I thought I would end the year on this blog with this hilarious sketch … Dinner for One. A must-see on TV in Germany on New Year’s Eve. Love it!

Happy New Year! Have a fabulous time tonight!

I really love my body’s timing. Saturday night I started feeling a little sick. I took some Nyquil before I went to bed but I still felt sick yesterday when I got up, so I went straight back to bed. Where I stayed until 8:30am this morning [with a few short breaks]. I am feeling better now, I have eaten breakfast, and have been up for three hours already. I still have a headache and a sore throat, but no fever and I am feeling a lot better now.

That is a good thing because tonight Julia, Tanja and I are going to do fondue at my place. Last night I honestly thought I was going to have to cancel it, but right now I am feeling a lot better so I hope it will stay this way at least until tomorrow. [But I really do not have time to be sick, so hopefully I will not get worse again.] I am not sure if I will go downtown to watch the fireworks though. I would like to but I’ll have to see how I feel.

I don’t know what it is with me and getting sick on New Year’s Eve, this happened before, in 2004, just when Susi, Tina and I were about to start the fondue [and I had to throw up and then went to bed and they did the fondue without me]. At the same time I hardly ever get sick so I am still thankful for my immune system.

On the studying front, nothing has happened yet, but I really need to get off my butt now and start studying. Well, right now I am going to take a shower. Hopefully that will help me feel even better …

The past few days have been really nice. On Wednesday I met up with Julia downtown and we walked around a little, around Marienplatz where we saw a huge Christmas tree at the city hall.

From there we went down to Stachus to watch the ice-skaters there. I thought these bear skating aids were so adorable!

Then we took the subway to Odeonsplatz and after wandering around in the dark in Hofgarten a little we went to Schwabing for a bit.

Finally met up with Sylvia at the Escobar for dinner and cocktails. I had enchiladas and three cocktails, I splurged a little but seeing as I cannot go there very often I wanted to treat myself. I love their food and drinks! After a few hours we went home, and I decided to take a look at Sylvia’s new place (she moved a few months ago), as it was sort of on the way home anyway. We just chatted for a while and I stayed a little longer than I had planned and ended up missing my last train home so I had to call my dad to pick me up at the nearest subway station. Thankfully he did.

Yesterday I went to the mall, I just ended up buying some toiletries that I had planned to stock up on while I am here [makeup, my favorite perfume ...] because they are either way more expensive or not available at all in Spain. I also bought a new electric toothbrush with a timer which was on sale; it tells me when I have brushed two minutes. I love it! Today I went downtown and bought a pack of brush heads as they were on sale as well, along with some more toiletries that I had wanted to buy but forgot to buy yesterday.

I have also been reading a bit in the past week [I finished reading two books, am currently still reading two more and am about to start another], I enjoy having the time to just curl up with a good book. Sadly, I do not really have the time, I just take it anyway. I am really starting to get a bad conscience though - I have finals coming up in less than two weeks and I haven’t done a single thing for them. Being home in Munich, all my duties in Spain seem so far away, and besides, Christmas break has never been a time to study for me. [Whoever decided to place finals right after Christmas was an idiot!] The fact that these finals really do not matter at all other than for my ego is not a motivating factor either - I can get credit for only one of them. Basically I would love to just be lazy and do nothing but enjoyable things, like spend time with my friends or out in Munich but I can’t. I am really looking forward to the week I will be here at the end of January because I will really be able to do nothing then, and feel good about it too!

Anyway, here is hope that tomorrow I will finally start studying but I also want to hang out with Tina so I will have to be really disciplined. New Year’s Eve is coming up in just three days and my friends have not really been very productive about planning what we will be doing because one is still on vacation. I assume we will do some sort of raclette or fondue [surprise surprise!] but I hope I will know tomorrow night.

I wish you all a merry Christmas! Enjoy the time with your loved ones!

My Christmas Eve was really nice. I put together our new DVD recorder [that my parents had gotten a couple of weeks ago but that they had not hooked up yet]. They also just got a flat wide screen TV so that makes watching movies even more enjoyable! After that I decorated our Christmas tree [that you can see in the picture up there] and then my dad and I picked up Christoph at his apartment. Back home we had dinner which was ostrich steak, fried potatoes and beans, and tiramisu for dessert, which was absolutely delicious.

After dinner we lit the fire in our new fireplace and exchanged presents. I got perfume and shower gel [Bruno Banani's Pure Woman] and the Shrek 3 DVD from my brother, and two books from Tatjana, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. From our parents we got money, as usual. Yesterday Tina and I exchanged presents already, and she gave me a 2008 wall calendar of Munich and a pair of pretty earrings. I also got a necklace and candle from Eva and a notebook from Sheela.

After opening the presents we watched the movie Help! [by the Beatles], we had given our dad the special edition of the DVD and now dad, mom and I are watching Shrek the Third. Christoph already went home to spend the evening with Tatjana.

All in all a very nice day. I hope you had a great one too!

I am having a really great time so far in Munich. Yesterday I saw Tina of course, when she picked me up at the airport, that was great, as we haven’t seen each other much this year (January, March, September and now), and I’ll see her again tomorrow because she’ll be coming over tomorrow night to hang out. My other plan for tomorrow is to buy a Christmas tree with my dad. I thought he would have bought it by now, because usually we are not so last-minute about the tree but he didn’t, and I wanted to come along now that I get a chance to [I don't often since I moved out] and he wanted me to come along as well, so that works out.

Today I slept in really late, I was exhausted after going to bed so late yesterday. I went through all my mail, sorted bills into folders as I do not have a lot of storage space in my room at the moment and I needed my desk to store stuff I brought. Even if I clean everything up it still always looks messy because I have so much more stuff here at the moment than usually. I ended up going to bed at like 4:30am.

This afternoon I just hung out in my PJs at home, I watched Music and Lyrics with my mom which was a good time. It is always a bit hard to convince her to watch a mainstream movie, but she really liked it. After that I called Tina and afterwards Eva, and she asked me if I wanted to come along to the Tollwood with her and her boyfriend. The Tollwood is a cultural festival combined with a Christmas market which takes place twice a year [in the summer without the Christmas market of course]. I indulged in so much good food there, I had a chicken curry with naan bread for dinner, and a crêpe for dessert as well as some Glühwein [mulled wine] and gebrannte Mandeln [roasted almonds]. And it was so so good, and I am still stuffed. It was such a good time. It was really cold even though I was dressed very warmly, but it was great. I took a bunch of photos there too, all the booths there sell so many beautiful and colorful things. You can see all of them here but here are a bunch of them.

Continue reading Happiness…