Warning: sentimentality ahead.

It’s funny - as sad as I was about leaving Freiburg before I actually left, I haven’t really thought about the town much since I’ve moved to Brighton. At least, I certainly haven’t been pining away for the things I left behind (okay, I pine a bit for my favorite Italian restaurant there, but other than that…). I guess I just really haven’t had time to pine. I’ve been inundated with new sights and sounds and experiences, and the flood of newness has sort of quelled any of the piercing “homesickness” I might have felt for Germany. All my emotional resources have been used up in the process of trying to get some sort of a foothold in this new country and this new life.

But just within the past week I’ve started to feel a little homesickness for Freiburg. It’s because of the time of year. In Freiburg, the hills around the town will be dusted with their first covering of snow. They will be putting up the Christmas lights all along the main street in town, and they’ll be setting up the Christmas market on the square in front of the town hall. They’ll be keeping the stores open later every Saturday for people to do their Christmas shopping, and the streets and stores will be packed with bustling people. They’ll be selling pine boughs and advent wreaths at the farmers’ market. There will be pumpkin soup, and spiced wine.

But it’s not just Freiburg that I miss. I’m always missing my family in the States, but it’s particularly bad during the holidays. Thanksgiving was two days ago, and though I was busy cooking all day long and then shared a lovely Thanksgiving meal (corn chowder, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, roast veggies, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie) with my friends, I couldn’t help thinking about Thanksgiving with my family back in Arizona: the smell of roast turkey, the murmur of Thanksgiving Day parades and football games from the television, the warmth of the fireplace, the dining room table lavishly set for dinner at 4:00 p.m., my Oma’s mashed potatoes and gravy, the real start of the “holiday season” (and believe me, I am a complete sucker for the holiday season).

So there’s just a little melancholic undertone to my thoughts right now, a little homesickness for every home I’ve ever known. But it’s certainly not bad here in England. They’re getting ready for Christmas here, too: I got all excited when I saw that they had hung big bows with white lights from the ceiling of the “shopping mall” in town, and there’s lots of talk of Christmas turkeys and Christmas puddings with brandy butter, which I find quite enticing, of course. The air has gotten colder here, and in the evenings you can smell coal fires burning; it’s a smell that I first remember smelling during the first Christmas I spent in Ireland, a smell so unique and penetrating that, no matter when or where I now smell it, it automatically makes me think of winter in the British Isles.

And as far as Thanksgiving goes, I can say that Thanksgiving as a uniquely North American holiday meant more to me this year in England than it has before, I guess because I shared it with three non-American people, two of whom had never experienced Thanksgiving at all. I felt like a little ambassador of sorts, talking about corn chowder and pumpkin pie and Pilgrims, showing off one of the cozier cultural aspects of America that I guess I lot of Europeans never get to see.

So, I’m feeling a bit chaotic right now - happy about the holidays, sad about missing people, excited about my “new life”, melancholy about the end of the old one, content to be where I am, inconsolable that I can’t be everywhere else at the same time. The usual state of affairs, in other words. You haven’t missed much.