the lights up in the streets and whatnot. I like the way Germans do Christmas. It has a lot to do with the Christmas markets that go up everywhere--wherever there's a plaza big enough, it's populated by little wooden huts in which people are selling roasted almonds and Glühwein (hot, spiced wine) and Christmas ornaments and handcrafted stuff. There are nine Christmas markets in Berlin; pretty much every town in Germany has one, some more famous than others. On Potsdamer Platz they've also built an artificial sledding hill, complete with artificial snow.
Wednesday mornings start off for me with an 8th grade English class. Today I talked for a bit about Christmas in America--tried (and failed, I'm pretty sure) to explain egg nog, did a better job with leaving cookies for Santa Claus (which Dad eats), the whole business with Naughty and Nice, and getting up at 5 am the day after Thanksgiving to go Christmas shopping... And then we sang carols, along with a cassette the teacher's been using for who knows how many years. First we sang "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and then we sang "Last Christmas." Yeah, the George Michael song. I had a hard time singing, cause it was all I could do not to laugh at a room full of German 8th graders belting out, "Last Christmas I gave you my heart/ But the very next day you gave it away..." and then mumbling through the verses and then bursting out with "Last Christmas..." again. Trust me, it was priceless. (Go here to enhance my description of the scene with a clip of the song!)
Germany's also pretty big on Advent, the calendars and all. That same 8th grade class made Advent cards for all the teachers, so each day of the season somebody gets to open the one with his or her name on it. My name was on December 1st already, so I got to open the card that says "Frau Peterson" on the outside and "Marry Christmas" on the inside.
Apparently Germans do their fair share of commercializing the season, too, though--the other day I saw an advertisement for electronics. Roughly translated, it claimed that the prices were so low, the Baby Jesus would be flabbergasted.
Wednesday mornings start off for me with an 8th grade English class. Today I talked for a bit about Christmas in America--tried (and failed, I'm pretty sure) to explain egg nog, did a better job with leaving cookies for Santa Claus (which Dad eats), the whole business with Naughty and Nice, and getting up at 5 am the day after Thanksgiving to go Christmas shopping... And then we sang carols, along with a cassette the teacher's been using for who knows how many years. First we sang "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and then we sang "Last Christmas." Yeah, the George Michael song. I had a hard time singing, cause it was all I could do not to laugh at a room full of German 8th graders belting out, "Last Christmas I gave you my heart/ But the very next day you gave it away..." and then mumbling through the verses and then bursting out with "Last Christmas..." again. Trust me, it was priceless. (Go here to enhance my description of the scene with a clip of the song!)
Germany's also pretty big on Advent, the calendars and all. That same 8th grade class made Advent cards for all the teachers, so each day of the season somebody gets to open the one with his or her name on it. My name was on December 1st already, so I got to open the card that says "Frau Peterson" on the outside and "Marry Christmas" on the inside.
Apparently Germans do their fair share of commercializing the season, too, though--the other day I saw an advertisement for electronics. Roughly translated, it claimed that the prices were so low, the Baby Jesus would be flabbergasted.
Labels: Christmas
