I feel like living abroad has taught me a lot about creative replacements and making due with what you have. When you move somewhere with only two suitcases and are on a tight budget, you just don't have everything that you might normally have. For my first year here, I hiked in tennis shoes and jeans. While I am very happy to have gotten some hiking gear, as it makes the whole experience much more comfortable, I had some really amazing hikes while wearing tennis shoes.
When cooking, I have also run in to the need to make replacements. For example, brown sugar isn't sold here, so I had to track down a sort-of molasses replacement to mix with white sugar to make a quasi-brown sugar. If cornmeal isn't available, polenta can be a satisfactory replacement. Chocolate chips can be replaced with chopped chocolate bars. I just add extra jalapeno peppers when a recipe calls for Rotel. I have no replacement for corn syrup, so I just don't make anything that requires it. And the list could go on and on...
Moving in and furnishing my own flat has also meant that I have tried to make due with as little as possible, especially since I know that I'll be moving in less than a year. This means that I have few pots and pans, and that I often use every pan I own when I cook and/or bake and have to creatively clean things mid-cooking to pull everything together.
I've also given up on attending fitness classes at ETH, because it was just too difficult to keep up with the German while also being coordinated. In general, my strategy of just trying to do what other people were doing worked, except when I watched the wrong person. There was one too many times in which I was called out in front of the whole class in German, didn't understand what was going on, and then was called out for not understanding and for speaking English, and finally I had enough. So, now I do exercise videos (in English) in my living room.
This past week, I added a new video to my routine to change things up a little and was surprised in the middle when the instructor told us to grab our free weights. I have no weights, so I ran into my kitchen and grabbed the first heavy things I could find, which ended up being a bag of oatmeal and a bag of lentils. I felt so ridiculous following along to this video and flailing around my bags of lentils and oatmeal, but I guess it worked! And I'm really happy that the bags didn't explode on me...
I'm so glad to be learning all of these new life skills!
When cooking, I have also run in to the need to make replacements. For example, brown sugar isn't sold here, so I had to track down a sort-of molasses replacement to mix with white sugar to make a quasi-brown sugar. If cornmeal isn't available, polenta can be a satisfactory replacement. Chocolate chips can be replaced with chopped chocolate bars. I just add extra jalapeno peppers when a recipe calls for Rotel. I have no replacement for corn syrup, so I just don't make anything that requires it. And the list could go on and on...
Moving in and furnishing my own flat has also meant that I have tried to make due with as little as possible, especially since I know that I'll be moving in less than a year. This means that I have few pots and pans, and that I often use every pan I own when I cook and/or bake and have to creatively clean things mid-cooking to pull everything together.
I've also given up on attending fitness classes at ETH, because it was just too difficult to keep up with the German while also being coordinated. In general, my strategy of just trying to do what other people were doing worked, except when I watched the wrong person. There was one too many times in which I was called out in front of the whole class in German, didn't understand what was going on, and then was called out for not understanding and for speaking English, and finally I had enough. So, now I do exercise videos (in English) in my living room.
This past week, I added a new video to my routine to change things up a little and was surprised in the middle when the instructor told us to grab our free weights. I have no weights, so I ran into my kitchen and grabbed the first heavy things I could find, which ended up being a bag of oatmeal and a bag of lentils. I felt so ridiculous following along to this video and flailing around my bags of lentils and oatmeal, but I guess it worked! And I'm really happy that the bags didn't explode on me...
I'm so glad to be learning all of these new life skills!
