Almost Christmas!

So this last weekend was finally the Christmas party! I love partying with the other exchange students,  it is the best. It was a house party at my friend Jessica's, who is also from USA, and everyone was invited. In the morning I left with Dju just before 2.
All the trains in Germany, and basically European transportation as a general, suck right now. There is snow and ice and everything is late (if it comes).  To give you an idea of how bad it is now, the Berlin S-Bahn usually comes every 10 minutes all over Berlin and everyone uses it, it is often packed. Now with the current conditions the S-Bahn only comes once an hour. Use your imagination on how that goes. We took one of the larger trains (RE1) to Berlin, but it stopped before we were even half way, then we had to take 2 S-Bahns just because everything is screwed up. I used to think the transportation was amazing here, not anymore. If it snows and is cold each year, by now this shouldn't be a surprise.
We quickly went shopping by Friedrichstraße and then waited for the next train to Potsdam.
On our train (45 minutes later) was a good long ride, part way through Potsdam we ran into a couple other of our exchanger buddies going to Jessica's too. So we took the rest of the ride together. When we finally got to Werdel (Havel) it was a relief to find someone waiting at the station for us.
That evening started out with cheesecake and tea and talking across the large table with all of our friends and Jessica's host family. More and more people started showing up and after we had all eaten and talked for a few hours, the party moved over to the little house in the back yard. Most people slept over, and that place was packed. It was a good night.

The next day when I got home my host dad told me to go to bed and get some sleep. I basically just slept, ate, and watched movies with my host dad that day. I was too tired for anything else.

This last week was only 3 days of school. Monday I went to the gym, Tuesday I went to Josie's, and Wednesday (today) I had another Christmas concert and then went in the city with Dju.

At Josie's we first went on a walk. Then it was so cold we decided to make hot chocolate and watch a movie. The hot chocolate had to be from soy milk because Josie has stomache problems, and it was a bit too filling. I made it. Then we watched ... something I forgot the name of. Oh wait, I remember! "Little Women" It was actually really funny. There was one sad scene where someone died, but most of the rest was just so funny, it was a lot of fun.

The Christmas concert (the second one)  went fine. This time no homesickness, and a lot more performances. I came home afterwords and my teacher was nice enough to drive me there because I had lost my bus. Then I went later back in the city with Dju looking to get some new boots, but we didn't have any luck with that. Last night when I got home I wanted to skype with my parents. I watched Dr. House and another show first, then discovered that the wonderful magical skype was broken. How can skype be broken? It is the site that connects across oceans, its the one that should be called facebook, because you see someones face with the video cam on your mac boo. Right? Yes. That's what I thought. I was stuck with normal facebook for a while until it finally worked again.

I had a sleepover with Laura (my host sister) last night. That was fun. I got out the Oreos, which she had never before eaten, and we tried to watch one of my favorite movies online, because all our movies that are German are downstairs in the room my host parents sleep in, we didn't want to wake them up. So we watched about half of that, then a few silly youtube videos, then dead tired, we slept.

Today I hope to meet up with Jens in Berlin. He can be a little harsh sometimes with what he says (Dju thinks) , but its just honesty, and plus, he's Finnish. I think it is the funniest thing how he speaks every language (he knows 5 already) with the same Finnish melody. It is the greatest thing to hear.