forgive and forget

I feel like there are a number of very common expressions that are often used in the world that I just don't agree with. For example - sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Not at all true. Words can be very hurtful. Maybe this tool was invented by bullies. It really is just a surface response to hide your true feelings.

Todays expression I wish to discuss is to forgive and forget. I think in my teenage years I embodied this mentality a lot more than I do now. I think that I was so desperate for friends I was always willing to forgive and forget. Then when I grew up and started to realize that it was the same things happening over and over again, because I never really addressed the situation. I just kind of moved on without actually standing up for myself to try to prevent the same thing from happening again. I am at fault there...oops.

To be honest one of the reasons that I started this blog was that I wanted a place to remember situations like this. It was more so on my old blog from when I was in high school that I would write in generics about these situations. I didn't want to actually have a diary but I also felt ok writing these things online because I could write about the situations more from an emotional perspective, but I also have enough of a memory to put myself back in that situation and remember why I was cross. But needless to say I eventually just moved completely on from those relationships.

"I want to forgive you and I want to forget you" - Lauren Conrad

Now this is another version of the expression that I still don't agree with with. The thing is that you can never forget. I have had a really upsetting experience in my life in which I have had people completely betray everything that I thought they were. This is something I cannot possibly ever forget, nor do I ever want to forget this. I am pissed. Still. And I really cannot see myself ever really getting over this.

The actions made by other people really do have an impact on how I look at them. It's weird how it can take one situation and you can never trust someone again. But it's important to remember these situation. I know that the expression is about getting over the grudge that you hold, but the actions sometimes caused from conflict mean that the person completely breaks the character that you thought they were. And you don't actually want to be friends with a person like that.

I think that trust is really the most important thing for every relationship. That's why fights happen, because on some level trust was broken.

the downward spiral

I don't know if this is true but I feel like people that are really good at cooking often are a little bigger in weight - except Giada, she's a goddess. I don't know what is going on but I think that I am starting to go down that road.

I have had this weird thing for the past two weeks where I just need to go shopping for food all the time. Everytime that I get home I ask myself - who is all this food for? Who is going to eat this much? Why did I go shopping again?

A few weeks ago I attempted to make my own Thai inspired veggie soup and I literally had so much that I forced my roommate to eat some as well. And then had leftovers for a week, and there is still soup frozen in the freezer. I like to make a lot at one time but it is just difficult to figure out how much to cook.

My cooking has also been inspired by my vegan roommate, like the amount of meat I eat is barely any. The only time that I eat it is when someone else cooks it for me.

It is getting so bad that I know what stores I need to go to for specific ingredients including best prices.

My goodness I'm going to have to start exercising more...

The underreaction

So if you don't know me I will tell you now - I love seeing things. As in new things, as in important historical places.

I would like to say that I have been somewhat of a history nerd my whole life - but boy when I'm in europe do I feel stupid. I cannot remember anything that I have learned and it drives me crazy.

But when it comes to seeing significantly important historical places I always find that I am lost for words. Like I literally feel like there is not enough that I could say that will deeply enough express the feelings that I want to get out.

Being in Italy this last weekend was just another thousand places for me to have these reactions.

This is the house where I was staying

Thank goodness I was with a friend who can truly understand these passions that I have towards learning and seeing things - and is totally down with helping me express my wanderlust.

She's fantastic

But seeing the sights in Rome was literally the oldest stuff that I have ever seen. Like holy smokes - I was walking where billions of people have walked for more than two thousand years.

The duomo in orvieto - I was informed that I would "die"
when I saw it...nearly did

The problem however was that I was a little bit ill. I will not hide the fact that I had done like the Romans and enjoyed my fair share of wine. However, I did the majority of my enjoyment on the first two nights. Sunday night I only partook in a lemoncello nightcap and was up around 8 the next morning. That night I had also eaten the most unbelievable pizza of my life (pizza bianco with truffle, mushrooms, and sausage) and was completely full. Everything on the menu looked so good that I actually was physically unable to answer when my friend asked me what I was thinking of everything. I just had to giggle.

Anyways I woke up not hungry at all, and had a nice cappuccino - then we headed up to the piazza for another coffee. It seemed that I had not had enough other stuff in my stomach because it wasn't before long that I wasn't feeling that well. I was on the train and debating going for a puke. Like just get it over with. I bought some water and pounded that back and it helped moderately. About twenty minutes away from Rome I had to "give back the water" and I figured it might not be a bad idea to puke a little. I would call that mostly unsuccessful.

Needless to say I was feeling terrible. Also being in Rome it was clear that I was going to see some cool stuff. I was really excited about it, and so I decided that instead of trying to over express my feelings for everything I was going to try and take everything down a notch and under react. In a sense I wanted to change the scale. Instead of being a nine out of ten I was going to be a 90 out of 100. I hope this makes sense...

But boy did I sound like an asshole.

Oh neat the colosseum...oh wow the forum.

I also decided to take the pictures in the least joyful way possible.

Looking completely disinterested at the Forum

Literally could not care less (not really)

But needless to say - it was amazing and Sometimes it is fun to react in a non-typical way.

travel lessons

I literally just got back within the last hour from my little weekend pop on down to italy. For one - it was a fantastic vacation. It is literally one of the big reasons that I wanted to live in europe...for the freedom to do things like this a little bit easy.

So I left on friday and started off by making some real rookie moves. First off - know the time that your flight comes in so that when people are coming to pick you up they can be there at the correct time. Luckily I was only off by about 20 minutes, so I had some time to wait and enjoy Italians, and start my judging. Second, like a responsible flyer I shut off my cell phone, completely forgetting I have no clue what the PIN number for my iphone was. This was going to be fine for the weekend, perhaps not the greatest if I did end up needing to call Cat. Luckily there were pay phones in the event of an emergency. It was going to however be problematic for coming back to Germany, because of the wonderful Deutsche Bahn app....amazing. 

I would have probably looked up train transfer times before I got back to Italy, but I knew for sure I needed to get my connections last night so that I could plan what I was going to do and where I needed to go - pretty standard procedure...

I clearly did not plan that aspect of my trip very well, and completely over anticipated the number of transfers. 

Using only public transport from when my plane was supposed to land (at 21:40), would get me home at around 6 am...not what I was looking for. At first I was literally freaking out that I was going to have to sleep at the train station. The Baden Airpark does not have a great shuttle service and at night this is even less so. Honestly, leaving the airport in Ciampino I had no plan on how I was getting home. I was lucky enough that I am not a worrier and I actually started to accept that I just was not going to sleep enough. For me it just was not worth the money...like I am not going to pay 67 euros to get to karlsruhe - that is ridiculous.

I was hoping that on the plane I would end up meeting some nice german couple that would be able to bring me a little further down the road. Sadly, it was French people from strasbourg that I got...but then as we were landing I was listening to the people behind me talking about the long train ride they had in front of them. I butted in and asked them soo many details. I figured that my best bet was going to be getting a taxi into town to get the train that would get me in at about 1:55 into Darmstadt (not even home yet). I was going to get them to try to split the taxi, but those cheap beestings did not have any interest in that. I figured I was going to have to shell out the thirty euros on my own, but that is so much for a 15 minute ride. 

Anyways we landed, I still didn't really have a plan, but then I found out that we had landed twenty minutes early. That's great, maybe there would be a quicker bus to the airport. Not the case...

I then headed over to the taxi stand to maybe hope that someone would want to split a cab. I could see the bus from where the taxi stand was so I figured if I don't find anyone in time I will just take the bus. It's quite logical. 

Gott Sei Dank! A miracle happened, these wonderful people two from syria and one from jordan (so random) adopted me to ride in the taxi with them. I got right aggressive in there...thank goodness I did. When I got to the train station I was able to catch an even earlier train, better than the one I was praying that I wouldn't miss. But boy was it tight, I got my ticket, but realized I did not know any of the stops in between. So as my schedule is printing out I am seeing the train coming. I had to book it.

but I made it. and I am home now. and it is currently 1:32. It is time for bed!!

So life lesson: If I had known the pin number to my iphone I would have not needed to panic nearly as much and it would have made things way easier for me getting back to Germany. 

peace and quiet

I don't think I have ever been able to accept this really until this year - but I actually concentrate way better when things are quieter.

I have two colleagues that I really don't think they realize how well they talk. They are nice people and I have no issues working with them, but they are just loud people. It is very difficult for me to concentrate to concentrate on my own work because I end up listening to part of their conversations, but they both are very difficult to understand. Luckily one of them moved to a different office about a month ago and then the second was on holidays.

Well she's back and it is loud again.

I think that I used to just use studying as an excuse to listen to music and I could never just accept the quiet. But I have now realized that I was using that as an excuse not to study. I would consistently be thrown off my concentration depending on the song, and then I would want to sing along. I tried for some way to make it work because I loved the music more than I loved the studying. Obviously who wouldn't.

Now I love working in the quiet, except I hate when it's completely quiet and you feel like you are hearing things and then you never know if you are really hearing things or whether or not your head is trying to make you hear something because you hear nothing and you don't want to go crazy!

I still can't fall asleep without noise though. Yay for podcasts!

It's really to bad I didn't realize this about 4 years ago when I started university...