Stephanitag??

In Switzerland (and I don't know how may other countries) the 26th of December is another holiday, called St. Stephens Day. That means everyone has another day off of work and such. So happy Stephanitag!

Tonight we went to my Aunt & Uncle's and ate leftovers from Christmas dinner. Then we were made to watch a movie called Doctor Zhivago. It's a movie set in Russia during the Russian Revolution and it's super long. I didn't particularly enjoy it. We watched it because one of the main characters is named Lara, and my cousin's name is Lara. Also, her friend Lara was named after the Lara in the movie, which is pretty cool. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Today I got up earlier than I wanted to so that I could unwrap my presents from Montana. It was a super awesome surprise to see my stocking here... My mom gave it to my grandma in New York. Merry Christmas! 

Christmas Eve Day

Today I helped my grandma prepare for dinner pretty much all day. Then we had my cousins and aunt & uncle over, and ate a yummy dinner and unwrapped presents. We Skyped with my parents and then I got to unwrap my presents from my swiss relatives:) Then my grandma, cousin, and I went to midnight mass. It was gorgeous!

1 more day!

Oh my gosh tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Today I helped my grandma clean & prepare for the Christmas dinner tomorrow. My aunt & uncle & cousins are coming over:) Here they open presents on Christmas Eve, so I'll be opening the ones from here then, and the ones from Montana on Christmas morning.

I'm also probably going to midnight mass with my grandma and cousin tomorrow, so I'm going to bed a bit earlier. I can't wait for Christmas!        🎅🎄🎁

Presents(!!!)

I dorm like to get out the wrapping paper and tape and scissors and markers and paper and cards and bows and such to wrap presents with until I have all the presents I want to wrap. Which means I wrapped all my Christmas presents today! It's really strange picking out presents for people that I usually don't, and not giving things to my brother and parents. Meh. I have way fewer presents to give this year. Only my grandparents and cousins and aunt and uncle. 

Only two more days until Christmas! Yippee! This was the sunset when I was walking home with my grandma after grocery shopping. 😱 So gorgeous. 

Christmas tree, swimming, & cookie fail

Today I got up late and helped my grandma decorate her fake mini Christmas tree. Apparently my dad calls it the Charlie Brown tree. It's tiny. It only took about 1/2 hour to decorate. I'm used to a real & much larger tree that takes most of the afternoon to decorate... But it was still fun. My grandma has to have everything just so, therefore it was basically her giving me ornaments and then rearranging them until they looked symmetrical enough. She's adorable. 

After lunch I went swimming in the indoor pool literally across the street from my grandparent's apartment with Lara & Dominic. It was pretty fun:) We basically just hung out & talked.

Then I went over to Dominic and Lara's house and we attempted to make cookies. There's a particular type of cookie (I don't know if it's a swiss specialty or something?) that's called a "Spitzbueb". I honestly don't know how to translate that... Uhh... "Bueb" means "boy" in swiss-german, and "spitz" means "tip" (like the tip of the tower), but together they mean something along the lines of "mischievous boy". I don't know why. It just is that way. They're two cookies with jam in the middle, and usually a face or a heart cut out of the top cookie, so the jam peeks through. With powdered sugar on top. They're so good. However, it took us forever to cut out the cookies, because the dough is impossible to work with. Then we only had a small amount of dough, so we couldn't make very many. (26, to be exact) And lastly, when we put them in the oven, they melted quite a bit... So basically all the careful cutting out we'd done was useless. Oh well. I got to eat some yummy cookies, and we had fun.

Friday! Christmas break!

Yay Christmas break!!! Today was super fun. We only had one hour of music in the morning because the second period was an orchestra concert, and choir was canceled because Christmas/the teachers are nice. So we had two hours for lunch, and three other girls and I went to the lake.

Then we had an hour less of math, because of the "atempause" I mentioned in my last post. I got to sing a song called "there's a girl that I love" (don't know who wrote it) that is in a round. It's super pretty and has like a secret message, a place, at the end when the round finishes. And a bunch of other classes did different things, basically it was a little celebration that there's a break, and happiness about the holiday season and the accomplishments of the school.

After I Skyped with my mom in the evening, Lara and Lea and I were going to go ice skating, but it started raining. So we had a movie night instead. It was still super fun. (My friend took this picture & I thought it was cool, so...)

I'm so excited it's finally Christmas break!

Happy day of school

Today was a usual day, except I went to lunch with a bunch of other girls from my class & then went shopping because we had a double lunch period. It was super fun. Tomorrow we are supposed to dress a bit more elegant, and I get to sing with my music class at the "atempause" (literally breath pause??) tomorrow instead of going to math. I don't really know what it is... I guess I'll find out. But only one more day until Christmas break! I'm so excited!

Also, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but our class is doing a secret Santa type thing, and I got a bunch of delicious chocolate from my secret Santa today:) Basically it was a good day.

Christmas market (again)

Today I had a half day, like every Wednesday, and afterwards I went to the Christmas market again to get presents for my grandma, aunt & uncle, and my little brother. (Gage, I'll give you your present when I come home:)) 

I'm so excited for Christmas ahhhh only two more days of school! I can't wait! (Shoutout to Stephanie for skyping with me for forever)

Christmas lights

Can Christmas break start tomorrow? Pleaseeee?

Today was an average day, so exciting. I spent about 5 minutes lost in thought whilst brushing my teeth this evening after skyping Kayli, so my teeth are especially clean. *sigh* I need my friends. Come make me sane again. 

Oh! I took photos this morning of some of the Christmas lights in Adliswil, and they're really pretty. I was kind of on the way to the train so I didn't have time to stop and find a good angle for a picture and such, but you get the general idea. (The trees are attached to a bridge by the way, and you can see one of the many stars that are hung around the main square area)

Surrrrnday

Today I did homework, practiced Christmas music on the piano (finally!!), cleaned my room, and Skyped with Stephanie. 

My class is doing a sort of secret Santa thing where you get a name and you have to give that person little gifts without them knowing who you are... I'm giving the girl that I got a pretty ring tomorrow, and a scarf on Thursday or Friday. I already got an adorable little "Schutzengel" (protector angel) from my secret Santa. :)

Only one more week of school until Christmas break!

Weihnachtsmärt

Today I got up early ish and went Christmas present shopping. Then I came back and just spent some time at home. In the afternoon I went into Zürich with my grandma and we went to the "Weihnachtsmärt", or Christmas market, in the main train station. Basically a Christmas-themed farmers market. It is so cool. There is also a giant tree decorated with Swarovski crystal ornaments that is basically the only lighting in the whole station after dark. It's gorgeous, and super sparkly. The picture doesn't do the sparklyness justice. (This is inside, by the way.)

We took a different way home than normal to see the lights down Bahnhofstrasse, the main road in Zürich. They were so pretty!

I also got a yummy "morechopf" (by the way that's a politically incorrect term, the politically correct version is "schoggi kuss", meaning "chocolate kiss" instead of "nigger/black person head"), which I've blogged about before. They're those yummy marshmallow-filled chocolate-covered things of deliciousness. Anyway, there was a hut selling just those in different flavors, so of course I had to get the zebra one. :)

The gorgeousness of the lights and the tree and the market almost made up for the ridiculous amount of people everywhere. Zürich alone has a population of almost 400,000?! (Kalispell is 20,000) Ew.

Happy late Santa day

So yesterday was "Samichlaus" day. This is the day that Santa Claus comes and visits, and if you've been good, he gives you a little bag filled with nuts, mandarin or regular oranges, chocolate, and little gifts. Here's mine:)

(Christmas is when the "Christkind" (Christ child) comes.)

For dinner we went to a restaurant near where we live with my aunt & uncle & cousins. It was pretty fun, but we got back and I forgot to blog. Oh well. 

The plague is almost dead

Today I felt much much muuuuuch better. I had an appetite again, my fever & headache were both completely gone, and I was able to help my grandma make Christmas cookies! I am still super weak, but that's what happens when you don't feel like eating for two days... But I am staying at home tomorrow.

It also happens to be my dear friend Kiley's Sweet Sixteen! Birthday shoutout to you:)

I also got to Skype with my family! *insert embarrassing screenshot here*-just kidding. I promise once I'm back in school the posts will become a teeny bit less boring. Promise. Goodnight!

Die, plague

Today I again felt a bit better, but definitely still nowhere close to 100%. I was hungry for the first time in three days, which was good. My fever went down more and the only thing that really bothered me was my massive headache. But tomorrow I might make Christmas cookies with my grandma! Yay!

Umbrellaaaaaa

Today I had a half-day of school (like every Wednesday) and it rained the whole day. :/. My grandma decided that for my birthday she would buy me a new umbrella, so today we went umbrella shopping. So exciting, I know. But I actually found a really cool one... :)

Also, when we were in Zurich I noticed a bunch of things hanging from the buildings and I asked my grandma about them. Apparently Zurich gets all lit up with Christmas lights during the holiday season. I'm so excited for Christmas already... Is that weird? I can't wait to see what these look like lit up though!

Tonight was a holiday called "Rabelichten", which means " turnip lighting", which means that you carve turnips (kind of like pumpkins in the U.S. But different-see the post "Happy November!" for details) and you walk through the streets where the streetlights are turned off with the lit turnips, and it looks really cool. It was super fun, even though it was raining nonstop all day today-it even snowed a teeny bit tonight! (This is a group of kids holding their turnips-you can't see it very well)