Reality shock!

Oh, living in Europe.  What a treat, right? Beer, chocolate, history, architecture, not Gwinnett County, food, wine and so on.  All true. However, this week I'm really missing home.  The people, of course, of course, my wonderful friends and family.  But there are some things that are just easier in the USA.

 For one, the language.  I speak English fairly well.  I speak French a tiny little bit.  I speak no Dutch at all. A couple of nice-looking people have tried to converse with me.  Just stuff like "Wow, what a lot of rain."  But I just stand there saying "Je parle seulement Anglais" with each syllable quieter and sadder than the one before.

 My Facebook friends heard about my aborted trip to the gym.  Going to the gym isn't all that natural for me anyway, but I used to hop in the warm car from the warm house, drive 10 minutes, and, voila!, I'm there.  And there are a lot of women who kinda look like me.  But not here.  It's a bus ride, then a walk, then a locker room with the most beautiful bodies in the world.  What the hell are they doing at the gym?  Some of these girls are goddesses. And, of course, Brett noticed.  Hell, so did I.

Then there's the garbage. And I know this is the right thing to do.  But the recycling takes some effort.  First, clean dry paper goes in the yellow bag.  These are collected on Monday.  Then, plastic bottles, drink cartons, yogurt containers, etc., must be rinsed first and then they go in the blue bag.  Also collected on Monday.  Glass must be taken to the recycling silos (after rinsing, of course) and sorted into colored glass or clear glass.  There's one right across the street, but at the rate I'm going through bottles, this has turned into somewhat of a chore.   Then, the regular garbage goes in the white bag and is supposed to be collected on Monday and Thursday, but there are rules about what they'll take and yesterday our garbage was rejected!!!  Was it the kitty litter?   Did I accidentally put a plastic bottle in the white bag??   So we have to reclaim our rejected bags, figure out what we did wrong and try again.

  Finally, the weather.  In three little words, the weather sucks.

But, like I tell myself (over and over)it's an adventure.