Christmas is coming!

It’s really hard for me to believe that Christmas is next week. It just doesn’t feel like it should be that soon, and it feels strange knowing I won’t be going home. Usually now I would be going home, helping my mom with shopping and baking, decorating the Christmas tree, and all that fun stuff. I am still having fun preparing for Christmas here, it’s just different. One thing that I really enjoyed over the weekend was making and decorating medovnik with Marcela. These are cookies that look like gingerbread cookies, but they aren’t. They are made with honey, and I think they taste a lot better than gingerbread. They are traditional for Christmas here and are elaborately decorated with white frosting. This week I am going to bake peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses for Christmas and I think everyone will really enjoy them (Thanks to Grandmom for sending the peanut butter and Mom for sending the Hershey kisses!!). Not too much else has been going one here. This Thursday I am going to visit Kristen, the volunteer in Velky Slavkov, and will stay there until Saturday. I am really looking forward to this, and it should be a lot of fun to see another placement and for us to be able to hang out and be ‘refreshed’ before Christmas. Here is some of the Christmas vocabulary I have learned:

Christmas- Vianoce
Merry Christmas- Vesele Vianoce!
Christmas tree- Vianočné stromček
Christmas Eve- Štredrý deň
Present/gift- darček
Angel- anjel
Cabbage Soup- Polievka Kapustnica (traditional for Christmas)

Vesele Vianoce to everyone!!