Holidays! Traveling! Fun!

In a few hours I'm headed to Vienna to spend the evening with a friend and go to a concert of the German hip-hop group Blumentopf (yeah, you read that right...we'll see how this goes?). Then in the morning I'm off to Germany to celebrate Christmas with the incredibly delightful and wonderful family I lived with when I studied there my sophomore year of college. After about a week in Bonn I'm flying to Barcelona where Michal will meet me for Part 2 of "Yadlin Sister 1 & 3 Take On Europe"!!!!!!! I CANNOT WAIT to see her! Michal and I will be in Barcelona for just under one week and then we will come back to Austria, where I will get to test my tour-guiding skills, showing Michal around Vienna! I am so so so excited for the next few weeks!!!

Here's a very short update of what I've been up to in the past two weeks. First of all, I've visited practically every Christmas market in the city of Vienna several times, and I still can't get enough. Here's yet another picture of the Rathaus market--it's so beautiful you just can't help but feel the Christmas magic!

It should be illegal to have such pretty things.

Five other TAs and I had a lovely little Christmas party complete with a secret santa gift exchange and Ikea gingerbread house construction. The evening with these ladies reminded me once again how special my life here is and how grateful I am to have such wonderful friends! I can't wait to get back from break and see everyone again!

Ikea Gingerbread kits come with no frosting and no decorative
candies. Just Gingerbread and very detailed instructions.
So our house-builders improvised.

Last weekend, some friends of mine descended upon Purkersdorf to finally see what I have been talking about for the past 3 months. We visited our adorable little Christmas market, which was having a special concert that night. The group was called the Holy Moly Christmas Band, and it was made up of local residents dressed up in festive costumes, singing holiday songs in English with Austrian accents! They were fantastic and so much fun! There was also a craft area where we got to try our hands at dip candle-making. Although we got shown up by some very young children, I'm pretty proud of our finished products.

The candles as a work in progress

Finally, it's not all Christmas Christmas Christmas here. We also had a Chanukah celebration as well!! Luckily my friend Annie had the foresight to bring her Menorah from home, so a group of us got together to make latkes and light candles. I told the three gentiles in the group the story of Chanukah and together we all stuffed our faces with food drenched in oil. It was fantastic.

I want to wish you all a frohe Weihnachten and einen guten Rutsch ins Neujahr! Till 2013!

Letters to Santa!

It’s that time of year: when students are done learning, teachers are done teaching, and the teaching assistant is asked to talk about Christmas almost every day. Luckily, I certainly have not yet and hopefully never will tire of talking about Christmas, so I’m happy to do all these lessons! Plus, I can do different activities with different classes, depending on their age and skill level, thus keeping it exciting for me!

It’s been really fun learning about the Austrian version of Christmas, which is surprisingly different from the typical American Christmas (even though traditions vary widely within America as well).  For example, there is a Christmas figure here called Nikolaus, who is basically St. Nicholas, and essentially the closest thing they have to Santa. Children celebrate Nikolaus on December 6^th by putting their shoes on their windowsills or outside their doors. Nikolaus visits the kids at night and puts treats in their shoes following the same rules as stockings in America: rocks or coal for the bad kids and candy for the good ones. One of the teachers dressed up as Nikolaus at school last week and visited all the classes, bringing them mini oranges, apples, peanuts, and chocolate. I didn’t know he was coming to one of my classes so I was as surprised as the kids when he walked in! He even visited the 18 year olds, keeping the fun alive even through adolescence! :)

Because they don’t have a Santa Claus as we know him, I thought it would be fun to focus on the character of Santa for the Christmas lessons I’m doing with younger kids. Today I worked with the 2^nd form, meaning they’re around 11-12 years old and generally in their 2^nd year of learning English. After telling them a little bit about Christmas in America, I had them write letters to Santa! You can imagine this activity produced some real gems. Here are some of my favorites:

I just enjoyed this line of this letter. Nationalstolz FTW.

Homegirl is not shy about her requests. What is she going to
do with an iPhone 4S AND and iPhone 5?

creative decorations!

After reading 18 letters all asking for iPads, cell phones, Wii games,
and other technology things, it was lovely to see a girl request
books, stuffed animals, and movies! Well done, girl, well done.

I just like that she added a PS with more things she thought of :)

Three guesses as to what she wants to do during her break. 

This wins the prize for most adorable letter ever. It's hard to read, but she wants ski trousers and a cell phone case.
Favorite line: "And give Mrs. Claus a kiss from me :)"

After class I showed another teacher all the letters and she suggested with do the same activity with the 17 year olds next week! I'm excited to see how it goes with them!