The Inbetweens

It has occurred to me that the things that I find interesting mean not necessarily be as interesting to you as they are to me. For example touring the city, I can't fully explain why that's exciting, it's exciting because I got to see it and it's hard to really convey that emotion so I want to make a post to talk about the daily life things that happen to me.

I slip on the stairs at least a little bit everyday. The stairs in Germany seem to all be in the semicircular pattern probably to save space but when I go booking it down the stairs in my socks I always almost eat it.

The family that I'm staying with has kittens, four of them, they roam around the house destroying houseplants and running into walls they're very cute, but they do keep me up at night.

Being a proud carnivore from America I'm really missing the protein-based diet. We ate a lot of meat at all of our meals in Finland. Now I'm majority of my diet is made up of bread, pasta, vegetables, carbs of pretty much any form. This is not doing kind things to my waistline.

After the first chicken slaughtering -- and they realize that I was not squeamish -- I was promoted. Adding the word eviscerate to my job description, simply put, I now pull guts out of the chickens too.

I am extremely uptight about refrigerating things that need to be refrigerated, the German culture does not share this view. Many foods are put into the "cool room" which is simply the pantry. Foods like pasta, potato salad, regular salad, eggs, sauces, soup, all just sit in the 60 degree pantry. I haven't gotten ill but that doesn't mean I want to take this new habit home either.

People in northern Germany tend to be tall, and people in southern Germany tend to be short. At 5'11" I fit in just fine in northern Germany, but now that I'm getting close to the center of the country, I tower over my host parents by at least 5 inches.

I will never take the prices of things in America for granted again. Life is way more expensive here.

Speaking of expenses, the chicken trailer that this family owns for the laying hens cost €32,000, they own two.

I am all for walking, I think exercise is great, but I don't think I will ever get used to the mentality of parking a car and leaving it for the day while you spend half your time walking from sight to sight and then the mile walk back to the car when you want to go home.

People here don't check the weather! At home I'm a weather addict, the app is on every device I own and I always check it during breakfast, it has been more of an adjustment than I'd like to admit.

The showers often don't have walls or curtains, you can sit down with the house nozzle and try to not make a lake in the bathroom, I'm not very good at that. They also have smaller shower stalls than at home, smaller than anywhere really.

I spent a considerable amount of time separating, peeling, bagging, sorting, and general processing, of potatoes. I'll be a potato pro when I leave.

 This tidbit piece has been more fun to write than I thought it would be, I'll have to do more of them!