This christmas was different in so many ways! It was our first christmas as a married couple, our first christmas as future american residents, the first christmas we completely spend together, the first christmas the whole family spend together and the first christmas Santa brought me Dollars instead of Euros.

As you may know we celebrate christmas on December 24 over here in Germany. This year my parents invited not only me and my husband, but also my parents-in-law to dinner. This is something I am really happy about, because my husband is an only child and till this year celebrated christmas alone with his parents. I hope that from now on this becomes a tradition, so we don’t have to worry about his parents being all alone on christmas once we live in the US with our own family.

When we were in the middle of dinner my aunt from Utah called, which she does every year on christmas to talk to my dad. It was a funny feeling to talk to her with the thought in mind that one day I will be the one calling from the other end of the world to wish my parents a Merry Christmas. Another funny thing was that I usually find it kind of boring and exhausting to have a family meeting every single day for one week, but this year I really enjoyed every minute of it thinking that this might be one of my last christmases at home, in Germany, on December 24 and with minus degrees outside.

I guess next christmas I will not be as calm as I was this year, because if nothing gets in our way we will be moving to California in January 2011. If we stick to this plan next christmas might be full of tears and goodbyes instead of joy. But either way I will be enjoying it even more! And to say just one word about how I expect our first christmas in the US to be: Exciting. So I really have to take back my theory that christmas gets more boring when you grow up!

Even if christmas is tomorrow, I still can’t believe that we actually are so close to the christmas season. This year ran by so fast and it brought so many crazy things with it. I guess I don’t realize most of them even by now. I am married, I have a temporary Greencard in my passport, my second niece or newphew is growing in my sister in law’s belly – and that’s just half of what happened in 2009.

I started this blog two months ago, but it feels like I published my first post just a few days ago. There is so much I want to tell you guys and there still happen so many things related to our Greencard win that I often can’t choose what I should write about. For this is Christmas week I will give you a short overview of what we will be up to the next few days.

Tomorrow is the first day my husband and me have off work. So we will sleep in, go for a quick walk, wrap the last presents, get dressed and than pick up my granny and drive over to my parents’ house. Last year we celebrated Christmas eve apart, because my husband spend it with his parents and I celebrated with my family. This year my parents-in-law are coming over to my parent’s house, so the whole family can celebrate together. Traditionally we get our presents tomorrow and than have a big dinner with goose and the last pieces of our wedding cake.

On Friday my husband and me will celebrate alone and on Saturday we will again meet at my parents’ house, but this time my brother, my sister in law and my little niece will be there, too. My parents in law always get away over the holidays, this year they take the plane to Spain on Friday. I am sooo excited about how everyone will like their presents, about how our first Christams as one big family will be and about how we will celebrate next year.

I will post some pics for you afterwards. Perhaps you guys can leave me a few words on how you will celebrate! Till then I wish everyone a wonderful and merry Christams!

This week I had an appointment at my hairdressers. I was suprised to see a new girl working there and was even more surprised when I heard her talk. She was native american. To be more exact native californian. When I asked my hairdresser about her, he told me that she moved over to Germany a week ago and will be living here from now on. What a funny coincidence to meet a girl which is somehow living my life in reverse mode I thought.

When my hairdresser was done with cutting my hair he asked her, if she would blowdry my hair and this way I got a chance to talk to her a bit. She told me that she moved to Cologne to be with her boyfriend who is a native German and that she will marry him in February. She told me about how exciting and new it is for her to be here, even if she already spent the summer in Cologne. Another customer asked her about her german skills and she told us that she is having a hard time learning it. Especially when it comes to speaking, because she is too shy to speak German in front of natives.

This talk actually really comforted me, because this girl is having the same anxiety I do. And the same problems. I guess my english skills are at a good level, but I actually feel so dumb talking in english. I had to form questions in my mind before I felt confident enough to ask her. I will have to get over that very soon when we live in California one day. Preferably I should get over it even before we move to California. Propably I should just ask that girl, if she would meet me sometimes so we can practice talking to each other in our new languages. But actually I am too shy to ask her in english. And because she doesn’t understand German this is a chance I will not take. Hopefully there will be many too come. Because some day it will be too late to just practice!