Tuesday, September 30, 2014

I've been hungry

I don't know where to begin, except that I watched five episodes of House last night. Or Doktor House, as they call it here.


I didn't know where to begin because this is kind of a between-the-cracks blog post, the scrambled eggs you make to round out your leftovers night, or the frosting you smooth over the gap between cake layers. Clearly I have food on the brain.

For the past month, simultaneously, a lot has happened and nothing has happened. Obviously I moved to Germany, and now I have a job teaching English to middle and high school students for part of the week. That all we can cover later. A new job would be enough of a full plate (again with the food metaphors), but I've also had a new living situation. Apart from my first night in a hostel in Mannheim and four days at orientation, I've been living with a teacher from my school and her daughter, which has been interesting, to say the least. But we can talk about that later, too. I've been very hungry.


My teacher/"host mother" doesn't cook a whole lot. She just thinks she does. I wouldn't mind cooking, but I live in a small town, and it's nearly impossible for me to get to the grocery store without a car--and my host mother usually shops while I'm working. She, like many German women, is very protective of her kitchen, or at least I get that sense.

Hence, my diet here has mostly consisted of fruit, bread, butter, tomatoes, and cheese. Granted, German Brötchen (rolls) are something to behold, with their crackly crusts that flake away as you bite into them, revealing their soft, pillowy, yeasted insides. And the fruit is some of the freshest I've ever had--Rheinland-Pfalz is known for its produce--but a girl of 23 years was not meant to live on bread and butter and cheese and fruit alone.


At first I loved it. The tomatoes are from my host mother's garden, tangy and juicy from the vine, and I'd slather half a Brötchen with Brie from the paper store wrapping and top it with tomato slices. This, with a sliced pear or a plum, was most often my breakfast or lunch...or snack, or dinner. (We eat at really weird hours around here, sometimes at three or four, sometimes eight or nine at night.)

Around the third week, I started to get sick of it. I've been exercising a fair amount, and both my body and my mind started craving protein and fat and other good nutrients in the way that some cheese or the occasional yogurt couldn't satisfy. Slowly, my mind became consumed with thoughts of food. I'm not starving, mind you--I'm allowed to eat as much as I want. There's just not a great deal of variety.

These days, I daydream about short ribs, braised in bold red wine and a mirepoix of vegetables, on a bed of creamy mashed potatoes. I like to think about cauliflower, roasted to an inch of its life, until caramelized, wrapped with other vegetables in a creamy, garlicky yogurt dressing, like this. I don't really daydream about desserts--I'm more of a savory gal myself--but one Sunday I did find myself thinking about cake, a rich chocolate cake, the kind you find in restaurants, with stiff, heavy, moussey chocolate frosting, worth every bite. As I ride the tram home from school, my thoughts turn to Asian foods, and I peer somewhat longingly into the windows of the local pan-Asian cuisine spot as I walk back from my stop, imagining curries and piles of rice noodles with sweet and spicy peanut sauce and crisp Mung bean sprouts.


Maybe this is all from boredom--of diet, of life in a small town--or maybe it's something else. And there is more to say about food, certainly. But I'm still trying to piece that together; as I said, my mind is jumbled. So for now I'll just say that I've been positively fantasizing about food, and cooking, and hopefully this weekend I'll get my chance. Friday is a German holiday, and my host family will be away for the long weekend visiting Grandma--huzzah! If I don't make travel plans, I will definitely be here, perhaps roasting an entire leg of lamb on a spit in the front yard, or blasting that new T. Swift song through every orifice of the house.

For now, it's back to Hugh Laurie's witticisms in a right rank American accent (I'm picturing that said in a British accent; I have no clue if that's actually something the British say), and multiple establishing shots of Princeton Plainsboro Hospital. Wherever you are, bake some banana bread or oatmeal muffins on my behalf.




P.S. Just for clarification, I think Hugh Laurie's American accent isn't half bad. Pretty good, actually.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Not even exaggerating

Hey there.


If you're reading this, whether welcome stranger or dear friend (or enemy, hell if I know), I know you're probably wondering about my life (back) in Germany--is it different from last time? How's teaching going? Have I met anyone yet? And the truth is, yes, it's very different from last time, and for that reason and many others, I don't quite know how to talk about it yet.


I've been here for almost one month, but it feels like an eternity already. I have nine more to go, the same amount of months it would take to have a baby. For some reason, this comparison keeps crossing my mind. But instead of growing a baby, I'll be growing my cultural and teaching skills, hopefully holding by the end not an infant, but a greater sense of self. Ideally, to Fulbright, I'll be developing a genuine, interpersonal relationship between two nations. That all sounds a little grandiose for me to comprehend right now. I'm trying to just take it, as the old adage goes, one day at a time. Which is both relieving and overwhelming, when I think of how many more days there are to focus on individually.


Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to say. Right now, though, it's all a perilous game of Jenga inside my head, and I have no idea which block to pull out first. So I offer you some pictures taken on my walks/runs around my current town, taken in the late afternoons of the past month, as the summer slipped away.


Forgive me for holding back on the writing; hopefully in the coming days and weeks, with some changes and a new routine, I'll be more forthcoming about my journey. For now, thanks for stopping by--it means so much to me that you care. And I'm not even exaggerating.