Christmas and New Year’s Eve
My holidays started at the 22 nd of December and will last until the 4th of January ! No teacher gave me homework over the holidays ! No stupid book to read or anything.
At Christmas Eve I and Betty were invited to come to Jo’s house and spend the day with her. Jo is Betty’s sister. She lives in Wichita Falls. So we started our journey at 8 o’clock in the morning and we drove about 2 hours. There was not much traffic. For lunch we went out to go eat in a real steakhouse. I ordered grilled pork with cabbage (Kohl) and salad. The meal was really good ! Especially the meat was fantastic !
After having lunch we stopped at an electronic store and got Jo’s new LCD TV. It was a real big Flatscreen ! When we arrived at Jo’s house I installed the new TV and Jo was very thankful, because she has no clue about technology 
In the evening we went to a worship in a middle size church in Wichita Falls. It was a candle light worship. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the great singers ! After returning from church we all went to the Christmas exposition of the Midwestern University. They had some pretty things there and I took some pictures. After that we went home and went to bed. The next day we got up early to drive back to Whitesboro. The first family members would arrive in the early afternoon. When we arrived in Whitesboro I met Donna, who is one of Betty’s 4 daughters for the first time. She is a really friendly and funny lady. Now I’ve met all members of the family !! In the evening we were invited for dinner at Debra’s house, which is also in Whitesboro. We ate a good meal, since Rachel is a brilliant cook (older daughter of Debra). I played with Phelix, who is 3 years old and talked to the adults.
The next day we had our main celebration. All family members finally arrived at Betty’s house. We had 2 very good soup. Later we also ate: thurkey, corn, mashed potatoes, peas, dressing, salad and for dessert: chocolate cake, fruit cake, cookies, and pies. It was a good meal! After the meal the “BIG UNPACKING” of the gifts began, that were neatly placed below the Christmas tree. Diane took the initiative and handed the gifts out. It was very crowded, since over 20 persons were in one room. But it was a lot of fun. Everybody seemed to like their gifts and to be just happy. Although I’m a new member of the family I got many gifts. I got: a giant Sudoku book, a cap, a Nickelback CD, 50 $, clothes, a thermometer with weather forecast.
After everybody had calmed down we ate dessert and talked and shared the joy of Christmas. After eating Don, who is heavily overweight, seemed to pass out. His head fell down from second to second, he began sweatening really bad and he couldn’t really speak anymore. We immediatly called an ambulance. We asked him a couple of times how he feeles and he always said ” I’m fine”.But that was the only thing he could say. When the ambulance arrived they decided to take him to the hospital. But that was very hard, because he was sitting in this chair and we needed 6 men to pull him out. He suddenly started screaming: ” NOOO, noo.” He shocked everybody, but he didn’t have any control about what he did and say. Then we all went to the hospital and waited there for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. We were worried, but it turned out to be just a drop of the blood sugar level. He could go home with us at the same evening and he was just fine. He promised us to go to the doctor and make tests for diabetes. I don’t know the results yet.
The next day we ate a lot of cake and later we said goodbye to everybody. It was a different, but good Christmas for me.
New Year’s Eve was boring. I was at home with Betty and Debra was with us. We ate a traditional meal, that should give luck for the new year: Ham, black-eyed peas, cornbread, vegetables. The peas, that turned out to be beans tasted like water, but the rest was good. The whole evening we watched TV. We watched the New Year’s celebration of New York, that was also boring. They didn’t even have fireworks…
I found out that the Americans don’t celebrate New Year to much, because they celebrate the Independence day (4th of July) much more (with fireworks).
The last days I did some good shopping. Since it’s after Christmas, a lot of things were on sale (reduced prices). I spend my Christmas money and made some good deals. I bought two new pants, a couple of t-shirts, a sweatshirts, boxer shorts, socks and new shoes.
And now I’m tired and I want to go to bed,
kind regards,
Simi
pre-Christmas time
I had a good pre-Christmas time here in Texas with a lot of nice experiences.
For the first time of the year the weather was cold and I had to wear my jacket. It was really windy and the temperatures were near to O degrees Celsius. But it didn’t snow. I heard that it snows about 1-2 times a year here 
One day the roads were icy and it was a big disaster for the Texans… Since nobody has winter tires on their vehicles the people had big trouble driving on the roads, if they even tried to. There were many accidents here and some people just didn’t go to work, because of the weather. Furthermore many schools were closed on these days or opened late. Unfortunately my school opened at the normal time, because here in Whitesboro the roads were acceptable.
As you know I was sick at the weekend of last week and I just didn’t make it to write an article. Sorry. This article will be especially long 
I had a headache all day long, some stomach pain and fever. So I didn’t feel to good. But Tuesday I felt good enough to go to school again. I had to take a test in Calculus and in History. The tests went well. School was easy the last week before Christmas holidays started. Thursday and Friday were the days for those students who needed to, to take their semester exams. The Americans are stricter with school attendance and grades than we are in Germany. If you miss more than 2 days in the whole semester or your grades are mostly C’s (4-5), you have to take the semester exams. It doesn’t matter if your absences are excused or not ! But I was lucky to be missing exactly 2 days Therefore I didn’t have to take the exams !! Football off-season workout was the only reason for me to come to school on Thursday. We didn’t really workout but we determined our maxes in 5 disciplines. The last time we did that was 6-7 weeks ago, and so we could see if and how much stronger we got. I got stronger in each discipline except for vertical jump. I also gained weight. I was really happy, because this is why I am doing these hard workouts every day in school ! Friday I didn’t have to come to school at all. Early holidays
I forgot to tell you that our Chemistry teacher baked cookies for us. The cookies were very tasty and they had our names on them. She wrote my name right: “Simion” not Simeon !
By the way our basketball teams are doing really good and I bet they will make the playoffs. They win most of their games and even if I don’t like basketball it’s fun to see them play. It’s fun to support the school teams !
Soon is Christmas and so I had to get a gift for my hostmum. I thought a lot and I finally decided to get her a book about German history, culture and sights. I’m sure she will like it. For family relatives that we celebrate Christmas with, I make CD’s with photos from Thanksgiving and from me and my German family on them that I took. Betty’s sister wanted me to do this for her anyway, but I just make a couple more of CD’s. I think it’s a nice little Christmas gift.
Guess what, we tried to buy a Christmas tree and we were not able to find any Christmas tree in an area of 20 miles around us !!! Luckily my host mother has an artificial one. That’s not good, but it’s better than nothing…
Sunday we had a Christmas celebration in the evening at church. Everybody brought a gift and we played a funny game. We drew numbers from 1 to 32. Then the number were called in the numerical order. If your number was called you had to get up and pick up a Christmas gift from below the Christmas tree or you had to take away a gift of somebody else, whose turn was before you and hence has already unwrapped his gift. This game was fun. I was number 9 and I chose a gift from below the tree. I got a tiny working tool that was a set of 6 tools in one. People from church also gave gifts to me. These didn’t have anything to do with the game we played. I got a cool Cowboy frame for a picture and a cup with cocoa (Kakao). These people in my church and everywhere here are so unbelievable friendly !!!
The city of Whitesboro is decorated very pretty with a lot of lights and red bows that are tied to street lights and signs. Family houses are also decorated pretty with a lot of lights. There are Santa Clauses and reindeers in the gardens next to lighting Candy sticks and snowmen or Christmas trees. It’s a lot better than in Germany!
The atmosphere here is really good and the Christmas songs are basically the same that we listen to in Germany just in the English language. But I miss “In der Weihnachtsbaeckerei, gibts so manche Leckerei… ”
One day there was Santa Claus with his longhorn bull here in main street in Whitesboro. I thought it was funny and would make a good picture. The longhorn bull is a symbol for Texas, such as the “Brandenburger Tor” is for Germany.
Tomorrow (Christmas Eve) I will be celebrating with my host mother’s sister at Wichita Falls, a town of about 100.000 inhabitants. It’s about 2 1/2 hours driving distance from Whitesboro.
We come back with Jo, my hostmother’s sister, to Whitesboro on Thursday. By Saturday the whole family will be gathered at our house to celebrate together. I am excited and I am looking forward to see my nice family again. We also give our gifts on Saturday
to you,
Simi
