Weihnachtszeit, Weihnachtszeit...

Merry Christmas to you and yours, lovelies. Hope Santa was good to you all and that you got to spend some quality time with your loved ones. I cooked up a storm and will detail the menu for you when I get back from our trip to the Czech Republic. The Germans have a practical name for the mountains we're going to visit, they call them the "Riesengebirge". In Czech, they're called "Karkonosze"--except with a few less vowels. I'm hoping for snow, since the temperatures here aren't really Christmas-y. I'm not expecting to have internet in our lovely village hamlet, so I'll update when I get back. Hopefully.

Have a great and healthy New Year, folks. Drive safe, take care of each other.

What A Difference 3 Days Make...

I know it's not Christmas yet. 

I'm not entirely sure whether or not I've got the Christmas Feeling yet.

It is December 23rd, though. I've been on vacation officially since Monday and it's been fantastic. I was getting burnt out as hell and just generally quite sick and tired of all the horseshit flying all over the place at work. I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I've got a lot of different things on my plate at the moment, job-wise. My life does not unfortunately consist solely of throwing lovely dinner parties. On occasion, I really wish it did. Between work at the KiTa and school, I get my 40 hours/week. Add the various team meetings, planning sessions or parents meetings and we get another extra ten hours/month, give or take. I teach one adult ed class/week (2 1/2 hrs), have the banker once a week (1 1/2 hrs) and the psychiatric practice every other week(ca 2 hrs). The aforementioned gigs require quite a bit of prep work, which of course happens on weekends and after hours. 

Someone else can do the math, but suffice it to say, I've been busy. Which makes me appreciate two weeks where I've been able to clear my schedule completely of the aforementioned committments all the more. Even the weekends take on a different character. Sunday wasn't the first day of my work week this week. Normally I build a fort out of various books, magazines other printed resources and le laptop and plan all my lessons for the week. Vacation is great. 

Thus far, I've had the time to meet up with several of the Lovely Ladies who I've not had time to see for the last few months/weeks respectively. I showed our new french/british intern around my charming hipster neighborhood and entertained at least 3 times for dinner. And once for breakfast. I also drafted a behavioral analysis and organized and wrapped the rest of the christmas presents. And I've slept in. 

On the docket for today is a bath for the madame, a shopping list for the christmas eve viva italia dinner and perhaps my second behavioral analysis. There's a planning session set for 2pm for our trip to the Karkonosze Mountains on the Czech/German/Polish border. We're going with two other couples, which has not served to make the planning any easier. I'm a lone wolf when it comes to travelling. I do not like making compromises. When I'm someplace I've worked hard to be able to visit or perhaps have always dreamt of visiting, I want to do what I want to do and my companions can take it or leave it. This isn't really one of those instances--I have not always dreamt of visiting the Karkonosze but I do have a pretty clear idea of how my side of this vacation is going to go down. I will make minimal compromises, but god help the asshat that wakes me because breakfast is ready. I.WON'T.CARE. I'm paying money to squirrel myself away in a little snowy house in the mountains to relax, do a bit of skiing, appreciate real winter and snow, but mostly to relax. I do not anticipate further trips of this nature. Although Stephan and I are pretty equally strong-willed in most other things, when it comes to travel, he usually lets me run the show...I think because even he has to realize that I've got a damn sight more experience than he does. 

Anyway, enough ranting. I know it sounds ridiculously egoistic. And kind of negative. But I do think/hope it's going to wind up being a good time, as long as they don't get too german (read: retentive) about cashmoney, food, etc. I mean...we're friends in real life. We should be able to manage a week's vacation. I'll keep y'all posted, but it's bathtime on the farm. If I don't get a chance, I wish you all wonderful holdiays and safe travels with people you love.

Be safe and know that I'm thinking of you!

stressstressstressstress

Oh me, oh my...time does fly!

I was shocked to find out that November had finally come to a close. I felt like it was a big secret that I just wasn't in on. I also felt terribly unprepared for December and the holiday season. In the last few weeks, however...I feel like I've managed to get things under control. I mailed the last package yesterday along with the last christmas card. Now there's a bit of last minute shopping to do for people here, some research to do for school things and a few work parties to attend and I'll be on vacation. Thank heavens and not a moment too soon. 

Yesterday was our second advent dinner party--we cooked up a duck (I thought it was going to be goose, but I thought wrong), baked some cookies and decorated the christmas tree, which was pretty cool. It's a bit minimalistic, but all things considered, I think it turned out well. I also learned a lesson...Stephans aesthetic perfectionism doesn't make halt before the holidays. He initially came home without a tree. His reason: they were all ugly, and the ones that weren't ugly were expensive. I told him that under no circumstances would Christmas be celebrated in this apartment without a christmas tree, ugly or not, and that I would be extremely pleased if we could get it up and decorated this weekend. Stephan, being as he his, went out and came back with what I must say might be the prettiest, fullest, greenest christmas tree I've ever seen. I didn't ask any further questions. I also busted out the double cd set of christmas classics--you know, the old Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong schtick and tortured my guests with forced christmas cheer. I got a little fascist-dictator-y and made them turn off the sound on the wii so we could enjoy the atmosphere. : D I don't think anyone really minded. Besides, the duck, the various kraut side dishes, the garlic dumplings, the baked apples and cookies were delicious enough to make up for any of my culinary/atmospheric tyrrany. I hope. 

Now, after an evening full of much too much red wine, I'm having great difficulty concentrating on my lesson planning/catchup work for school. So I'm listening to HSE, posting to you all and waiting for Robert, a friend of mine, who allegedly needs some nutmeg, to come by and pick it up so that I can go take a bath. Now that's a Sunday. 

F'hain Thanksgiving Extravaganza

I'm going on a posting binge to make it up to those who care, but I had to separate these two posts. Thanksgiving in the F'hain grew out of a resolve from last year. Thanksgiving is the hardest holiday to spend outside of the states. My sister was so funny...I told her that on the phone and she was like "Why?! It's not like you miss anything here. Really." I'm sure it has a lot to do with expat-romanticism...the things we don't have, we tend to redschön. Thanksgiving has definitely become more important to me since I've taught it in a thousand lessons and explained it's history to tons of curious Germans. Last year was hard because we didn't celebrate, so I resolved to do it up this year in style, and Stephan had not choice but to go along for the ride. 

It was pretty cool if I do say so myself.

The battle plan was as follows...we had a team of  approximately 16 "guests" (if you can call them that while still expecting them to work for their dinner) who were then divided into three smaller groups who were then assigned to one of the three kitchens. The grou

ps were deliberately mixed so that people were with people they didn't know, and everyone had authentic recipes and ingredients distributed amongst them. They were then sent to said kitchens and told to produce said items. 

There were some stressful moments where I had something close to boiling over/burning on on the stove and was taking a phone call from Stephan complaining that they had too many sweet potatoes and what should they do about it, while desperately waiting for a refill on my wine glass...but it worked. My team was fantastic, we were done with our stuff in a jiff and could get to work on the decorations/beverage consumption/serious relaxation. 

I think all told, everything was ready and we sat down to eat shortly before seven pm. The cooking had started effectively at one. The last guest left at two am. It was a scene of mass carnage and destruction but everyone went home extremely full and at least a little tipsy if not roaring drunk. 

What amazes me is that almost a week later, people still haven't come to claim their chairs or KITCHEN TABLES?!?! How does one live without a kitchen table? Or chairs? I mean, yes one can eat on the couch, but really? I'm glad we live on the top floor...we've just put everything out on the landing in the stairwell. Noone comes up here who's not invited anyway, and there are only four apartments. 

However, if a photo is really worth a thousand words, I'll close with this picture of Vika and Stefan:

Guys, come get your effing table. 

Thanks.

Love,

Mia

So Many Things...

So yeah, for those of you who don't know, I had to give up my dog. It blew. Hard. I'm a crier, as pretty much everyone who knows me even casually can attest to, and I lost it all over the place as it became evident that we were going to have to admit defeat. 

We'd called in the national guard of friends, friends of friends and partners of friends to make things work for about a month, and when my boss dropped the bomb that she hadn't understood me right and that she was against having a dog in the KiLa on a regular basis, our hand was forced. I talked to her about it and I think my problem is that I'm just so damn reasonable. I understood and empathized with her reasons for being against it. I really did. I still cried my eyes out, though. It was heartbreaking. 

I learned so much though--about myself, about Stephan, about our friends...it was bittersweet but I don't regret it at all. We've got a lot of great people around us, and I'm really thankful for that.