Halloween

Halloween in Germany is much different than what I’m used to in the U.S.A. Where as in the U.S.A. there are whole stores dedicated to Halloween stuff here you are lucky to find a full shelf of Halloween stuff. In Thüringen (my state in Germany), Halloween is a holiday that no mail comes and most stores are closed. So my family and I went to Erfurt, the capital of Thüringen, and went to the zoo. It was okay, but it was just a smaller version of the St. Louis Zoo. I was able to try Kartofflepuffer. Basically its potatoes that are smashed into a flat round shape, and then fried in oil that you eat with applesauce and sugar. It tasted just like a French fry, but instead of eating it with ketchup I ate it with apple sauce. It was pretty good! Then we went to an ice cream place called San Renmo. It’s apparently a really famous ice cream place that there is always a long line to get a seat. I related it to going to Chicago and having to wait for a while to eat at Giadonos for some deep dish pizza. The Ice creams were really big, and very well plated. I was cold I didn’t really want Ice Cream, but I saw they had hot sauce options. So I had Chocolate Ice cream with hot vanilla sauce! It was really good. The combination off the cold and hot together was really cool! After eating ice cream went drove back to Ilmenau. I had tried to make plans on Friday with people, but I struck out. So my plan was to watch Halloween 1 and 2 with my host parents. My little sisters didn’t want to go house to house asking for sweets or sours. I don’t exactly understand why because what kid doesn’t like free candy?? My host family also didn’t want to hand out candy, so we sat in the house with all the lights out and put a white rag on the door handle to signal that we weren’t giving out candy. While I was waiting for dinner to be prepared I went on my computer. I started asking more people what they were doing tonight, and most weren’t doing anything, but then I asked Michelle, a girl I sit next to in almost all my classes, what she was doing and she was going over to Marie’s house (another girl in my class), so I asked if could come too, and finally it worked. I finally made plans with someone that was not an AFSer or my host family! I was soo excited! I had no clue what we were going to do, but I didn’t really care! Lol! So I asked my host dad if he could drive me there, and he did. When I got there Michelle and Marie were standing in front of Marie’s house waiting for me. When I got there I set my bag down, and then we grabbed a plastic bag to go out and ask for suesses order sauers. Yes, we went trick or treating! When we went to a house we would make ourselves appear small by kneeling, and then when they asked where out costumes were they would say were dressed as teenagers and she (pointing to me) is dressed as an amerikaner! It was great! There weren’t many houses with lights on, but it was fun. We received a lot of candy, and then we realized that none of us really wanted the candy. So we spent the rest of the night giving away all the candy (that wasn’t gum) to the kids on the street. After we got rid of all the candy we went to the playground, and played on that, sang and danced! It was great! Afterwards we went back to Marie’s house and spent the night. We watched videos on youtube, watched Mean Girls in German (Girls Club), and just talked! I had missed having sleepovers so much! Then we woke up eat breakfast, and then went home. It was defiantly not a normal Halloween for me, but I did have a lot of fun!