Sometimes I love my life, sometime I don't

Love:

Super late Sunday night, actually Monday morning, we had a Super Bowl Party here in Germany! It was awesome. The sports announcers even greeted our tiny town! We were all so excited! We had tons of great food! We got to watch the super bowl with a bunch of Americans and Germans! And thanks to our influence everyone there was rooting for the Packers!!! My husband's birthday is today and he's still on cloud nine because his favorite team won. He's calling it the best birthday present ever, and I'm ok with that.

Don't Love:

I started a new art class, the teacher basically told me all the art supplies I have are way too cheap and for school kids. I felt like crap. I didn't have a list of what I needed. It said that they would tell me when I got there. Everyone else seemed to know what to bring.

Love:

That my German is good enough that I understood the class well and people didn't seem to think my German was bad. One person even complimented it. Instead of taking another German course, I thought, I'd try something where I could improve my German and meet Germans. In language school I of course only meet foreigners, and most of the foreigners that I've met have left the country.

Love:

Getting complements on my German. Seriously, last Thursday I met someone and they told me I had only a small accent and my German was quite good! Do you know how you felt in high school and a cute boy gave you a complement? I felt that good for days after that! And trust me it was not a cute boy or anything that said that. That's what us language learning people love to hear. Now I'm not saying my German is that good, but one person mistook it for being good. So I'm excited.

Don't love:

The sometimes brutal honesty we get from Germans. I mean it's seriously rough sometimes. It's like please lie to me a little. Like please don't tell me what you really think of my haircut. I have to live with it for awhile.

Kind of Love:

They don't lie to you, they don't fake friendly. Sales associates don't pretend to be your best friend. I've worked at plenty of stores in america where my job was to be miss perky friendly sales girl at whatever store. That's not my natural personalty, so it's nice that I can go in a store and no one necessarily greets me. Although the negative side of that is the customer service here is pretty stinky. I think at some stores they're paid to be rude. Maybe the more costumers they ignore the better Christmas bonus they get. But that's ok, because if you ignore me I'll just find it cheaper on amazon.

Love:

Germany, the people I've met, the life I have here. The culture that I've been able to discover because I've lived here for a while. Do you know that when someone has known someone for a long time here and they switch from the formal way of addressing each other to the informal, they will reintroduce themselves to each other using their first name. Yeah, so even if you've known this person for 10 years and obviously know what their first name is and have both decided to switch, you kind of stop the conversation and reintroduce and shake hands. Weird, I know. Luckily for me, most people just use the informal with me. All though it would be fascinating to do this.

Don't love:

Germans always talk about how cheap and flimsy american houses are compared to their 500 year old stone houses. I don't know why, but this more than anything, drives me crazy. Maybe because German houses sometimes drive me crazy. See post here. They seem to think that if a tornado came to Germany their houses would be fine. Which brings me to final point.

Love:

That Germany doesn't have any major storms. Thunderstorms are almost nonexistent. When a thunderstorm comes I barely take notice. Germans will talk about it later and I'll be like, that little storm? Huh? Yeah I guess the sky made a grumble sound. And no tornadoes! Woohoo!

Guess what, the "loves" outweigh the "don't loves," so I'm pretty happy in Germany. I love the friendships I have here. There's something deep and strong about our friendships here. Germans have thick walls, but somehow the relationships that we have feel so strong. That's a huge "Love." So even though today was bit of a tough day, after writing this and looking back at my weekend I've got to say I'm happy with the friendships I have and am building on!

So what about you, what do you love/don't love?