Hey there! εϊз
I really just realized that I didn't write anything on here in ages! Again.. Why am I never changing? I always loose my enthusiasm. Forget about something I don't feel like doing anymore or is too much work. But, well, I don't wanna abandon my blog another time, so here I am writing something about my life.
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| The Grandparents Christmas tree |
My last entry was in November, wow.. am I really that lazy? Seems so haha. Hm.. what happened since then? Let me check my pictures (I have a terrible memory) .. Okay, in the first week of December I visited a dear hostfamily of another Au Pair in Costa Mesa. They are nice and open people, and we became friends quickly. It takes me 2 hours with the bus each time to get to their house!! I can't drive so far... but I have a looot of fun with them and their kids every time. On that Sunday they were starting to decorate their house with Christmas stuff. I got to help them with their tree! Sadly a lot of Americans here in California only have fake christmas tree. This family too, but at least I got to know how to put up a plastic christmas tree, haha! (I don't want to use this knowledge ever though). They had maaaaaaaaaaaany many Disney Ornaments like Aladin, The Lion King, Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella and so on. It's so cute! I realized that we are missing a lot in Germany. They have much more different oranments over here! For different years, with pictures, handmade, celebrations, with music, singing ones, stars, figures, animals, TV characters... everything! And what do we have in Germany? Christmas balls, straw stars and maybe a few wood figures (at least in my family). When I am back home I will try to find more cute ornaments. It's just awesome! You can tell so much and recall every memory at Christmas again! Back to my day with the hostfamily. After decorating the tree&house I went to a big mall with their Au Pair, but we didn't really buy anything and just walked around. In the afternoon we watched an old but good Christmas movie about Santa, and I helped them with dinner. The hostmom likes to cook and is also selling kitchen stuff (Tupperware and so on) and I liked to assist her. (I am turning into a different personality when I am somewhere else... I rarely lend my own mom a hand, haha!)
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| A crazy house with tons of Christmas lights! |
Unless that one day I didn't do any other big things by myself besides gift hunting I guess.
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| Gorgeous Arizona! |
One week before Christmas, my hostfamily and I travelled to Tucson, Arizona to spend the holidays with their relatives. With the car, it took us 8 hours to get there! The kids - luckily - watched movies the whole time. (Btw, how could our parents travel normally without a DVD-Player when we were small?)
I kinda had a small vacation there, since the parents&grandparents were available to take care of the kids. I still had to help them from time to time of course. But I got to finally read a book again! (I don't really get to read much over here) I tried to go up to an Observatory, however the weather turned out to be bad everytime and I couldn't go and see those beautiful stars and planets. My hostfamily organized a day in the Desert museum, where we saw hummingbirds very close, Javelinas, a coyotes, sleeping but cute Ocelote, also nodding bobcats (nap time?), a mountain lion, training owls and a very beautiful view.
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| Cookies for Santa x3 |
In America, Christmas is celebrated on the 25th of December, so I had the day before for myself to skype with my family and to spend our traditional German Christmas. I loved it so much. We opened presents together (I got one too!), laughed together and took pictures together. It was such a wonderful and happy time with everyone. I miss them!!! I miss everything. On that evening, Helena decorated some bought cookies for Santa and I wrapped my last presents (Of course..) And you know what? They were gone the next day!! I am serious! Santa exists!! The whole morning, we unpacked lots and lots of presents. In addition to the presents you can see under the christmas tree at the beginning of my post, everyone also got a huge stocking full of small things. Mine contained German stuff. I was happy to get one too! I received many presents from "Santa" and am really grateful to my hostfamily to give me so much. Most of my presents were clothes: two jeans, three nice sweaters, a white jacket, 2 pajamas, a wonderful soft, red bathrobe, two sets of scarfs&mittens/hats (Even though I am from Germany, I am the one who always freezes - even here!). I also got a cool Make-Up kit, including eye shadow, cream eye line, lip gloss, bronzer, highlighter, blush, brow wax and powder. The only problem.. I don't know half of it since I only use eye shadow and eyeliner all the time ^^
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| Our Christmas stockings |
Someone wants to volunteer and teach me?
In the afternoon, a lot of relatives came over to our house. The grandparents had prepared a feast beforehand! It was the same food we had on Thanksgiving. The one difference was that we also ate ham and much more sweets! I liked the business and that I got to speak German!! Helenas Grandfathers mother was born and raised in Germany. She is very nice and I enjoyed my conversation with her a lot. We drove home the day after Christmas and I had to seriously work the day after that again. Christmas was over just like that. (Where are my 2 weeks of German vacation?)
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| Our "fireworks" ... |
Between Christmas and New Year's I celebrated two birthdays of close friends and got one stomach flu. (Last thing is awful and not recommended!!). Actually my whole hostfamily got it through our amazing little baby boy.. I spent New Year's Eve itself at the house party of the hostfamily I mentioned at the beginning. My own hostfamily was sick and wouldn't have done >anything< otherwise anyway. I helped them prepare everything again and played with the kids. I didn't really know all of their friends, but it was okay. And I finally got to drink some alcohol! (Okay I am not that obsessed with it, but I like to drink it from time to time) I am not 21 yet, so I can't drink it legally.. The absolut Best Thing of the evening was when I was allowed to hold real military guns!! <3 That feeling was just aaaaaawesome!!
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| Daiko performance |
But there was also a negative side to it. No fireworks are allowed on New Year's Eve in California.. you can't buy it, you can't fire it. Just terrible! I missed that part a lot. All we had were table firecracker, hah! Oh and everyone started watching TV 5 minutes to midnight. It's kinda like a tradition to watch a crystal ball drop in New York at midnight. I spent the first day of the new year with my thai friend. We drove up to Los Angeles to visit a Buddhist Temple She prayed with a lot of other Thai people. It was a very nice day full of sunshine and I believe we had 25° C degrees!! I liked it to experience another part of Asian tradition and to see Buddhism first-hand. After that we went to a japanese district of L.A. and saw a little japanese New Year's festival! I loooooved it <3
Okay I did it! I covered last year! xD Even though I wanted to write something about current happenings.. I will leave that for next time! Which will be much much sooner hopefully.
Thanks for reading my blog!
See you later, Alligator X3
Sarina ❀
