Happy Advent!

Do you have your Advent's calendar? I have mine....they're seriously so popular here. On December 1st, several people (without their own children) said that they had opened the first door on their calendar before coming into work. These people take their advent calendars seriously! My neighbors were nice enough to give me the gift of an Advent calendar, so I have been enjoying this tradition as well. (Mine even plays music!)

As my sister-in-law pointed out, it's been a while since I blogged (thanks for the reminder!!:). I guess I have been busy.....but what have I been doing? Well, after celebrating Thanksgiving twice, I started last week off by going to an Integration Seminar (you know, because I'm so poorly integrated here ;). It's required for all employees from other countries who are assigned here. It was interesting, but I didn't really learn a whole lot of new information. After two days there, last Tuesday night, I had dinner with my friend T. in the city. I decided that rather than pay the parking fees in the city, I would take the S-Bahn (street train). Plus, they're doing a campaign here right now about how we should all reduce our driving to protect the environment, so I've been feeling guilty about how little I use public transportation. (I mean, really, when it's still 50 degrees at the beginning of December, you have to think that something might really be wrong with our eco-system, right?) The problem was only that the stop which I took (Stadtmitte) has about 50 million exits (from the underground stop). T. said he'd wait at the top of the stairs, but when I got to the top, he wasn't there. So I called him and sure enough, I had taken the wrong exit. So I went back down underground and came up another exit.....wrong again. But this time, I walked above ground, past Starbucks and eventually found him. 50 million might be an exaggeration, but there really are at least 4 or 5 exits from the one stop - and they're not close to one another. Anyways, we drank some Gluhwein, which really doesn't fit to our overly warm weather, but was tasty nonetheless and then headed to a Thai restaurant for dinner, which was delicious!
Wednesday night the ladies from my church had a cookie exchange. But after "cooking" for Thanksgiving and being at the seminar for two days (including Monday night for dinner), I didn't have time to make any cookies, so I just said I couldn't make it. Stephanie came to my rescue, though, and baked cookies for both herself and for me. So I did go and it was a lot of fun...we decorated St. Nicholas canisters to hold our cookies and ate too many in the process.
Thursday night I had a dinner for work. The restaurant reminded me of Lazy Lizard, which was sort of unusual for Germany. It's a very popular Mexican restaurant in the city. The food was just ok, but I met a lot of new people and so that was really fun.
Friday and Saturday were not interesting - worked late on Friday and just generally recuperated from the high-speed pace of the past couple of weeks on Saturday.
At church on Sunday, we had a really beautiful Advent wreath. It's probably the nicest I've ever seen. We sang really low-key Advent (but not really Christmas) songs. Sunday evening, we visited a few Christmas Markets, but they weren't really as good as last year, so that was kind of disappointing. But the company was good!
And then, suddenly, it was Monday again!
Today after work, we went to the Stuttgart Christmas Market, which was lovely, just like last year. And although it's still 50 degrees or so, we drank a Gluhwein anyways (sort of obligatory at the Christmas Market...). I saw a lot of stuff and didn't buy anything - I need to go back on the weekend. (I'll try to get some pictures then.)
On Wednesday, I have to go on a business trip for work. It's a blitz trip: leave Wednesday at 4, drive for 8 hours. Meetings on Thursday. Meetings on Friday morning. Leave Friday at 11, drive back for 8 hours......
Then it's the weekend again and Christmas shopping and church......and then Monday and Tuesday are packed with meetings at work, Tuesday night I take the cats to the Cat House (really, it's called that in German) and Wednesday morning I have to catch the train at 5:30 a.m. to be at the airport in Frankfurt for my flight to Michigan!
I'm tired just thinking about it, so I'd better go to bed. I'll try to blog between now and the 13th, but if I don't: See you all soon!