Frohe Weihnachten!

It's been a while since I've posted so I'll try to catch you all up on what's been happening lately.

My job has been going well. It seems like it's more administrative assistant work rather than IT administration, and it's a struggle every day to speak German, but I've just got to keep on pushing through.

I celebrated Christmas here, which was actually the second time I've done so, so it wasn't entirely strange to spend the holiday away from my American family. We definitely saw enough Austrian family to make up it. We spent Christmas Eve in Vienna, just Marlene and I. We cooked ourselves a delicious dinner on our raclette grill, then we sang some English/German songs, then opened presents. I got a nice watch to replace the one that broke when it fell out of my pocket at a soccer practice during the Fall and the watch face broke. I also got Football Manager 2011 which is a super addictive soccer club managing game. I'm currently still playing the 2010 version of the game because I've got a season with Austria Wien that I can't quit yet.

On Christmas day we traveled to Neusiedl am See and had a great dinner with Marlene's immediately family. After the dinner we played board games all night. The next day we went to an Aunt's house and had dinner with all of her family who lives in Neusiedl. We again played board games afterward, mostly an extremely long game of the Settlers of Catan, which was won by Marlene's cousin Wolfgang. Then on Monday I had to work again so we came back to Vienna, and the Christmas season officially ended.

Now, we're looking forward to the New Year! We're going to spend it at a friend of a friend's place and hopefully play some more Settlers of Catan. If I don't win then it'll definitely be a bad omen going into the new year...