Merry Christmas!

Helloooooooooo,

I never had a such a christmasy christmas time as I had this year. It became cold, we had snowfall and everything is decorated very nicely.
In the school nothing much happened except that we had many tests before the vacation.
Outside of school I had events with my swim team, like a team dinner and a christmas party, where everybody brought a present and gave it to somebody else. I was baking a lot of cookies from home during the advent time and I also got a bit more homesick than I was before... I guess it is because the christmas time is at home in Switzerland the family time, where we are more peaceful together and we do more things together. We are spending and enjoying a lot time together. I missed that, but I am having such a good time here, which helps a lot to not be homesick for a long time. I am still 15 years old and I have never been away from home for a such a long time so of course it is hard, but I am so glad and happy to have a very nice host family here. I know I am repeating myself a lot with saying that my host family is amazing, but they really are the perfect host family for me.

I had with the school band one evening a christmas concert, which was pretty fun and I went to another school christmas concert from the better band, where I used to play. It was all very christmasy of course!

Something that is not connected to Christmas at all is the State Champion Ship from our school football team. The football team is very good of the Duxbury High School and so they got into the State Champion Ship in their league and the got to play in the Gillette Patriot Stadium. The Patriots usually play in it and it is because of that very big. I went with my host dad and with Amanda. It was really fun but it was also really cold.

Also something interesting that happened in the last few weeks is how the temperature changes very quickly. For example on December 16 the temperature was -15 degrees Celsius, on Saturday after it started snowing, but around midday it started raining and washed almost the 15cm snow away again. On Sunday right after it was 15 degrees Celsius (+!!). All the snow was gone and there was nothing of white anymore on the streets.

I went last weekend to watch the nutcracker with some AFS volunteers and some exchange students. It was pretty awesome again, as everything that we do with exchange students and volunteers are.

It go closer and closer to Christmas and since my mom at home sent me all the christmas presents for my host family I fortunately didn't have to do Christmas shopping. On the weekend before Christmas I went to Sarah's (my sister's) house and I helped her to wrap all the presents up for her kids. We get along very well and we had a lot of fun with her and Adil, her husband.

On the December 23rd I had a half day of school and we had a concert in that half day, which means we didn't do much that day. Everybody was wearing an ugly christmas sweater, because it was "ugly sweat shirt day".
After the school day, Lea (from Germany) came to my house and we baked some christmas cookies. I love spending time with her, but school is keeping us busy, so we don't get to see each other often outside of school.

December 24 is the day when I usually celebrate Christmas and so did my family at home this year. That was the point when I had a little break down... I was going form house to house that day wishing people here Merry Christmas by giving them the cookies that I baked. I like making people happy by surprising them.
Adil cooked dinner that day and my host mom's two sisters came for dinner. I went to church before dinner with my host dad. It was very nice and that was the only reason why I had to dress up during the whole holiday. We are usually at home in our pijamas which is awesome, because that is at my house at home as well like that.
On Christmas Eve the boys, Ziad and Adam went to bed early, because they wanted Santa to come, of course. They were very excited and right after they were asleep, Sarah, Adil and I started to bring the presents to the living room and wrap everything up, that has not been wrapped up. I stayed up quiet late that night and I had a very fun night with my host siblings (who are more than double my age hahaha).
In the morning the boys woke up very early of course, because it was a very exciting morning and they couldn't wait to open the presents. There were so many of them, that we were opening them for almost 2 hours! Of course we were in our pijamas.
It was a whole new experience to celebrate it in the morning and not in the evening as I usually do. Later in the day Sarah and Adil took Ziad, Adam and me to the movie theater. It was the first time for Adam to be in the movie theater.
After that Sarah, Adam and I went to the beach to watch the sun going down and to watch the waves and the beautiful clear sky.
We again had a bigger dinner at the end of the day.

The December 26 was a relatively spontaneous day. Sarah took the boys and me to an ice skating rink and that was the first time ice skating for both of the boys. At the end they both made big progress, but Sarah and I were very exhausted, because we were holding them all the time and they didn't want to stop, because they liked it that much. It was very fun though!

That is everything I have at the moment, but I promise that soon will come a new long post, because I am leaving for Alabama tomorrow in the morning to visit my host parent's oldest son Bear, who is my oldest host brother and he was born in Switzerland.

I hope you had all a wonderful Christmas,
Nadia