Weihnachten - Christmas 2013

 Christmas Eve is when Austria celebrates Weihnachten or Christmas. Anna spent it with us and the first thing we did was walk around the Schloss and try to feed the peacocks with the cracked corn that you can buy there.  This one was hungrier than the rest and braved coming near.

 I wanted to show this white peacock because I had never seen one before coming here. It came running when it saw I had food but took a look at the corn and decided it was not worth it and simply walked away. It was hoping for someting better I presume.

 We had dinner at our apartment and played some games, watched Mr. Kruger's Christmas, opened a couple presents (we gave her a small German Hymnbook which she loved), then had dessert and took her back. We had a grand time.

 Here is Elder Santa before going to bed.

 Christmas afternoon and evening we spent at the church with our Missionaries.  As they traded off skypeing with their families we fixed waffles with all the trimmings.  Here is the grand waffle maker himself!!  We took our laptop and tablet and with the church computer going, all three units were being used which made it really great.

We gave them all cookies and  their favorite Traum (Dream) drink. These drinks are milk based but with all kinds of flavors.  They are very delicious and some flavors are only sold at Christmas time and are called Wintertraum.  My favorites are Nuss Nougat ( Hazelnut chocolate) and Schoko Traum (dark chocolate) Elder Tew's favorite is Weisse Schoko Kokos (white chocolate coconut) There is also Banana, Strawberry, Apple, Vanilla, and I think that's all.  Don't these fabulous Missionaries look great? We played games and Sister Tew even beat Elder Badders in pingpong. Lucky day for me. They finished up with a fun animated movie while we skyped with some of our family.  First Christmas in the mission for most of us. It was fun to be with these missionaries and to be on this end of the experience of calling home to family.