Happy new year, to One and All.

I still (January 4th,) have no internet at my home. This, I hope, does a fair amount of explaining why I've been so uncommunicative over this past holiday season. (There was also a good amount of being busy though, and hectic organisation for the weekends. But the details of that is to come.)

First, some more basic things though: I'm still in Lüneburg, in my nice little room, living with my two flat-mates. (And we still have not found the time and energy to do something about our kitchen, which is most in need of some fixing up.) We've started rehearsals for the Ballet production this year, which will premiere at the beginning of January. I'm treasuring every moment that I have with Pamela, (My sweetest, dearest, most wonderful girlfriend,) with whom I spend every weekend, holiday, (and free time in General.) -The difficulty being that she lives in a city at least four hours from here, (With the absolute best traffic, and being able to drive as fast as she desires on the German Autobahns.) And neither of us could simply move to where the other is, and be certain of finding work in our fields there. But be that all as it may, we enjoy all our times together, and I had a pleasant Christmas and Newyears, with her and her Family.

That's one thing that I've found, in my years (and years,) abroad; that when one can't be with one's own family during the holidays, it makes a great positive difference to be with Some family. (My first year in Germany, I was with the family of a neighbor of mine that I didn't know at all. And there was the language barrier as well. But, I still feel that was much better than it would have been if I'd gone with some students or something, to a party full of young people.) And when it's a family like the Münch's, who I feel so close to, then it was beyond a doubt, thet next best thing to my own family.

SO... It's now clear with whom I was for Christmas. And hopefully, last year, I sent some sort of Season's E-mail, telling that they, (the two parents, the one Grandmother, and the Uncle, Aunt, and Cousin of Pamela,) all gather at the old Family home outside of Berlin. And there we eat much good food, and open all the gifts on the evening of the 24th. And then go on eating much good food, for the next two days. This year was largely like last year, but I had a good deal more self confidence. (As far as my relation to the family goes, I mean.) And Pamela and I got to stay in the same room at night. (Last year, I was in the basement, and she was in the attic.)

But the Christmas tree was still decorated with tasteful... minimalism. (In FACT... they found the special Christmas cookies I made last year so lovely, that they saved them in aluminum foil, and put them on the tree again this year, where they promptly started to deteriorate, and drip candy covering onto the floor!) The food was also as good as I remembered it from the previous year: we again had their traditional Walnut cake, with plenty of whipping cream, as well as the pumpkin soup which I remarked upon last year, (although this year it didn't have shrimp in it, and was spiced a little differently. I liked it though, without a doubt. -I only wished there had been more of it.)

We once again tried setting up a webcam there, so that I could see and speak with my mom over the internet, but once again it didn't work out, and we ended up only on the phone. (Although the technical reasons for it not working were different this year.) And they had the same (rather silly) tradition of pretending that the... "Weinachtsman," (santa,) comes on the evening of the twenty fourth, even though Pamela's cousin hasn't believed in that for the past six years at least. And then we open Santa's sack, and see what he has brought all of us. (Ah, yes: the gifts don't lay under the tree to excite and interest the household; They are more or less ALL brought by Santa. The truly traditional people don't even put the tree up at all until December 24th. And then it's a special event in the afternoon, when the children are allowed into the room to see it.)

So, the gifts are then brought out of the sack, one by one. BUT... before you're allowed to open a gift, you, (at least the children,) have to recite a Christmas Poem. (There are a great abundance of these, which flood... the German culture in this season.) Last year, I got out of this, because I didn't know about it until the morning of the 24th. So, I had no time to learn one, (much less find one.) But this year, after promptings from Pamela, I thought I might join in. But with WHAT? There aren't books full of short Christmas poems in English, all ready to be memorized and recited. I didn't know of any at all... -until I came to the thought of "Twas the night before Christmas..."

So, I had to admit to Pamela, that there was ONE Christmas poem, which is well known in English. So I set about memorizing it, in the five days that I had. (And found out that it's a bit of a LONG thing, with some lines that really DON'T stay easily in the mind, like

"As dead leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky"

But, by hook, and by crook, and by roughly filling in the parts of the sentences I couldn't nail down exactly, I managed to memorize the whole thing. -Well... but it was with five to thirty second pauses between verses. And it was so halting, and delicately outlined in my mind, that all my effort was going into the words alone, and I didn't put any real character into it. -And on top of all of that, Only Pamela was able to have an understanding of more than half the words anyhow. (And even she probably didn't understand "Mount to the sky","His coursers", "His clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot." and so on.)

But, I did it, and I got through the whole darned thing, and... perhaps none of them will encourage me to say a poem next year now. (I'm half joking about that. But only half.)

What else was there about Christmas? Ah yes: somehow, at some time, on Christmas eve, we went to the Church, perhaps for a service, or perhaps for something smaller, we couldn't find any information about it. In fact, we even got the time wrong, and had to go back again, an hour later. And then, it was a nice little concert, with the organist, two flautist, a soprano, a trumpet, and a Cello. (All of them local, and of varying degrees of talent. None of them were truly bad though. -Some just more rehearsed than others.) There was a brief reading from the Bible too, which I soon recognized as... well, to me, it was the part of Handel's Massiah, which goes "For unto us a child is born, unto us a child is given... and the government shall be upon his Shou-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-houl-ders..." and so on. That's when I realized that one of the traditions I could tell them about, (for they liked asking what Christmas was like for me at home, ) was that at some time, we always heard at least part of the Massiah.

I know what else needs to be said, before I finish on the subject of Christmas: Pamela and her mother thought that we should work together on getting a Christmas song sounding good in three voices. We chose Adeste Fidele (O come all ye faithful) Because we all knew it, and we could sing it in Latin. (We agreed that Latin would be a nice language to sing it in.) So, I took a week to find arrangements of it, but they were all either two or four voices. So, then I made my own arrangement, based on the harmonies in the other ones. And that's what we learned. Only... Their family isn't as musical as mine is; They could both sing... but none of them had ever been in choirs before. (While my two siblings and I grew up with a certain amount of singing. Tuesdays Meant Choir, for how many years?)

But, as they could both sing, I thought we'd work it out somehow. The mother can't read music, but is the better singer. Pamela, in contrast, is less secure singing harmonies, but plays the piano, and can read notes. AND... don't forget that we all live in different cities, and see each other only a day or two each week.

We got it all together in the end, (after driving the poor father half out of his mind, with our incessant practising, every time we got together.) And I think that on Christmas eve, when we sang it for the family, it was pretty good. (And even better the second time we sang it, some hours later.) So, that was an interesting little Adventure that we had this year.

Now, New Years. The whole Münch family had free days between Christmas and New years, but I had to work. Specificaly, I had to work on newyear's eve, and only got out of the theater around 10 pm. So, after a fair amount of discussing, it was decided that we'd all be in Lüneburg for the coming of the new year.

My performance was an opperette, which was absolutely sold out, so none of the Münch's could watch that. Instead, they had some dinner, and some good wine, and talked. When I got out of the theater, we all went to a bar, which had a bit of a dancing floor. Only the Mother really enjoyed it there though, I think, though it wasn't so bad. But she was the only one who went and danced. Then, at 11:15, we finally made the decision to go to Hamburg, to ring in the New Year, (which was an idea we'd discussed for a couple of weeks. But we'd always thought we'd see how things were in Lüneburg, and then decide.)

Now, Hamburg is 35 minutes away from Lüneburg. And we had to walk back to the car first. And we didn't know exactly WHERE in Hamburg 35 minutes would get us; was that just to the city limits? Or to the center square? So we went speeding along the empty highways, as the minutes ticked away. I was rather pleased when we got over the River Elbe, (which Hamburg sits on,) three or four minutes before midnight. We could say we were Officially in Hamburg then. And even if we were on some back street at midnight, we'd get to the center, where all the fireworks were, before they were over.

And the minutes ticked away. And we got nearer to the center. We went into a tunnel, which goes under the Train station, and on the Radio, it said "Twenty five seconds left of this year!" And we all thought, "Great! We're going to change years in a concrete tunnel." -It was an interesting idea though: a Magic, Time traveling Tunnel, which would deposit you in the next year when you came out it's end.

We went through it quickly enough though, and were back in the free air, with five seconds to spare. And then, just ten seconds after the year change, we were at the land bridge across the... lake; We were right on the edge of the water where the fireworks were. We only pulled onto the side of the road, along with a hundred other cars, and got out to watch, (with thousands of other people.)

So in the end, we were at one of the best vantage points to see the fireworks, which pleased us, because we weren't sure if we'd get to see them at all. After about 15 minutes though, we decided to find somewhere to park the car properly, and walk around a bit. We had great luck finding a place to park, but not so much luck with the walking: There was slush everywhere, and except for me, (with my thick, insulated, winter boots on,) we all had somewhat cold, wet feet by the end of it. And of course there were some crowds of people to slowly push through, and much trash and litter strewn about. Other than that though, I think it was a rather nice walk.

The one thing I still have to say about new-years here, is that unlike my culture, (Canadian -Hooray!) The city doesn't put on a fireworks display here. They don't set up a great big barge in their lovely town-center lake, and have big, professional fireworks come from there. They leave it to the millions of residents and visitors; Everyone brings whatever fireworks they like, and then light them where and when they like. The two biggest groups of people were at the lake, and at the port, but it was still just... collections of people.

It was disappointing, because that meant that there was no continuity to the effects, or any really, really BIG ones. But it also had it's own charm: there were More fireworks set off. (In the first ten minutes, you couldn't hear a thing, because there were at least 10 fireworks set off each second... and those were only the one's within a stone's through of you. After that, there was still a firework being set off every second or two somewhere near for the next hour or so.) Also, there was the variety of it: you saw something a little bit different in each direction you looked.

I still think I like a Big, Planned show more though.

Anyhow, is there anything missing still from this e-mail? Christmas -Check. New years -Check. My current life -Check. (at least sort of.) If there's anything else particular, which you feel is missing, let me know, and I'll correct the shortcoming.

Happy Winter Season to all!

Matthew.