Recap: St. Martin's Fest (Nov. 11, 2008)

November 11 in Germany is St. Martin's fest. All the younger school kids make lanterns a couple of weeks before out of wood and decorated parchment-like paper. Jodi was pretty handy with a saw - if she would have known she had to saw the pieces herself for the lantern I think it would have been me going to do the building. I probably would have turned it into Homer's barbecue project. The kids got to do the decorating and gluing and assembly all themselves, which was pretty neat. There were mosaic ones, and spider-man ones, and fire ones, and iron-on leaves ones - the variety was crazy, and they were all really natural and cutesy homemade. Cutesy. On the night, the kids gathered in their respective classes with the parents, and we 'lit' the lanterns (some, like Erika's, were light bulbs inside of the lantern, although other, more daring/incompetent parents lit candles inside). The candle variety tended to blow out continuously, resulting in tantrums and tears. Jodi was thankful one of her friends passed on the tip about using a light bulb instead of candle. At the meeting point, we made a big circle and sang a couple of songs. We got the sheet music for them and tried to fumble along. Or Jodi tried to fumble along. In the dark. Trying to read German. And not knowing the tune whatsoever. But I think we sounded great. Here's a night picture of some of the lanterns we could see (or just Erika's):And a video of the sing-a-long:

After singing the two songs three or four times each, we walked around our neighbourhood and made a loop to the kindergarten. There was a play on the roof of the kindergarten about St. Martin. Basically, he was a rich man and he ripped his cloak in half and gave half to a really poor man which was, apparently, unheard of in his day. Half a cloak? Then both of the people are cold. Obviously, we missed something in the translation. But he is a saint that they honor in Germany. After the play, we sat by a big fire and had some kinderpunch and Glühwein and sausage on a bun:

In summary: fun, a little stressful and very cold. The stress was because of the ignorant immigrants wandering around. That would be us.

Jodi and Jeff