Things I Learned This Month | January 2018

As per usual, I'm following Emily Freeman's lead to share a handful of things I learned this month. 

1. In Italy, hot chocolate is more like hot, drinkable chocolate custard than our typical hot chocolate. Basically, it's to die for.

2. Shortbread cookies only take 3 ingredients. This one's dangerous, y'all.

3. Skiing is not the only thing to do in the mountains in winter. There's also sledding, snowshoeing, hiking, and frolicking in the snow. I climbed up a mountain with a friend last weekend (we were supposed to be sledding but kept wondering what vistas would open before us if we went just a little higher), and it was such a blast.

4. I am not a good speller. It's embarrassing, but it's true. I've ignored the fact for years, because usually when in doubt I can do a quick google to double-check my spelling. But now I'm a teacher. In a classroom. Where I'm frequently writing vocabulary words on the blackboard. While I'm usually right about my spelling, I'm also occasionally wrong. It's a lesson in humility to stand in front of a classroom and admit that I managed to graduate from college without a firm grip on spelling. (Ironically, my German spelling is perfect.) *sigh*

5. Just because I want to watch a TV show in the middle of the afternoon, when I can't, does not mean that I want to watch one in the evening, when I can. Do you ever plan to use your relaxing time one way, really look forward to it, and then realize that it's not actually what you want to do when the free time comes? I do. Strangely enough, I sometimes make myself do the thing anyway. I wanted to do it earlier, so I must want to do it now, right?!? While this is good when it comes to things like exercising, it's just kind of ridiculous when it comes to something like watching a show on Netflix. It was weirdly freeing to recognize this pattern and give myself permission to not do the thing I thought I wanted to do. Am I crazy?

6. The Munich Readery is one of my happy places. 

7. Along those lines...I've turned into a multiple-books-at-once kind of person. Through high school, I was very firmly a one-book-at-a-time person. I'm not sure when that changed, but I realized this week that I'm currently reading two hard-copy books, a book on my kindle, a different book on my phone's kindle app, and listening to an audiobook. Oh, and that doesn't count my daily Bible reading. Oy. (A good friend of mine recently told me that "to say you're bookish is to say a fish prefers to swim in water." Ha.)

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