Thanksgiving and Philly !

123 days!
(already more than 4 months, holy shit)

Soooo the week before last week was Thanksgiving!

As it's quite an important American holiday, I thought I can tell you about how it was in my hostfamily.

I had the day off! So that was great. I actually think that I published the last blogpost on Thanksgiving. But before dinner. And dinner is the fun part! The food is the fun part.

We had chicken (instead of turkey - my hostdad didn't want to have turkey, I still don't really understand why), sweet potatoes with marshmallows (tastes as weird as it sounds), stuffing (what you actually put into the turkey, but you can also eat it like that), Brussels sprouts and cranberry sauce. And of course pumpkin pie with whipped cream! I am still not sure if I like pumpkins. But it tasted good.

I was quite sad that we didn't have a turkey, but one of my aupair friends had leftover turkey so I ate that the day after Thanksgiving. Tastes like chicken. And duck. So not really special, but tradition!

Most families have guests over and / or the whole family is there to eat and celebrate together. We had two guests, but they left before dinner. So it was more like a normal dinner for me.

On Thanksgiving, people also express their gratitude for whatever they're thankful for.

I am thankful for my family and friends back home who are absolutely amazing and I can't wait to see them again !! I miss you guys so much. I am also thankful for WhatsApp and Skype :p

No, but seriously. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to come to the US and for the experiences I made so far and for my Aupair buddies. I'm so happy that you're all here and that we're in this together.

Well, I really do have great people in my life.

The day after Thanksgiving was Black Friday!

Yes, it is as crazy as you think.

A lot of stores open at midnight. People wait in front of them for hours and when the doors are opened, they go crazy.

I didn't participate because I had to work but it's really like that. The discounts are pretty  nice, but you have to be careful because sometimes they're kind of fake. The stores just say that the discounts are huge, but in fact they took higher prices and put the discounts on the higher prices so at the end the discounts are not that great. But sometimes you can make good deals. I was off at 1pm that day so I drove with the girls to Syracuse and we looked around the mall for a bit.

kind of foggy

Last week was not really exciting I think. It's finally December! Yay Advent calendars! Yay Christmas!

Last Sunday we drove to Philadelphia again.

We went to the second largest mall in the US. Let me tell you: it really is large. It's huge. It's in a town called King of Prussia :D

But we didn't have a lot of money, so we just looked around and left pretty soon again.

In Philadelphia, we went to the Rocky Steps (from the movie Rocky) and we even met other Aupairs from Germany! And one of them was in California her first year and lived ten minutes away from where Michelle lives there (Michelle only came here because her hostparents work here for the semester). The US is small!

Philly

Rocky

Rocky Steps

We also went to an Authentic German Christmas Market.

(After searching for a parking lot for half an hour) (Parking there is so expensive! 15$ AN HOUR)

The market was pretty nice. They had sweet popcorn which I had to buy - I was actually so happy! Sweet popcorn! And they had Döner. I also ate that. And a waffle. And Glühwein!

Pretty City Hall

Christmas Market in Love Park

Take care,
Christin xoxo