i baked biscuits with phoebe today - they look more like spring biscuits not christmas ones but never mind - it was great fun :) 

my recipe is soo easy yet soo good (thank you svetlana for giving it to me): 
55 g plain flour
200 g butter (yes, it does work with salted butter hahaha)
180 g sugar
2 eggs
mix it, dough into the fridge for 15 minutes, make biscuits, preheated oven 180°c for 15 minutes

this was a rainy, 10°c day... i don't feel like it's christmas in 10 days at all! 

and something i forgot to mention a few days ago: a friend from germany asked me recently, if it was true that we eat cats in switzerland, my friend read that it was allowed by law. i explained to my friend that there are always weird people doing weird stuff but just cause it is allowed by law, it doesn't mean that many people do it - at least i don't know anyone personally that eats cats... the best question i've been asked before here though was if we had warm water in our houses in switzerland (asked by an english person)... i mean i don't really expect people to know the difference between sweden and switzerland (many mix those two up), but they could assume that i know how it is to have warm water in the house... :D

mr. h. was ill today, i had only 2 lessons in the morning :D so i went home early, and in the afternoon i went to ellen's place and we watched a film and talked, and then i had dinner at her host family's house. we had lasagne and salad (something i have hardly ever over here :D)... ellen's host parents are really nice, her host dad even gave me a lift home because otherwise i would have had to walk for 20 minutes :) 

the school trip today to the german christmas market in birmingham was soo cool! the trip was organised by the german teacher of our school and some other teachers and was open to all year 7 students (about 12 year olds) and to the internationals. after a 3-hour coach ride to birmingham, the german teacher split the students up in groups of six and every german-speaking international student had to take one group to walk around on the christmas market as a leader to make sure they don't get lost and explain stuff (even though i have never been to a german christmas market before haha). i had some students which started to study german this year and at every sign where there was standing something in german they asked me what it meant :D after an hour we brought them back and then they were allowed to walk around alone, and so were we - we went into some shops as well, not only the market, there is a very big shopping centre in birmingham... then we met up again. the coach ride home was the funniest part of the whole day as we were 'am umeblödle' all the time with the german teacher... 

huge shopping centre

i had a photography trip to london today - it was just great! we visited two art galleries, the national gallery and somerset house. before we went into the national gallery, we could take pictures with an old camera with film in it. we are going to develop our pictures in one of the next lessons. it was quite hard, as we could only take 12 shots each (we worked in groups of 3) we really had to think about what we wanted to shoot, not like having a digital camera - it was a different way of thinking. in the national gallery, we looked the exhibition 'seduced by art'. it was all about how art influenced photography, and if a good photograph can be as valuable as good artistic work. in the somerset house, there was an exhibition called 'story teller'. it was about fashion photography, photography with very freaky objects in it... a lot of different stuff.

me with the old camera :D

seduced by art

story teller

i had quite a boring day - but i am very looking forward to tomorrow and thursday. tomorrow i have a photography trip to london, and on thursday i go to birmingham, to a german christmas market. the german teacher of our school is taking his class on the trip and he asked the other german speaking internationals and me if we wanted to come along as well, as we are helping from time to time in 'german club' (it's just in one of the breaks in the morning, all the german students can come and we talk to them, or, more often, we sing the 'fliegerlied' hahaha). 

today in the bus: cake, stuck to the window. weird english people! :D

happy 2nd advent!!

london today... i've been there with the german internationals, first we went to a christmas market at the thames in the southbank area, then to camden, then to covent garden - it was cool :)

the perfect second @southbank

christmas market

camden - walking around in the crowd

river in camden

covent garden whiskey christmas tree :D

london from the train back home