During the Christmas season, the workshop hosts a mini-market where the locals sell all kinds of hand-crafted wares that are great for unique Christmas gifts, making it, overall, a really cool experience!
Since it was Thanksgiving last Thursday, I got to spend the week discussing the holiday at school. I really enjoyed getting to tell my students more about the history behind the holiday and the various ways that Americans celebrate it today. There is also a similar holiday to Thanksgiving in Germany, called Erntedankfest. This holiday has religious origins in celebrating the start of the harvest season, and the locals thank God for providing food at the start of winter. I also took two fifth grade classes to the theater on Wednesday, where we watched an interpretive play that featured a number of fairy tales from the famous Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen. You may be familiar with some of his classic tales, such as "The Princess and the Pea," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Emperor's New Clothes."
In addition to discussing Thanksgiving with the students at school, my colleagues from the English classes and I got together on Monday after school to celebrate "Friendsgiving." We each made a special dish from our own culture to share. I made baked mac-and-cheese, which is a popular dish at Thanksgiving in Charleston, South Carolina. My colleagues and I are mostly vegetarian, so one of them made a "turkey" out of vegetables that we ate with a yummy ranch dip. This was a super cool experience and I would definitely do a "Friendsgiving" again in the future!
