Today I got to sleep in. My oral interview wasn’t until 11:15 AM. It felt amazing to sleep finally. The oral interview was pretty simple. We went in pairs. We had 3 different topics we had to carry on a conversation with our partner about. I suspect I got somewhere between 1.3 to 2, which means A- or B. I’m satisfied with that.
After that, I went home and decided to give in to Corry’s pleas to exercise with Thimo. I got dressed to jog. It was a rare nice day out, still pants weather of course. Thimo had some excuse about having to be ready in a couple of hours to go to the doctor. I figured I was already dressed so I’d go myself. Considering I haven’t done anything since I got to Germany, it felt good, but I am so out of shape. I was nervous to run too far in any direction that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back.
When I got back, I decided to shower again. I got in the shower as normal, only the water had an enemy, me. It turns out it was on TURBO setting. It was pelting me so hard. I tried to turn it off Turbo, but to no avail. The water was spraying everywhere. It even sprayed through the shower curtain...I'm not even sure how that is possible, but it did. Trying to move out of the water, I nearly fell backwards out of the shower. The last time I tried to catch myself on the shower curtain, I ripped the PVC pipe holding it up out of the wall.
(SIDEBAR: Their "shower" is not what we think of as a shower. It's a bathtub with a jank shower curtain put up in the middle of the tub....hanging from PVC pipe on the ceiling. So really you only have the width of a bathtub...so not very much at all. END SIDEBAR)
It was the worst shower of my time in Germany. I was literally in pain during the whole shower. For some reason, the water temperature only included scalding hot or freezing cold. When I finished that shower, I was beat red, and I swore I’d have bruises the next day.
Oh and then when I tried to explain to my host mom what I was talking about, she just looked at me like I was crazy. In German I said, "The water is too hard." Those were the only words I could think of. The next evening she said she finally understood what I was talking about. And 2 days later we had a new shower head! :)
Abendbrot was nice. We had fruit salad, with all fresh fruit – none from the can. That is one difference between America and Germany (or at least with my families in each place). My host family doesn’t believe in vitamins. Rather they believe you should get your nutrients and vitamins from food sources. Even when they are sick, they don’t take any medicine. Instead they find a tea that fits their symptoms. I’m sure this works quite well, but I’m just stuck in the American attitude of needing to take daily vitamins and medicine.
As a sidebar, Germans like to think they eat super healthy and Americans eat all crappy, unhealthy food. I don’t argue with the second part; admittedly most of us do. For brunch today I had a bowl of cereal, the equivalent of the US brand Smacks, a slice of bread with butter and jelly, and a slice of bread with butter, cheese, and a turkey slice. My host dad walked by, scoffed, and said, “That’s extremely unhealthy!” The cereal they consider to be pure sugar. Other than that, I was surprised. They eat bread every morning and evening! The cheese was the most unhealthy part of it. The cheese was 48% fat. They love their cheeses, but I don’t think they realize how unhealthy those are. No kidding, abendbrot spread includes bread, butter, 5 or more different kinds of cheese, and some other spreads. They just can’t get enough of their cheeses.
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