A week before Christmas....

One week til Christmas! I hope you've been good. And I guess it's a four day wekend for most people, that's great! Enjoy!!
It's snowing here again this Wednesday morning. Gisi told me when I first got here "it hardly ever snows in town". Well this must be the fourth or fifth time. She said this morning "the city is trying to show it's prettiest side to me". Well that's nice. It's better than just grey clouds, makes everything look so nice.
We took a drive up through the Vosges Mountains in Alsace this weekend. Saturday was a sunny, blue sky day, so we headed to the hills. We ended up going to an old silver mining town, St. Marie aux Mines, in the Val D'Argent. ( I didn't realise the Amish movement was started here) It was so pretty, the woods in the mountains were frosted with snow as we got up higher elevations. We saw a Poitou, so cute. Some beautiful photos here.
Sunday we awoke to a cloudy, foggy day. But it had snowed again the night before, so we took a walk through the cemetary down the street. So quiet and peaceful there. In the naked trees you can see Mistletoe growing. I never saw it in it's natural habitat. Apparently, it was a good year for mistletoe and you can see it all over town in the trees.
Also, I posted some pictures of the Weihnachtsmarkt, the local Christmas market that is so popular throughout Germany. This is in Freiburg. It's a good place to get some local handcrafted gifts and products. They have food stalls and Glüwein is very popular this time of year. My favorite are the Marroni stands, small roasted chestnuts.
Three weeks from today I will be on a plane heading back to New York. This time has gone by quickly, yet I feel like I've been here forever....strange. I've really gotten used to the pace here, and it should be interesting to see how I reacclimate to NY. Well, we'll think about that later. Now I'm going to enjoy the last weeks and Christmas and New Year here. I hope you enjoy them wherever you are. I will write again before Christmas...Tschüss!!!!