Hairbrushes, chocolate cereal, and other small details of my life
I always like knowing the little details of peoples' lives when they're travelling rather than just what they've seen that day. Thus, I feel compelled to give you all (whoever you are...or should I just say, "Mom?") some windows into my day to day life as a quasi-backpacker:1) I forgot a hairbrush! It's made surprisingly little difference, actually...
2) In Holland, they have...(drumroll please)...Special K cereal with CHOCOLATE! Or, shall I say, "Pure chocolade?" The hilarious thing is, similar to in the US, they have this campaign where you're meant to lose 5 pounds by eating one bowl of Special K cereal for 2 meals a day and being healthy on the other one. Excuse me? One bowl is never enough, even when accompanied by fruit, toast with peanut butter, and juice! Oh well, I can't blame them for trying, and anyone who associates chocolate, cereal and dieting can be invited to my birthday party any day.
3) I think for half of my time in Ireland I survived on a diet of digestive biscuits (http://www.bestdeal.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=M278358&Category_Code=3&Store_Code=BritishDepotRetailNEW), "The Natural Confectionary Company" gummies (http://www.tncc.com.au/sites/tncc/), bananas, peanut butter, and Cadbury's chocolate (http://www.cadbury.co.uk/EN/CTB2003/). This might help put the "Irish stew" experience in better context. Being in Holland with my aunt, I've now discovered vegetables and whole foods again (again, this is for mom!).
4) Having a castle all to oneself is fun! Today, my aunt and I went to this castle not more than 10 minutes away called "Doorwerp" or something (i can't remember, i'll update it later!), and i'm sure by some objective castle-ranking standard it would seem small, but we had such a blast just walking around the moat, going inside and learning how the castle had been bombed in WW2 and then built up again, seeing the old-styled kitchen with a funky 3 tiered egg holder and funny looking kitchen implements, and viewing the paintings from the 17-18th century in their actual context (I don't typically enjoy that style of painting, but it made sense in the castle). The whole thing was made of brick, which also just struck me as unique and very Dutch!
5) I suppose i got off the everyday life topic for a second - I should also add that I have more than doubled my weekly average shower per day ratio after being in Holland for only 36 hours (I did this by taking one shower in 1 1/2 days...you can do the math!).
6) I'm such a talker that being my myself for periods of time has allowed me to actually just listen to my thoughts and be more observant about the world around me...I find myself creating whole worlds around the people I see dining in the table next to me, or going off on long daydreams about what life would have been like had I been a famous operatic singer by age 18...it's been interesting, to say the least!
7) No one cares. In a good way, I mean! That's just usally the response I've come to when I start to feel self-conscious about something (such as the fact that I'm wearing clip-on glasses over my prescriptions). It's so much easier to say that when I know I'm not going to see most people again, but I hope it continues when I come home! I've always loved the phrase, "People wouldn't wonder what others think of them so much if only they knew how little they actually did!" Travelling in a foreign country definitely reinforces that.
8) Perhaps the countries/cities that I have the hardest time pronouncing are the ones I should push myself to visit...? I'm not sure, but the more I hear about Eastern Europe, the more I want to plan something for there...of course, not until after Belgian chocolate and waffles... | posted by Cheryl, 10/28/2005 02:50:00 PM
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