i just made a f-ing cheese log...

**written on dec. 22
so! merry christmas! happy holidays! as ´ol blue eyes just reminded me, in these times we only need to think of the truth in the old saying "God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world". indeed.

am in marions kitchen, listening to her and kalla speak deutsch, curled up on the sofa together, happy as larks, christmas candles burning and neil diamond on the stereo. i just finished the first part of my preperations for tomorrows yultide get together, at which we will be serving a variety of fresh baked cookies, a cheese log (lord, i feel old...but is rosalynn carters recipe, apparently, so i love that), cheese straws (lots of cheese), guacamole (random, but delicious), and the infamous egg nog! bit worried cause we got the bourbon at the aldi, some mystery supposed-kentucky distillery...i mean, i dont want to kill anyone or anything. but i think it should be fine. and the truth is, i think bourbon only...interestingly affects southerners, as it is in our blood to drink the stuff and go buck wild, so they should be spared anything but a mild headache, worse come to worse. i´m sure it will be perfect! i hope to make mimi proud tomorrow. and aunt sally, as richard described those cheese straws and it sounds as tricky as a souffle...

ok, so where was i...

oh, marions class and singing christmas carols.
i had gone with kalla´s class bowling the day before (was great! we bowled and then kalla took me to the christmas festival in essen, which was beautiful and we ate and ate and shopped and i almost got lost but some kids found me and it was just a great day), and while the kids he teaches were for the most part pleasant to me, they didnt say one word. had no idea what to expect from marions class. we arrived very early in the morning, dropped a load of christmas celebration stuff in the classroom, and walked briskly to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee (my second). when we returned 30 minutes later, the class room was full of students and was decorated adorably, especially considering 80% of the class is muslim and doesnt even celebrate this holiday of ours. marion introduced me and i waved and everyone mumbled something and smiled and seemed excited to have me. we ate breakfast together, yummy fresh rolls and meat and cheeses. the class was wonderful in that you could tell that they all knew each other really well. everyone seemed to be friends and like they knew each other personally. there was joking and conversation and shouting from one end of the table to the other, and it was a very happy celebration. in the middle of it two other teachers came in, and seemed to be very well received. we all ate and one girl passed around homemade muffins and then the teacher asked the class to go around and say what they felt about the past semester and every student talked for a while, which was so different from what i have experienced, when a teacher asked the class a broad question and everyone starts to look at their nails or pretend to be asleep.
later there was the christmas carols\ kareoke hour, which was great. we sang rudolph the red nose reindeer, etc, and everyone sang along. during kareoke hour i was minding my own business, just witnessing the scene and picking at my nails, when one of the cute turkish boys started asking me questions in english. this got a huge rise out of everyone around him, and there were hoots and giggles as he came and sat next to me and offered me a chocolate. he was very nice and spoke nice english, and this encouraged some of the other students to talk to me as well. one boy asked if it was "hard" to live in america. assuming he meant, like, hard to immigrate and find a job and become a functioning citizen, i began to launch into my "well, lets consider the american dream..." speech, but realizing that he probobly knew about as much english as he had just uttered, he was spared, and i asked, "not really, why?". turns out alot of the kids had this totally weird vision of america which was granted to them by the TV, a vision wherein america is a tragic, violent, brutal country, with police and gangs and guns and hospitals and pervert priests and KKK meetings, etc. i laughed and explained that, good lord, no, we´re a very gentle people, come visit some time and see for yourself! then they asked if the girls were good looking and i assured them they were, so now everyone is planning on visiting.
after i bid my turkish boyfriend adieu, marion and i went into duisburg, where there is a beautiful mosque. we went inside, and aside from the smell of feet and the slightly damp (but unbelievably plush!) carpet, it was stunning! there was a giant golden chandelier in the middle of the room, which marion explained that some people found tacky. i loved it, though. it shimmered and looked beautiful and had engravings of prayers all the way around it (was a series of large golden circles), and when you walked underneath and looked up it lined up with the writing and colors on the ceiling. i was impressed and overwhelmed.

**present day
so, the christmas party went great! poor marion was a little nervous before hand, as she says she doesnt entertain often and is always worried a fire might start or the wine will run out and people will turn into an angry mob, and i assured her that everything would go flawlessly (i make this a personal quest when hosting and i generally succeed and ina garten says, even if you arent done cooking, just hand the guests a beverage and put some music on and they will be fine but that, of course, the best hostess is a hostess who is present, not slaving in the kitch- bah! anyway, not important). bottom line, i made sure all food was fixed ahead of time and that the plates were decorated nicely and marion looked beautiful and was an incredible hostess and annika did her unintentionally perfect part by serving the guests way too much eggnog in their glasses, which no one seemed to mind (or know the difference), and kalla is of course kalla and could make fantastic conversation with a stump and he kept everyone happy and entertained. the food was pretty good. the cheese log was actually not bad, considering that it was something that i never ever in my life thought i would make because, i mean, eww. but since the germans dont have cheddar cheese (which is fine with me, i abhor the stuff) i substituted with gouda, and used sour cream instead of mayonaisse and i dusted the top with hazelnuts and served it with raspberry preserves...and the cheese straws were more like crispy little biscuits but still spicy and delish (odd, though, that my crackers turned out more like biscuits, because whenever i do try to make biscuits they turn out like crackers...hmm...), and the guacamole needed salt (but i think that was just my demented tastebud problem) but was great, and the cookies were also sort of like biscuits (hm?) but very fluffy sweet wonderful biscuits, and the eggnog...mmmm. i think it would have definitely made mimi proud. especially since i messed up the converting (cups from liters or something? metric stuff...) and put 3X as much bourbon as the recipe called for. had a slight suspicion that the recipe wasnt exactly the recipe i was used to "drinking" anyway though, so i think it tasted just like normal.
christmas was wonderful! the house was decorated and warm, and christmas eve morning kalla and annika and i decorated the tree. their trees look slightly different then ours do, sort of like theres alot of branches at the bottom and then the yget soarse up top, so the ornaments at the top hang off the end of lone branches and it looks like beautiful weights holding the tree in balance. their tree is simple and lovely and made me so, so happy.
we went to a catholic church christmas eve, which was nice. kalla and i took communion. then we came home and made a nice dinner, some sort of swedish fondu-type dish with chicken and pork and a variety of vegetables, and like six different types of dipping sauces. we drank champagne and ate and talked and it was nice. gifts came afterward, and i was spoiled, of course. marion and kalla and annika have done more for me than i need or deserve, and all i can hope is that i was a good enough guest to merit even a fraction of their kindness, and that one day down the road i can repay them for all of this. im already cooking up some ideas...
christmas day annika and i went running (cultural), and that evening marion and i went and saw Australia, the new baz luhrman flick with nicole kidman and that shockingly gorgeous man hugh jackman (is adorable, marion for some reason pronounces his name "huge" jackman...makes sense, of course, in a variety of ways, so i dont correct her). the movie is fantastic, so ladies, go see it and swoon.
yesterday we went to marions parents house in rinteln, germany, about 2 hours away from here toward berlin. the town is incredibly old, built in the middle ages, and looks like something plucked out of a cookie-cutter-image-german-beer-mug catalogue. her parents house is huge, and fun, lots of rooms with secret ladders to top floors and attic spaces and rooftop balconies. her parents were great, especially her mother, who doted on me and hugged on me and told me all about ehr trip to visit my grandparents in cornelia in the 70s. there were artifacts from this excursion and others that marion had made to the US all over the house: stencils of the big red apple, photos of aunt beth, supposed letters from mimi. it felt strange and comfortable, like i had been there before which, in a metaphysical way ((if you want to go there...) i suppose, i had. we all went out to a wonderful dinner, and marion suggested a dish of wild pig, which i devoured, and annikas cute cousin lilly smiled at me and spoke random english words alot which made me happy.
oh! i remember...the other night, christmas night, marion and kalla and i were playing a game with his two beautiful daughters and his son, and the game was this thing where teams of two are given a word, a thing or a phrase, and they have to take turns saying words in order to build a sentence that describes this words e.g. the word is "tree"...so i would say "seeds" and marion would say "grow" and i would say "from" etc...and marions and my word was "potato". so naturally i thought "ireland"...so i make the first word of our sentence "irish", thinking the senetnce could turn into something like "irish people died because these blasted things went sour" or something. but when i said irish, marion looked at me like i had said...i dont know, japanese, and it came out eventually that no one aside from me at the table had ever heard of anything pertaining to the irish potato famine. and i assured them that probobly 75% of americans, upon hearing the word potato, would think of irish people. am i right? i mean, i couldnt make this stuff up. i could not make up a famine. was v tragic and serious. definitely.
so anyway.
today i worked on my italian for about 4 hours, if not more if i include vocab studying during the car ride. i made 200 vocabulary flashcards and did some sentence structure research and i now make it a point that when i communicate with anyone italian in email or on facebook i always write in italian. and they love it. and i have been told several times now how much i am improving! yea! honestly, i love germany, i have had an incredible time, and i cannot wait to go to berlin (!!!), but i want so so badly to go back to italy. it feels right to me, it feels, as ive said before, like home. so on the 9th of january i return to roma, and i can hardly breath till i get there...
but oh, berlin! just you wait...