#21 Weih - What?

Very often in the last few weeks I received the message 'Happy first/second/... Advent' and every time I thought to myself: Thank you, but there is no such thing here. Some people also asked me what the Christmas season looks like here and what should I tell you - this year I experienced this time 99.9% not. The first Advent was still on my last farm and if someone from Germany hadn't wished me a happy first Advent, I wouldn't have noticed. On the farm, I was then told that this is not really a thing in Canada or North America. On top of that, the 'main Christmas day' in North America is December 25th, when the gift-giving is celebrated early in the morning and is the typical 'Christmas Day'. The so-called Christmas Eve is traditionally heralded by a church service and turkey, unless you live in the wilderness - like me.

But both on the farm and here there was no real Christmas feeling. Two weeks ago, I did get the Christmas decoration out of the basement, but I will put this box back the same way it was (unpacked). So how did the Christmas days go exactly?

December 24th - Christmas Eve

After my family could watch me drink my morning coffee via Zoom and I could watch them have the traditional potato salad and sausage dinner, it was time to ... just work as usual. Sawing and chopping wood, that's what my Christmas presents were. For me, it was just a normal working day. BUT do you know what I had? White Christmas!! I can't remember the last time I had snow on December 24th, and it even started snowing really hard. In that moment (I have to be honest), I felt a bit of schadenfreude, knowing that it's raining in Germany and it's snowing on my Christmas Eve. In the evening, the snow turned into a real windstorm, which was no joke. But at least the roof structure passed its first test.

December 25th - Christmas Day

When I came for breakfast in the morning, there was actually a little gift from Jenny. I was happy about that. We also had the day off. Fatih and I took this time to take a little 'Christmas walk' with the quads (maybe I can show you something about it soon). In the evening, we turned on the Christmas decoration and had turkey. By the way, you can easily recreate the Christmas decoration at home. Open YouTube, enter '10 hours Christmas tree' in the search bar and click on any video, and you will have exactly the same Christmas decoration as I had - that's the 0.1% that was missing from the 99.9%. For dessert, we had something that is a popular dessert here, but I forgot the name. But you can also go to the supermarket, buy a 1.5 kg package of sugar, and eat that... it was incredibly sweet and heavy on the stomach, so everyone was tired and went to bed

December 26th - Boxing Day

Can you already guess? Right, it was just a normal working day for me again.

What was it like for me?

I have to say that for various personal reasons, I'm not a big fan of the Christmas season. So for me, it was really nice this year to not be aware of it at all. But I have to be honest. When I wanted to go to my little house in the evening and stood alone in the living room of the main house and that stupid YouTube video was playing - in that moment, I missed the Christmas at home a bit. I can't even tell you exactly why and what, and maybe it only lasted a minute. So no Christmas for me this year.

And what else?

Despite the distance to Germany, I had a real Germany feeling on December 26th. When I went for breakfast, I first thought it was raining, but it was just the ice melting from the trees and dripping down, and since there are trees everywhere here, it looked like rain. It wasn't just dripping from the trees, it was just everywhere... everything was wet and it felt really disgusting. That was the moment when I explained to Jenny and Fatih that this is the German winter. It drizzles, everything drips, the snow doesn't stay, and it's wet and cold :D But that's not the only bad thing about it - do you remember that last week I did the water experiment? We had a temperature difference of 50 (!) °C within five days (-45°C to +5°C). Dave also said that it's absolutely not normal. These low temperatures are actually more typical for the end of January and February, not December. These temperature changes are of course also not normal at all, and I find it really shocking how crazy the weather (all over the world) is, but luckily there is no climate change.....16°C in Magdeburg on December 31st.

The problem is also that the body gets used to the minus 35 to minus 45 °C, but when it suddenly gets so warm, and yes, for us it's extremely warm - after all, there's also a difference of 50 °C - you just sweat yourself to death, and when it's minus ten or fifteen degrees Celsius again, you freeze your ass off because you're used to the warm temperatures now, it's a real up and down here. Now that it got so warm and everything started melting, we now have the problem that there is ice everywhere. Yesterday (December 29th), the three of us almost fell several times... it would be funny if it weren't on the roof. But the German Occupational Safety and Health Administration is well represented here by me, because I at least covered the most dangerous spot with an old carpet, so at least it's not slippery (and life-threatening) there anymore.

On December 27th, Fatih and I had the day off. Last week, I told Jenny that I haven't built a snowman yet this year, and she told me that the snow here is not suitable for that, as it is usually too cold and therefore not good packing snow. Despite the warm weather and the new snow, I still wanted to try to build a life-sized snowman. The problem now was that there was a thin layer of ice from the melted old snow under the new snow, and underneath that was the old snow. As soon as I tried to roll my little snowball, I logically broke through the ice, and I had a combination of ice and usable and unusable snow, and that, of course, didn't work at all, so it only sufficed for a small snowman, but at least a snowman this winter.

Why did we have the day off anyway? Jenny drove Dave to the city, as he is currently on his way to Argentina to photograph albatrosses and penguins there. I would love to always accompany him when he tells me how close the animals come. That he simply has this opportunity to see so many animals in the wild - pure envy. Currently, it's albatrosses and penguins. However, due to the Canadian weather, the first flight was canceled, so Jenny and Dave had to go straight to Vancouver. This trip takes 10 hours and is therefore a short trip by Canadian standards, but Jenny logically stayed the night in Vancouver and didn't come back until December 28th.

Otherwise, we continue to work on the house. I don't want to say anything, but the final floor is already laid almost everywhere AND there is now at least a roof, so it can't snow in there anymore. Because that's the stupidest task, always clearing everything of snow early in the morning. Otherwise, it's slowly taking its course. Due to the holidays and Jenny's absence, we couldn't accomplish that much this week.

So... this blog post would actually end here, but today I received a message. My hard drive was found in my beloved and hated yurt! There have been several moments when I could have cried of joy in Canada - this is one of those moments :D

So the last post for the year 2022 is slowly coming to an end, and on Instagram you currently feel like you're being spammed by year-end reviews, and when I think about it, I have experienced quite a lot this year:

• At the beginning of the year, I passed my second state examination and finally received my first full salary (YEAH! :D) after 6 ½ years of training (which I will never miss! Except for the WhatsApp groups to complain about the uselessness of the seminars).
• I learned a lot from my own students and I hope they have also learned something that maybe goes beyond school.
• With almost no knowledge of English, I managed to navigate through these damn challenging Canadian authority pages and tried to plan my personal adventure on a whim next to my work.
• In early March, I received the acceptance and in August I just flew to Canada and now I'm here - in Canada. I actually took the step. For me, who almost failed high school due to English, every day is a challenge here, and yet I am grateful for every second.
• I got to see bears, a praying mantis, (too many) black widows, and coyotes in the wild.
• So far, I have had the opportunity to work on three farms, where I was able to learn so much and so many different things on each farm, whether from the farmers or the people working there, and I am incredibly grateful to each and every farm.
• Now I am here in the middle of the wilderness and get to enjoy the untouched nature and in a few weeks I will see various wildlife up close

And I try to write down all these experiences here in my blog, which is currently DRUMROLL the 14th most read post on Vakantio. Who knows, maybe there are only 30 blogs or there are 1000, and if I'm in the top 10, I'll become a travel influencer - I'm telling you :D But actually, I don't care. I don't care if you continue reading the following posts or only check in every three weeks. The only thing that would really make me happy is if I can entertain you with these posts or make you smile, and maybe even distract you from something. Your smile while reading my posts is the most beautiful compliment. People don't smile enough anyway and are too often bitter, so every smile that I can achieve with my posts is a gift :)

So everything has an end (except seemingly every one of my blog posts), including the year 2022. So I wish you a happy New Year and all the best for the year 2023. What are your new resolutions for next year, which are probably unlikely to be kept?

Mine is: Only consume German media on weekends, like German music, movies, or videos. I think I'll internally cry often :D But it's worth a try.

Oh, and if you really feel like celebrating, remember to drink some water in between or simply not drink so much or even nothing at all (yes, that's also possible), because honestly... the hangover the next day doesn't justify the party the night before (I was informed about this).

Take care of yourself and maybe see you next week.

Samuel