Letter: New year in Germany brings promises of more excitement

I was also able to travel some. On Halloween, I went to Ludwigsburg for a pumpkin fest. I went to a water park called Palm Beach with my host sister, Jana. It was fun to go down many slides and relax in the salt pools. I also travel back to Munich for more touring. I went to Olympia Park and was up in the Olympia Tower. It was pretty to see out over all of Munich!

One constant thing I’ve been doing over the past three months is going to Crailsheim Merlins basketball games. I really love going because of how fun they are and it’s like a bit of America in Germany. The best game was the Christmas game I went to. I got to go into the VIP area and met some American players! After was a party that I went to and that was very fun as well. I’m looking forward to the rest of the basketball season.

My German Christmas was very nice. In Ingersheim, where I am living now, at the beginning of December they start Advent Fenster. Every day in December a new family around the neighborhood decorates a window and a lot of neighbors come to look at their creation and drink punch and eat snacks together. I got to meet lots of people this way and I drank lots of punch. It was fun to see all the windows and I think it’s a great tradition.

Christmas in Germany is different because we celebrated for three days instead of just one like in America. I ate lots of food over those three days, and spent lots of time with my host family and host neighbors. A surprise was when Santa Claus came to the house on Christmas Eve with presents! I also traveled to many Christmas markets. I went to Lindau, Rothenburg o.T., and of course the Crailsheim Christmas market. In December, I also played in a concert with the city band that I am a part of. It was very cold since it was outside, but I had lots of fun and I think we sounded great. I also enjoyed going to my little host sister Lilli’s concert, where lots of kids from the music school played. I also went to a concert that my school, Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium, put on in the Johannes Church.

A day before New Year’s Eve I went to Stuttgart with my host family and had fun shopping, and I even got to ice skate and help my little host sister. On New Year’s Eve, we went to the Crailsheim Christmas Circus. There were many good acts and they had lots of animals, including five tigers! New Year’s Eve also brought good food. It was really amazing to see all the fireworks going off all around Crailsheim when the clock struck midnight. Everywhere you looked you could see fireworks going off. That’s a thing you don’t see in America!

I am very excited to see what the New Year in Crailsheim will bring me. I already have lots of events planned. I will use one of my Christmas presents to go to a horse show called Equila by Apassionata in Showpalast Munich. After that I have many celebrations for the Stadtfeiertag (city holiday). Another highlight will be the inauguration of Mr. Dr. Christoph Grimmer for the mayor of Crailsheim and the election of the new exchange student!