Oh no. That makes a lot of sense.
I'm with you there; too many people take Christmas for more than it is. I just like being with my family that day[:

So this Knecht Ruprecht dude, how'd he ever get invented? And how do you pronounce that? hah.

This Knecht Ruprecht, he is, you could say, the negative counterpiece to Saint Nik. It´s like Saint Nik is the messenger from heaven and Knecht Ruprecht is the one from heck. While Nik rewards the nice kids with sweets, gingerbread and nuts, Knecht Ruprecht gives the nasty ones their birches... and in some regions of Germany they say he even beats them up with the birches^^

I read that the Knecht Ruprecht myth can be traced back to the middle ages where the parents told their children about so-called Perchten, ghosts and demons in human form that eat and kill nasty children. Ruprechts name probably comes from "raue Percht" (harsh Percht). This myth about the childeating demons was ´probably the root for the figure of Knecht Ruprecht.

Pronunciation: The "ch" sounds like in "ich"...

Here are some pictures of how people think they look like:

Whoa.
That's sort of scary!
If I was a little kid hearing about those stories, I'd never do anything bad ever again. Ahah.
So for New Year's, do you guys have big parties too ?

*lol* Well, to keep the children nice and friendly was actually the reason for telling them about the Perchten^^
But of course today many children don´t even know about Knecht Ruprecht anymore...
The whole Nikolaus rite had been replaced by the tale of the Weihnachtsmann (Santa Clause), altough that isn´t really rooted in German culture...

New Years Eve (Silvester), we have parties with friends and familiy and at midnight there are big fireworks^^
And there is a custom of telling fortunes by the shapes made by molten lead dropped into cold water, simply called "Bleigießen"^^

Okay guys....there´s not really anybody active round here.... but still I´ll try to keep this up.
Rose if you read this, please try to attend class more often....

So, well, my life is very much ruled by our graduation exams at the moment. They´re called Abitur - Abi for short.
You have to take the Abitur at the end of form thirteen (or this year rather in the middle of form thirteen XD) and you have to do:
4 written exams in Math, German, one foreign language (most students take English) and one other main subject (I took Art)
The Art and Music Abitur is somewhat special: You have to do a practical exam too ( My practical Art exam is tomorrow >_< )
Examination time runs from 4-5 hours.

For the German Abitur we had to read three novels/ plays by famous German writers (believe me that wasn´t funny all the time...):
1. The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiller & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Robbers I liked it best of all three
2. Michel Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_von_Kleist & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kohlhaas I hated it
3. The Trial by Franz Kafka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafka & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial I really don´t get it....

For further information on the lectures, klick the links (first link for the author, second for the work)^^

I keep you informed^^

That's really intersting Cat. I Learn German at School and Suck at it I got 1 out of ten in my test. I failed in case you didn't notice.

Yeah, I know telling you about the Abitur isn´t really that interesting...... and how do you mean "I failed in case you didn´t notice"?
I´m sorry about that Cj.... if there´s any way I can help you just tell me and I´ll help!

Something totally different:

On Wednesday I stayed in school during lunchtime to read "The Luxe" and when a classmate of mine came back from home she asked me "Have you head about that killing spree?" I said "You mean that has happened in Alabama? Yeah, I heard it on the news this morning." - "No. I mean the one that has happend a few hours ago in Winnenden."
I was quite shocked. Winnenden is a town near Stuttgart in southern Germany and it´s only fourty kilometers from where I live.
Killing sprees are always a very horrible thing as you will all agree but when they happen so close to the place you live you get a totally different perspective on them.
To be honest I still can´t believe what has happened:
On Wednesday at about 9.30 a.m. the 17 year-old Tim K. ran armed into his old school and killed there and on his escape 15 people. One police officer is still in the hospital and nobody knows when she´ll be recovered. When the police had him cornered he shot himself.
And on top: nobody really has an idea why the boy did it.
He finished the school just normally not like the guy that committed the Erfurt killing spree in 2002 who had been thrown out of school.
Tim played games like counter strike etc. but not more than other guys do and he had been in several psychiatries because he was depressed. They said on the new today he had been in a psychiatry last year that´s only five kilometers from my home... and I might have met him even because I visited a friend once who had been at the same clinic because she was depressed as well....
The head of department of the clinic said that Tim K. hadn´t shown any signs of aggression or suicidal tendencies. So the question remains. Why did he do it? We will never know for sure.
Still people call for the government to act again - they say they should tighten the laws for gun purchase again although that hadn´t really been the reason why this spree had happened: Tim K..´s Dad hadn´t preserved his gunaccording to the rules so the boy had access to it.
And Germany already has one of the harshest gun lews in the whole world.....

Sorry I just had to get that off my chest and I thought you guys probably don´t get much information on that case in your news...

So well, something else happened in my life^^ as you know form reading this thread, I´m doing my Abitur exams atm and I think most of the written exams (the last two weeks) went quite okay.

First we had German....and that was kinda nasty because afterwards I really wondered why I´d even read thoes stupid books we had to read.... I´ve taken the essay about a literature staement that had nothing to do with any of the three books... great.

Then Math the day after German. The only exam of the four where I´d really learned the right things, I think....

Then English last Monday really was stupid!!!! As this stuff about immigration I´d never learned because my teacher told us they wouldn´t want to know in the exam.....yeah.
NEVER listen to your teacher when it comes to such questions!!!!!!

And then Art. On Wednesday. I´ve really wonderered why I even learned A THING for this...... I think it was a piece of cake.... (at least for now....I wonder what the results will say,.....)

YEAH^^ and for the practical exam in Art I scored 15 points^^ that´s like 100 %^^

woah! you get up at 5 am??? omg!
i get up at 7 am and my school starts at 8am yeah,i'm lazy
but it lasts only until 2 pm..and when i go in the afternoon, it's from 2 pm until 7.15 pm

*grins* yeah I get up at 5 a.m.^^ I need to because I need 45 mins to get at school (it starts at 7.50 a.m.) and the only train I can take goes at 7. I´m a sleepyhead and always need to take my time till I´m fully awake (that includes at least one cup of hot coffee and a shower^^)^^

I get up between 5 and 5.20, have my shower, then at 5.34 I watch the weather and then the news while I´m having breakfast (wholewheat bread with a little butter and cheese + a cup of coffee) then I go back to the bathroom to put on some make-up, afterwards a do the rest of my homework and then at 6.40 I leave the house^^

I can say some subjetcs in German we're learning them at school

Noce Cj^^ I´m just making a lesson about Grammar atm^^