Christmas Break

As busyness increases, the time for blogging decreases, and thus I have way too much to say when I finally find time! But at least I won't lack for material, and I'll try to relate what I can remember. 

Getting ready for the school Thanksgiving
dinner!

Irene enjoying the
snow from our balcony.

     School finished up on the 17th of December after a week of finals for Rosie and me. Our exams were all oral, and so we had an entire week to prepare for five or six 15 minute conversations. That ended up being challenging in a different way than I would think, mostly because it didn't actually require a ton of extra work that one might be expecting to do over finals week. Consequently I spent a lot more time wondering what and how much to study than I did actually doing it. Rosie did a better job of just sitting down and going over what she had learned diligently, and in the end we both did fine and were glad for break.

Our lovely Jenny
helping prepare for
Thanksgiving dinner!

     We had one week after school and before Madeleine arrived, and so we prepared for Christmas and looked forward to seeing a familiar face from across the world! We got tickets to the Nutcracker at the Slovakian National Theater in Bratislava, Slovakia's capital. It was right next to a big Advent Market, so we explored that and then watched a beautiful show in the small, historical theater. It was small enough that we could see the dancers very well, and hear the sound their shoes made on the floor.

After we saw the Nutcracker. Everybody's wearing
hats I finally finished making!

The Advent Market was very cold, and very Christmassy. There was no snow, but they had a giant Christmas tree set up with a life size creche scene under it, and several stands selling strings of dried oranges, limes, cinnamon and all sorts of Christmas-smelling goodness. We bought several to decorate our flat with, and also tried the traditional Christmas drink they were selling. In Austria it's called Gluhwein and is basically hot wine. I think it's pretty weird and can't take more than a few sips, but it's pretty famous and people seem to like it! They had a traditional Slovakian band playing, and Jakie and I danced the Polka and tried to avoid pumping into people with hot wine.

One of the stalls at the
Bratislava Advent Market.

Vienna on Rachel's birthday!

     Rachel's birthday was the 18th, and Mom, Rosie, Claire and I went to Vienna to explore the Advent Markets there. We bought plenty of beautiful Christmas presents, (Christmas shopping is much easier and more fun to do at those markets than at home in the mall or wherever else!) and we tried a bunch of the different kinds of food they were selling. While we were out it started to snow, and we thoroughly enjoyed walking down the streets lit up with Christmas lights with snow falling all around. Quite the new experience for us Californians! Dad picked us up in our van and we made our way home for dinner and a movie. While we did birthday things inside, it snowed outside, and we took some breaks to run around barefoot on the deck and enjoy it.

Snow on our deck, and signs
 of cold feet.

Another day we went to the Advent Market at Heiligenkreuz and got more beautiful things and helped support various monasterys at the same time.

     We spent some time Christmas decorating, picking a tree, trip planning, and getting ready for Madeleine and her two nursing school friends to arrive. They came on the 21st, and after the first joyful hello tackles, we all went over to lunch in the girls building on campus, because a kind friend invited the whole family. We told him we'd have three extra people, and since he was serving fish he just said if there wasn't enough, Jesus had multiplied fish before and might very well do it again. It was a delicious lunch, and we had a relaxing afternoon and evening with Madeleine and her friends.

     We learned how to make really neat paper stars to decorate our tree with, and those stars, combined with popcorn strings and ornaments from Advent Markets in Vienna, Bratislava, Berlin and Prague, (Madeleine brought us several from her travels before arriving here) as well as beautiful handmade decorations from our Montrose family all made up our simple and lovely tree for this year. 

We found a tree!

     Next day Rosie, Jacinta, Rachel, Madeleine and her friends Jen and Rachel, and I all went to Vienna. We enjoyed looking at the Advent Markets again, and also got to go into the Albertina, a big art museum right in the middle of Vienna. Then we saw Stephan's dome and had pizza, met up with Dad our faithful driver, and came home in time to watch Muppet Christmas Carol with our friends at the ITI. We watched the movie with what seemed like 10000 little kids, who more or less behaved themselves and the entire room only erupted in loud screams and yells a few times. One little boy named Johnny who sat next to me loved to lean over and explain to me what was going on throughout... When the Marley brothers appeared: "When your heart is painted black that means you're a ghost." It was nice to have things clarified.

The Kolassa boys--friends
from ITI. :)

That day we finally managed to stand our tree up, using a stand that Dad built, since we didn't think we had one here. We bought a rather expensive one and tried to use it, but the tree didn't fit. So Dad returned it and decided to buy the materials and make one instead. He bought the wood, saw, nails and whatever else he needed and worked away. In the end he had a nice, sturdy tree stand built into the tree. Unfortunately there was no way to put the tree in water with this stand, but it's lasted pretty well all the same. When Dad tried to think of a place to put his tools, he thought of outside on an out-of-the way part of our deck, so he went over there and set down his tools. On doing so he discovered that he had placed them right on top of a nice, functional tree stand hiding on our deck.  So now we have two, but our tree was already nailed into the first and it looks nicer anyway. 

     

We have light from Bethlehem!

We had a really great Christmas day; we received a huge box of presents from Grandma Judy so we were well supplied and did our usual several hour long, one-at-a-time present opening session. We had a candle that was lit from the light of Bethlehem. We are told that every year in Bethlehem where Jesus is said to have been born, the Patriarch goes into the cave and a fire lights up on the rock, and he brings the flame out to the people. That same flame is sent all over Europe by plane, and then on horseback to all the churches. So on Christmas Eve we walked over to our Parish church, saw the horses and lit our candle from the light of Bethlehem. (The horses were transported by car I think...perhaps in the old days they actually transported it by horse and now it's just the tradition...) 

Irene making good use
of her face paints.

     Irene received some face paint for Christmas, so Rachel and I got very decorated throughout the day, and went to the ITI Christmas dinner with very colorful faces. We had a lovely dinner, everybody contributed something, and then afterwards we played games for a long time. We began with charades, and then the "song game," which consisted of Irene firing her unloaded dart gun at somebody, giving them five seconds to think of a song to sing, then she'd immediately shoot somebody else and they had to begin a new one. So we jumped from song to song for nearly two straight hours, and went to bed with a hundred songs running through our heads.

      Next day my boyfriend Michael arrived at the Vienna airport and I went to meet him, and then we trained to the Vienna city center and had a great time looking at the Christmas decorated city and getting lost because we were relying on my navigation skills.

It all worked out though, Dad picked us up (again, he's the best) and we made it safely back to Trumau. We had planned to go to Budapest with Madeleine and Michael and the older girls on the 29th, and so Michael had to practice driving with our car. He drove it around Trumau for a while, Dad giving little tips and me working very hard to hold back snarky comments, and soon he was comfortable enough with it to drive us all to a nearby ruined castle. So we got to show Madeleine and Michael our favorite castle in Baden, I've posted pictures of it before. That night we had a cookie party planned by Rosie; we brought a bunch of ingredients down to the common kitchen in the boys building, invited our ITI friends and had a loud, chaotic, really fun cookie making/decorating session.

Our Baden Castle!

It was fun having my friends meet Michael, since for the last few months they seemed to talk more about him coming than I did. :) We tried to sing some Christmas carols after our party, but there were too many energetic little boys jumping about, and so it sort of fizzled into watching Muppet Treasure Island with a big group on a small computer. 

     Claire's birthday (the 28th) was to be a stay at home day, and though they ended up going shopping for a while, for the most part we had a great family and friend time in our cozy flat in Trumau! We had brunch, and then while the others went to the mall Michael and I went to the Byzantine Liturgy and I showed him around the Schloss where we have classes. When the others got back we did some Budapest prep, stole some bikes and went for a beautiful ride in the cold through fields and little neighborhoods, and then invited some friends over for dinner and games. 

     We've also fit in several wonderful skype sessions with Margaret and the Montrose family, so good to see all their faces at Christmas time! We miss our family, it's sort of odd having Christmas with only half of us, yet it makes us especially grateful for the family who are here and for the ones who came all this way to spend Christmas with us!

     Next day was our Budapest adventure, which turned out to be much more of an adventure (in the real sense of the word) than we had planned. But I think I'll tell about that in another installment. :)

Enjoying the snow in Vienna!