Christmas, New Years and New Job

Hi!

I haven't had the time to update in a while, so I'll try to tell you about the last weeks in a nutshell. 

CHRISTMAS went by way to fast.

My dad came to church with me for the Christmas service, which was great. My mom couldn't make it, but I was really excited that my dad came anyway. Please pray for him and my mom, as they aren't saved yet.

I spent the night at their house and we celebrated Christmas day together. Germans usually get and open their gifts on Christmas Eve, but since we are a half Scottish family, we do that on the 25th.

I got some neat stuff and was very thankful that  was able to spend the day with the family. 

For NEW YEARS EVE, Ines and I went to our friend Daniel's house to celebrate with some friends, but mostly people we didn't know yet. The evening started pretty dull, but turned out to be great after everyone got to know each other better. We had a great time of worship together later on, which I couldn't really be a singing part of, since I had a sore throat.

The next morning, well actually Ines and I didn't leave there till 6 am, so I guess we could say the same day.. we went back to watch movies with everyone and hung out together.

Now I am coming to the end of my 2 week vacation and will start working at a new school starting Wednesday. I am pretty excited and a little nervous now that it is getting closer.

I can't wait to see who I will be working with. I already know that another girl from church will be there to do a 4 week internship there, starting the same day as me, so that's nice. :-)

I'll try to update sooner the next time.

Love to you all!

Here are some random pics from  the last weeks:

Christmas parties, photos and graduation choir...

Last week I went to two christmas parties from our school. One was by the 1st graders one by the fourth graders. They were a lot of fun and the kids did a great job playing songs and doing some other little plays for their parents. 

I brought my play-station and we had the kids play "singstar" ad they had a lot of fun with it and I laughed a lot. They did a great job!

Wednesday I babysat two of my boys again and we took some pictures that turned out pretty good. Sadly some of them turned out blurry cause my battery was dying... 

Wednesday evening I attended the BC's graduation. We got to sing three songs with our choir which was so much fun! I was amazed at how fast we were able to learn the songs.

Graduation

I had to say goodbye to some of my friends, which I am used to by know. That doesn't mean that I would not miss them. I just know that I will get to see them again at some point. 

(here, there, or in the air..)

If I had stayed in Neverland...

Friday evening the BC had a theme-party at the café. The topic was "Neverland" so I had actually planed to go in a blue nightgown or dress, as Wendy wears it in the Peter Pan stories. I couldn't find one, so I just put on what I could find, painted some dirt into my face and grabbed a wooden sword. Now I was Wendy who never left Neverland. :-)

We finally made it, for the last semesters we have been trying to get the Neverland people together: Michael, John, Wendy,Peter, and for the looks our friend Rufio. Also notice Peter's shadow in the back, I am fixing him... :-)

I knew it!

Hook, he just can't leave me alone...

sunday, birthday and BK

On sunday it was Kerstin's birthday, so we went out to BK for lunch.

As you know we like to be crazy every once in a...well ok, all the time... :-)

"You distract them, and I'll get the hot brownies.."

snow, kids, classrooms and friends

Hi there.

The other day it snowed so much that I got stuck half way to school and so went home for the day. It wasn't to bad, since the school bus didn't make it either and so over half of the kids weren't there anyway. Well, it was nice to have a day off, but I do miss those kids whenever I don't get to see them. So I took my camera to school the next day and we had fun taking pictures with it. Of course everyone wanted their own picture with me. :-) Here are a few of the nicest:

First-graders

                                                

Fourth-graders

Ahhh, I love those kids so much. I have to leave them by the end of the year, because I got a now job at a bigger school. It will be a good place to work and I will have way more to do, but I will surly miss the personal contact I was able to have with the kids at the little school. Here we only have 90 students, at the new school it will be 400! 

Black Sheep

On thursday I went out to dinner with my friends Alex R., Jason, Patrick and Frank who is Alex's friend from Jersey. Alex invited me for my birthday. It was a lot of fun and I really appreciate this time I can have with my brothers in Christ. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, so there are no pics, but we had a great time and a lot of fun. :-)

Afterward I went to church and hung out with some more friends of mine. 

Ines, Matthias, Jonathan and I met Daniel at BK later on ( no, I did not eat again :-p) and guess what...the camera was there too. haha

I just love sharing these moments with you guys and love it when I can put pictures to let you join in the fun! :-)

haha, we were NOT trying to hold hands here..haha, thanks Kerstin for noticing :-) Daniel took the pic, so he's not in it...

oh, there he is! :-)

Big hug to everyone!

girls night, birthday and thanksgiving...

I haven't been able to update in a while, so let me tell you about a few things I did over the last weeks.

Some weekends ago a few of my girlfriends and I went out to a restaurant for a late dinner.

It's a place called "Cheese" and that's what they serve. :-) The owner had given one of the girls a coupon so she could bring 10 girls and get the food cheaper. We ate a lot, talked a lot.. and unfortunately had to inhale a lot of smoke, since the place is called a smokers club.. 

Well, as you can see in the pics, we had a lot of fun!

Then I had my..26th... birthday on the 25th. So I invited some of my girlfriends and my parents over to my place and we had cake and just hung out for a while.

It was a great time and I really enjoyed having them. One of the boys I babysit came with his mom and of course he was the center of attention from then on, but I didn't mind. :-)

Friday we had the big Thanksgiving dinner ( or lunch) from the BC. We had lots of good food and a lot of fun hanging out.

good food

good men 

some more great ppl

and even more :-)

they are outside taking pictures..I am inside...so is the pie!!!!! haha

Today I watched one of the many kids I take care of. I took her to the movies and we watched a children's movie which was put together from different episodes of a TV show, so I knew most of it, but she didn't so it was a lot of fun. Afterwards we went to the christmas market which isn't as good as it used to be, but she got to ride the carrousel so that was nice for her at least.

Jess, how do we do it ???

The craziest things always happen to my lovely friend Jess and I, so saturday was a lot of fun! 

But let me tell you from the beginning:

I called Jess saturday morning and asked if she wanted to go out, so we made plans to go out for Coffee with another girl from the BC.

When I got to the school the other girl (sorry, I don't remember who it was :-( ) had already gone into town for something else, so Jess and I were trying to think about what we wanted to do.

First we thought about going to Ikea for free coffee, or going into town for one, or doing something totally different. We settled on the going to town and getting coffee thing and went to ask Mike if he wanted to join us. He was going to have a relaxed day and so decided to stay behind. For a joke I told him that we might end up doing something amazing, like finding a medieval-market or something like that. (we had been to one last semester and had an amazing day there, so I knew he would like that) He stayed behind anyway...

Jess and I got into the car and all of a sudan decided that we really wanted to take a road-trip.

So I called my dad and asked if he had any ideas. He told us to go to the zoo in dortmund and that sounded like fun and so we started going in that direction.

Then Jess remembered that she had a coupon for a free Starbucks coffee, and since there is one in Dortmund, we didn't go to the zoo, but there.

We got there and saw a couple of rides on the market-place. It looked like a small fair, not to big, so we went into Starbucks after looking around for a short time.

I LOVE ICED CHAI LATTES!! 

So, after we got done with our drinks we wanted to go to H&M to look for deals, but never got there. And then the most funny thing happened... 

The first thing we saw were some people sitting on a stand looking at other people SWORD FIGHTING!!!  I couldn't believe it, we did happen to be there during the Hanse Markt..which is: A MEDIEVAL-MARKET!!!!

hahaha, we could not stop laughing!!!!

We walked around for a couple of hours and it was so much fun! They had all sorts of animals, and a group playing old music and people baking bread in and old style way, and all sorts of other medieval-things!  It was great!

Jess and I just couldn't believe that we had found this, we keep running into fun things like this, whenever we decide to just hang out. :-) I love it!

Here are some pics to share the fun :-) :

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Later that evening I got to put my signature on two of the BC guys..don't ask, I though it was funny at the time...haha (they have my name on their wrists)