Updates from Deutschland

I thought I'd take a minute and do some life updates. Time is flying by!

Things are going smoothly over in Berlin. I had put in a lot of work (ie. over 10-hour work days daily) from August to November to learn the new curricula and to earn the trust of my colleagues and student parents, and finally I was ready to re-focus on what I needed for myself. So, in a non-trivial gesture, I'm back doing yoga on a weekly basis and am LOVING it more than ever. (My new yoga teacher is really tough, but I love him!) I've also arranged for a private German teacher to work with me starting in the new year, since I feel like I cannot commit to 6 hours of classes like Geoff does during the work week. Socially, things are good and we've met a lot of fun people. :) Overall, despite the weather getting colder and the days getting darker, we are enjoying our first winter in Germany!

Recently, we got some free tickets to check out a Christmas market outside of Berlin, so we took the local train there last Sunday. It turned out to be a fairly small market, but the town was very charming!

The town had a lot of old people on bikes. I did not see a single young person riding a bike that day. I told Geoff that some day, we're going to retire to towns with old people on bikes. :) The town also had statues that looked like they were from old Grimmes' tales.


There were gondolas ferrying people back and forth between the two sides of the Christmas market. The ride was long and a bit chilly, but we had blankets and people were drinking hot mulled wine ("gluhwein"), which is common at Christmas markets and really all around Germany at this time of year.



We also saw a for-rent sign next to this cute little barrel of a room. It's even smaller than our apartments in NYC!!


Geoff took a photo of some locals moving a tractor via two gondolas.


All in all, it was a lovely day away from the city, and a much needed break from all of the stress I had been feeling from nearing the big semester exams. :)

I am looking forward to checking out some of Berlin's very own Christmas markets this weekend. Gluhwein, here we come!