Mother Theresa and the BMW Bunch

Today was my first day with my volunteering gig here in Aachen. I met with Theresa, the senior I'll be having coffee, chatting, and grocery shopping with once a week from now on. She turns 96 this month and is amazingly active for someone her age. But it wasn't just her good fashion-sense, mobility, and cheery laugh that impressed me, it's how much she's experienced. 

Aachen got a cute dusting of snow earlier this week.

She talked about leaving school at age 14, working during the war while raising two boys alone, living in East Germany, and then the rapid way our society has changed in general. She's gone through so much, certainly including some pretty intense and difficult things, and is still up-beat, chatty, and interested in the world. This is some pretty fascinating and inspiring volunteering. 

Mr. Carver definitely explores the "human experience." Re-reading these short stories in German is also a whole new adventure.

My soccer team's on winter break until the weather gets better, so I tried out a running group our coach told us about. It's made up of a few co-workers from Kohl, a company here in Aachen that sells BMWs. They were very articulate people all over the age of 30 who had A+ running gear. Even though it gets dark so early this time of the year we ran through the woods, which was part Blair Witch Project, part extreme puddle jumping, and a hundred percent great workout. 

This is my artistic interpretation of the run.

And of course a good workout is especially valuable this time of the year, what with Christmas cookies, Mozart balls, and Spekulatius galore. St. Nikolaus even visited last Saturday and dropped off some delicious goodies and... a Christmas carol book for trumpet! I always liked that St. Nick. The holiday spirit even got me cooking. The local band I play in had their Christmas party last weekend, so I made the good ol' American treat of brownies. My host family found the measuring cups I used interesting. Fun fact: The US, Burma, and Liberia are the only remaining countries that don't use the metric system. Hmm.

Our band leader already reserved his brownie.

All in all, life in Aachen is wunderbar. There's an endless flow of interesting people and language-wise I'm slowly leaving the state of I-know-I-learned-this-word-it's-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue-but-what-is-it and entering a more satisfying state of actually knowing what I want to say. Maybe for Christmas Santa Claus will give me a complete understanding of German grammar? That'd be the ultimate Christmas miracle.