And Esslingen Weihnachtsmarkt Pictures.

Esslingen is a very aborable medievel city that hosts a wonderful, cozy regular Weihnachtsmarkt and an interesintg Middle Ages Weihnachtsmarkt. Vincent and I went there together on the Sunday before Christmas. Oh what a wonderful trip.

Here I am in front of a middle ages building. Sooooo neat!

The entrance to the regular market.

Over the top of the regular market.

Inside the Middle Ages market.

Vincent and me inside the Middle Ages area.

More Weihnachtsmarkt Pictures!

One of those Windmill things I talked about...only really big.

See, told you it was really big!

Ludwigsburg Weihnachtsmarkt

Angels above the Ludwigsburg Weihnachtsmarkt.

The whole view of the Ludwigsburg Weihnachtsmarkt.

My Weihnachtsmarkt Tour!

So here in Germany, for those of you who don't know, they have beautiful Christmas markets in almost every big city, little city, village, etc. The size of the market ranges in size depending on the size of the city where it's located. From what I have seen this year, they are all very beautiful and have wooden stand after wooden stand that are decorated for Christmas and filled with everything from wooden toys to Christmas ornaments to hand made Christmas sweets for sale. For those of you who are geeky (like me!) and like to learn about the history of things, they have a wonderful article about them on Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_market) Everyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE Christmas. I love everything about it; the decorations, the atmosphere, the decorations, the smells, the decorations, the gift-giving, etc. So, I made it my mission to visit as many Christmas markets as I possibly could while I was here. Of course, even if I went to two Christmas markets every day for the four weeks before Christmas when they run, I couldn't visit all of them in Germany in one year....but I was determined to see as many as my pocket-money could afford. One time when we were talking about the markets in my German class, I mentioned all the ones that I was planning on going to and my friend sitting next to me said "It's not a contest Cori!" Haha. Oh yes it was! Anyway, I only got to see a few in the end, but they were all simply lovely. I went to Stuttgart, Esslingen, Nürnberg, Prien, and Ludwigsburg, Germany as well as Salzburg, Austria.

These festivals are where the best places to buy those little, wooden, smoking Santas, snowmen, etc. and the little windwills where the smoke/air from the candles make the blades of the fan turn which then turns the little figures of angels or other things around at the bottom. I bought several little wooden ornaments and a tiny snowman smoker and Vincent bought me a bigger Santa smoker. One of my favorite parts of the markets was the Glühwein they serve in many different stands, with different recipes, around each one. Glühwein is a spiced/mulled red wine that is served steaming, hot in cute little mugs, normally with the name of the market on them. I was always very glad for the taste and most of all the warmth of the Glühwein because it was always freakin' cold. Seeing that you normally go to the markets as it is getting dark so that you can see the lights all lit up and glowing, it's even colder than you can imagine! Standing in the markets at night, drinking Glühwein, still freezing your butt off, looking at all the little wooden ornaments, decorations, and lights is probably one of the best ways that I could imagine to spend a cozy, lovely winter night. If you ever have the chance to get to Germany, go at Christmas and go to the markets. It's worth coming if only just to experience them. Okay, now for some pictures!

This is a picture of some random people looking at all the cool wooden smokers.

This is just the candle area in the Stuttgart Weihnachtsmarkt. You can buy already made fancy ones there or dip your own.

This is the Stuttgart City Hall decorated as a huge Advents calendar above the market.

This is a Lebkuchen house in Salzburg. Sooooo darling!

This is the main street area in Salzburg all decorate with lights for Christmas.

Thanksgiving 2008!!!

Let's just start out by saying, it was perfect! Well, as perfect as a Thanksgiving without your family can be at least. But really, it went very well. We celebrated Thanksgiving here on Saturday, November 22nd which made it much easier because everybody was off from school and work that way. I made my first homemade pumpkin pie on Friday after lunch so that it was ready and out of the way for Saturday's festivities. Vincent came over from Prien on Friday night to visit for our Thanksgiving weekend. That night, Vincent had his very first Root Beer Float and saw Singin' in the Rain for the very first time. Such a Cori-Night! You see, they don't have root beer in Germany and so I bought some at the base when I did my Tday shopping so that he could try it. Both the movie and the dessert drink were smashing successes with Vincent! The evening was very relaxing and cozy as we prepared for the big Tday the next day.

On Saturday morning, Vincent and I got up early to stuff the turkey before breakfast. It was just the two of us who made all the stuffing with bread, apples, onions, raisins, celery, and spices that my mom sent from home. Then we packed the bird impossibly full and set it up to start cooking. Before we could put the bird in the oven though, we had to make breakfast! We made my Grammi's recipe for baked eggs, biscuits, and gravy that my family always cooks for every holiday morning. It was sooo good and really felt like home eating that and smelling the bird and stuffing start to get warm in the oven at the same time. We rested and relaxed the next few hours while the bird cooked and we waited to get all the other things cooking. At home, this would be the time, of course, set aside for football, but alas, in Germany, there is no chance to see football ever. Oh well, there's always the bowl next year. So we relaxed and even took a nap instead. I spent a lovely time decorating the dining room with the decorations that I had been planning and creating for over a month. that Then we started all the side dishes. The mashed potatoes, yams with marshmallows, cranberry sauce, and etc. all went fairly smoothly, a little bit stressful trying to do it all alone for the first time ever, but smoothly nonetheless.

Finally, the bird was golden-brown, the side dishes were done, the candles were lit, and the dining room had the lovely glow of orange, brown, and gold. It was time to eat. Everything tasted just like home! I had successfully recreated my mom's Thanksgiving...in Germany....where I couldn't even get all the right ingredients! That felt really good. Okay, anyway, now for pictures of it all.

Me; stuffing the bird!

The bird all golden-brown...

My beautiful, glowing table...

My pumpkin pie.....with a cute little pumpkin, that I made, in the middle.

Every single person had their very own, unique place card that I designed and drew for them. I tell you what, they looked gorgeous on the table with their own little pumpkins! (:

Back and Blogging!

Okay, I know that it's simply been FOREVER since I have updated my blog, but now I am FINALLY back! I ordered a new power cord from my computer, had it shipped to me from Hong Kong and now everything works perfectly. Actually, it's even better than my old cord because it plugs right into the wall here and I no longer have to use that scary, little, power converter that I bought back home. Hooray! Now I will post all about Thanksgiving, the holidays, and my Silvester vacation to catch-up all you guys at home. So...here goes!!

I'm one lazy blogger...

So, now I'm getting just plain lazy about posting huh? Haha. Now I am here and I can tell you about the last couple weeks and post some pictures! Hooray! The last couple weeks I have been a little lonely. I still go back and forth between being amazed that I am in Germany and wishing I could come home....and that emotion switches in about three seconds! No, not really. I have my good days and my bad days though. The only problem is that when I'm not watching the kids or whatever, I basically have nothing to do. I know, I have been doing my crafts and art, but it still gets a little lonely without a friend or two with whom to talk and experience new places. Luckily enough, I have the internet! Thank goodness....what would I do without it?

I do have information about an au pair club downtown in Stuttgart so maybe I will check that out and meet some other au pairs. Then in a couple weeks, I will start helping at the local school in an English class. They have a big project coming up and they needed some native English speakers to help the different groups of kids. Anette used to work at the Interenational School of Stuttgart and had some connections where she heard about this opportunity and got me in. I think that will be really interesting and it'll give me something extra to do and I'll even make a tiny more pocket money!

Anyway, I have been keeping myself busy with planning Thanksgiving. I don't think I have written about the plans before, but please bear with me if I have. I'm hosting my own American Thanksgiving here on Saturday, November 22nd. I know, Thanksgiving is on Thursday, but it had to be a weekend so that Ralf and Anette wouldn't work and I could focus on cooking all day long! Also, that makes it so that my special friends Lena and Vincent can come and join us. I'm really excited because it will be Lena's and Vincent's first Thanksgiving...not for the Fischer family though, they had an American au pair a few years ago and she cooked Thanksgiving. Although, she didn't even make stuffing, so I don't really think it counts! Haha! Anette gave me a decorating budget that I asked for so that I could really make my Thanksgiving special. I have an entire, traditional autumn table planned and I can't wait for everyone to see it. I have hand-drawn all of the place cards and created many cool ideas to make it really festive. I will, of course, share pictures when it happens.

Halloween kind of came and went here. I offered to throw a big American Halloween party for all of their friends, but they just don't understand it all the way that we do. It made me sad, but eventually I gave up. We did, on the other hand, carve pumpkins. Anette mentioned it a couple times and I figured that she must have really liked the idea, so I carved one in the daytime, while no one was here, just a couple days before Halloween. I was mostly worried about handling Jonathan and the big knives that it would take to cut the huge pumpkins they had. When Jonathan got home from Kindergarten, he was so excited about it that I decided we would try and VERY CAREFULLY carve the other pumpkin. Who gives a 5 year old boy a knife that big?! ... Apparently me! We made it a monster and I used my American expertise to use the already cut pumpkin and make them into ears for the monster. Here are some pictures:

A Few More Autumn Pictures..

This is the hill that I walked down. I know, it's sideways....but it was the only way to capture all that I wanted to.

Crocuses in Fall?

Looking up a side street; there are some very cool old buildings up that street.

Neat stone front building:

And a classic hotel street sign: