Plans and sparkly things with a side of frozen seagull.

I have only my tutorium left on Monday and then I will be freeeee to celebrate my holidays at ease, ie. with required reading, rehearsal, and many many days of Josh Plourde! My biffle of Mainer biffles (biffle = BFFL = best friend for life = wonderful new word born of terrible IMspeak) comes on Tuesday afternoon. (That's soon!) We're leaving Hamburg on Wednesday to spend the Christmas days in Detmold with my favorite German family, after which we will return to the north for various other fantastic adventures. If you can't be with the family you love this holiday season, be with another family you love!

However I am sensing a teensy little chink in all this future fun, being that this morning I woke up with a seriously unhappy throat and a head full of sick. Upon this realization, I canceled all my plans and have spent all day in my warm and comfy bed sleeping, drinking tea and soup, doing homeworky things, and playing lots of mahjong titans on my computer (it's a problem) while watching the snow come down outside. My favorite afternoon activity was lying in a total of one extremely comfortable position while listening to the entierty of Amahl and the Night Visitors. It's my family's Christmas Eve tradition to watch this wonderful opera every year together and I wanted to make sure I could still have my moment to enjoy it amidst all this year's changes. I closed my eyes while listening and watched the whole filmed version on the backs of my eyelids. Thus despite feeling yucky, it was a most wonderful afternoon. Somewhat homesick, but wonderful.
I'm not really sure where the sick came from (beside living in a dorm full of dirty college students), but I think the several hours I've recently spent in the unusually frozen weather probably had something to do with it. Friday in particular was both very cold and very beautiful. I spent the better part of the afternoon with Martha drinking cappuccino in a delightful French cafe and then walked around the gorgeous snowy Christmas markets around city hall for a while as night fell and all the sparkly lights got even sparklier. I'd just brought my baby camera because of the cold and snow, but went around taking as many pictures as possible, as per usual.



All the seagulls were half-frozen, confused, and probably quite ticked off at the subfreezing temperatures and had all curled up on the water and in the snow trying to stay warm.
Like I said, it was a beeeauuutiful night, but it was so cold that I got dizzy and lost all feeling in my hands and feet after a short while and had to retreat into the great indoors, despite all my layers. It was worth it for all the cheer.