6. December

If I had a toy advent calendar I would a toy that's a little more special today because in German we actually celebrate this day. With nuts and mandarines and apples and a little bit of chocolate, too. Sometimes we even get a small present because St Nikolaus was a real man and actually not made up by Coca Cola. He and Santa look very different:

There actually is no decent pictures of St Nikolaus as most people think he looks just like Santa. Actually though, he was a bishop and so it is only natural that he should wear his bishop's clothes and stick! Haha, I just remembered what I faintly thought to be a song about the two! Of course by no one else than the one and only Rolf Zukowski and funnily enough the song is about exactly this topic, so listen in or follow this first bit of the lyrics :)

Nikolaus und Weihnachtsmann

Sprach der Nikolaus zum Weihnachtsmann: 
"Es muss endlich was geschehn! 
Dass man uns so oft verwechselt, 
das darf nicht so weitergehn. 
Überall legt man zur Weihnachtszeit 
unsre alten Kleider an, 
und der rote Mantel, der gehört 
gewiss dem Weihnachtsmann. 
Weil ich auf dem Kopf meine Mitra trag 
und in meiner Hand den Bischofsstab, 
frag ich mich, wie man uns beide da 
überhaupt verwechseln kann."

To revisit my childhood I was going to post another song, but this one works perfectly well.

"It's Nikolaus day, where are my presents!", says my just woken up face!

So as you can guess there were no big celebrations for me today. My chocolate advent calendar didn't even honor this day and presented me with an angel...

Anyhow I was scheduled to clean at Christine, the neighbor's, house. She moved her hair salon into her house and hosts many international students like Tucker from Japan, who sleeps very long and doesn't speak much. I had much more fun talking to... Well I have no idea how to spell it, but it's pronounced "Heykea". A mixture between hey and ikea. He is 17 and has been working as Christine's account manager for 3,5 years now, as his mom know her pretty well and he seems to spend more time there than at his own house. For me this proved pretty helpful since Christine was working in the front in the salon and I was back with the kids. They stayed home instead of going to school and so instead of cleaning I had to come up with christmas crafts they could take in for the kids in their class.

We made snowflakes and lovely christmas trees and cleaned up after our selves very nicely. I tidied up the kitchen on top and in the end I was payed 60 dollars for four hours of crafting instead of cleaning. This pleasure is waiting for me on monday.

The upper one I made for Luey, the lower one for Stefan.

I am still pretty exhausted now especially because my neck is very sore and I got a little sick living through the ice age last night. I am still upset about the public transport failure. One would think they could at least schedule buses and trains to work around each other, so that one can catch the bus when getting off, instead of it having left five minutes earlier.

Oh well, today was a pretty nice day again, although I have been really cold especially on my hands. (Finger tips were blue last night... Just saying.)

Happy Nikolaus everyone! I hope you have a great end of the week :) I also just realized that next week is Friday, the 13th. I hope I won't have bad luck going to the ballet.

Sincerely,

your Sant Skipper (a mixture between Santa and St... duh ;)