I don't even know

SOoo . . . since last week. Hmm. Last Friday was the night of three birthdays. Sean and I went to one with the Amis and brought it together with one of the Frenchy's birthdays and brought them all to Thanners where we celebrated Philip's birthday. At the end we went to a private dance party above Thanners (I realize this sounds sketchy in English, but it's not) and danced until 5ish. It was . . . well . . . something. It was a very mild night, but I had a blast. This week was relatively uneventful. I went ice skating with Arne's 5th grade class on Monday and it was so sweet. Once he introduced me to the kids, all the girls just wanted to talk to me!! I felt so loved. Plus, ice skating was great. Tuesday I met Astrid and Sean at the Weihnachtsmarkt for some Gluehwein and Schmalzkuchen. We had a really nice conversation and it was a really nice way to end before the holidays. Later that night, Sean and I held "Elf" movie night for our Stammtisch kids (hence the Elf dance in the last post . . . that was our invitation to the kids) and it went really well! We had about 15 kids show up (?) and one (Vanessa) even brought a home made gingerbread house for us. It was a pretty ghetto operation we had going on . . . a back alley part of OHG, a laptop, hooked up to a projector that beamed onto a wall divided by pipes and up to my Ihome for speakers. It worked though. The best part came when we brought the beamer home and watched Batman Begins in Sean's apartment . . . AMAZING quality and so much fun. Julian had just gotten a job so it was a bit of a celebration :-)
Today I went to a really nice Lessons & Carols service with Annette (one of the teachers with whom I work) at a Lutheran church here. It was funny because the Parson wore this crazy robe with with tie thing (looked like Martin Luther . . . I was amused). The rest was nice though, we sang a bunch of Christmas carols and then had punch and stollen at the rectory. Then I came back to Seans where we tried to make cookies but his oven ran out of gas, so it failed, miserably. We ended up cooking most of them on the confection setting of the microwave. Then we got tied up doing stuff on the internet and I think I'm finally going home now. Oh yeah, and I cut sean's hair. . .will post pics when I get around to it . . .
OH! Just got this message from a random guy studying at UniGoettingen posted on my StudiVZ site (Facebook for Germany)
Hi Karen,

sicher bekommst Du hier ohnehin schon genug Nachrichten, so dass eigentlich nicht noch jemand deine Postbox vollspamen müsste. Ich wollte allerdings nicht nur auf dein Profil hüpfen und mich dann heimlich, still und leise wieder verkrümeln, sondern Dir flugs mal sagen, wie toll das Foto aussieht. Ganz, ganz dickes Kompliment - ehrlich! Kannst Du übrigens gerne auch dem Fotografen ausrichten. Denn er hat ja schließlich auch einen nicht unerheblichen Teil zum Gelingen beigetragen :o)

Sonnige Grüße,
Thomas

Gist: your picture is gorgeous, many many compliments, your mailbox must be full of messages from guys and this will be just white noise, but I just wanted to tell you . . . (my picture is of me sitting on the railing in front of the bay before Commencement Ball)