Celebrating Holidays

Celebrating holidays in Germany has been a learning experience because, of course, there are different holidays and different traditions for common holidays.

I have been blessed by the hospitality of many people here and been invited to celebrate with them.  For Christmas, for example, I was able to eat with two different families and see the kinds of things they do, while eating some traditional food.

Sometimes it was my turn to share about the U.S.  For Thanksgiving, I invited some teacher friends over and attempted to cook something close to resembling Thanksgiving foods, though unfortunately the results weren't the best.  Thanks to the amazing cafeteria at St. Olaf, I'm still learning how to cook.

For Halloween, I decided to invite my conversations classes to carve some pumpkins while eating some candy.  We had a good time, though it was cold and dark, and got to talk a bit about how Halloween is celebrated in the U.S.  Here are some of our creations (mine is on the left):

Center Stage performs Black Comedy

One of the most fun parts of my job is working with the English theater group, Center Stage.  This year's production was Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer.  The group had been working on it since last spring, and I got to join in in the fall, working as an assistant director.  Our three performances were last week, Thursday to Saturday.  Thursday and Friday were both sold out and Saturday was well attended.

I didn't have too much experience working with theater, but I really enjoyed being involved in a production.  It makes me want to do some more acting in the future.  I also really enjoyed getting to know and spend time with the actors.  I'm sorry that our rehearsals are over for the year.

Here are some photos of the cast, set and posters.