December may have been slow and boring but I could not find it in my heart to update this blog. Mainly because there was not much to tell. December was cold and lonely and the temperature went down to -14 C (windchill -19 C!!!!) the week before Christmas. We had lots of rain and snow followed by ice. Needless to say, I decided not to leave the house unless I really had to. I did not have that many lessons to do anyway (see last post) and could not be bothered to visit any more museums.
So, what did I do? Well, fortunately my yoga school and swimming pool are rather close to our house and I have been a rather sporty spice this month - no doubt motivated by the prospect of lying on the beach next month. I also read up about linguistics and have put a that academic subject on my list of things to study for that point in the future when I have an infinite amount of money and no obligations so I will be able to be an eternal student. It joins such worthies as art history, comparative religion, Hebrew, English literature, Sanskrit, Italian literature and the likes. I have not got around to prioritising yet and I will probably save that for the next time I am bored!
We also had a lot of guests over, such as my dear friend Stephanie and her Chris/Cobus...
...who went a little crazy. It was really good to hang out with them again and visit all the christmas markets, and especially with Chris because I did not know him that well. Steef and I have already started planning our next trip, we are going to Barcelona together in March!!
They were followed by Rosie and Vanessa who really came to Berlin for two Rammstein concerts but delighted us with some nights of 'worms' as well
And then it was already time for Christmas. And when I say 'already', I mean 'finally'!! Our weekends had been packed with visitors and lots of fun, but I was somewhat bored during the week when Olaf was at work and I did not have that much to do. Fortunately, we were to spend Christmas with Olaf's brother Lars, his wife Rachel and their two adorable girls, 4-year-old Leah and 2-year-old Hannah!
Although it had been really cold and there was a thick layer of snow and ice covering the city up until basically two days before Christmas, the weatherman suddenly decided we had had enough and raised the temperature to around 0 which caused all the snow to melt and made sure we did NOT have our so longed-for white Christmas in the end. Oh well, good riddens I saw, I do not like snow anyway!
We had an amazing time and Olaf cooked us two wonderful Christmas dinners, although the kids were perhaps still a bit too young to appreciate the finer art of gastronomy. In short, they just wanted 'princess chicken' (aka smoked salmon) and started booing Olaf's cashew nut soup, tuna carpaccio, gazpacho and goat cheese fondue. As would luck would have it though, children need to get to bed at some point and that is when we were able to enjoy Olaf's superb lobster and other lovely dishes, obviously accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol. Here are some pictures of the 5 magnificent days they spent with us:
Present abounded and I believe the kids were happy. As were we. You can see everybody being ecstatic about Rachel's new pink winter hat in the pictures, can't you? I was personally most impressed with my reindeer-shaped lamp...
Well, that is it for 2009, I guess. We are busy packing because it is finally time for our honeymoon. We are going to see Avatar in the cinema tonight and fly to Bangkok tomorrow. We are already quarreling about where to go and what to see because there is simply too much to do in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and we cannot do everything. Oh well, we will see. And if we like it, we can always go back!!
Happy New Year everyone!
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