The countdown started early in December for when I got to head home for the holiday’s. I was loving it here in Graz and was kinda sad to be leaving during the holiday season as it is the best time of the year in Europe! But I was also ready to head home for some quality family time. Teaching this month was great! I could see the improvement and confidence that the children had made over the past 6 weeks that I had been with them. The children would come right up to me in the hallway wanting to chat. It was amazing to see their enthusiasm about practicing the language with me. Now I just have to be more like them with my German!
As mentioned about Christmas time in Europe was amazing and Graz was surely not an exception. The Christmas market started in early December and the gluhwein was flowing for the entire month. Michi and I frequented the market regularly for a casual gluhwein once and a while!
Michi and I at the Graz Christmas Market
Carla and I also went to the Christmas market in Vienna. Words cannot even describe how breathtaking it was.
We spent the afternoon walking around, drinking our gluhwein, exploring all the booths and best of all I had a Starbucks for the first time in 4 months.
After that we headed to Graz for Carla’s first visit and the first night at Kololinsky, our new favourite place! That week I also headed to Linz on my Wednesday off to watch a European Cup basketball game. It was such a great experience. The game was Wels vs Tartu (Estonia) which happened to have a Canadian on the team as well. It was a great game with Wels making a late 4th quarter comeback to win in overtime!
As for volleyball we didn’t win any matches but we did have two very strong matches against the first and second place teams in the league. We lost in five to Hartberg in a game where we were up 2-0 and had a few chances to close it out. It was a tough game to lose but it was great that we were able to get at least one point out of the game. We then had ten days off from games until we played the number one team in our league before Christmas, Linz. Again, we started the match really well and I had my best set of the year to start the match and we almost took the first game narrowly losing 26-24. The next two games Linz picked it up and we just couldn’t keep up with them. It was both a good and bad way to end before the Christmas break.
Canada was a whirlwind trip. It was 10 days, 3 cities, staying with 4 people, 20+ hours of work, daily naps and lots of family time. It was so great to be able to go home for the holidays, seeing family was the most amazing feeling over the holidays!
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