Budgeting woes

Ugh, sorry, I'm so bad at blogging!

Welcome to week 3 of my classes! The system is definitely different than the U.S. which is definitely causing some stress... but it's midnight in Paderborn, and I'm going to make this post relatively short tonight. I could promise to update again tomorrow, but seeing as it's been almost two weeks since my last post, don't hold your breath.

I've been blowing through money a little faster than anticipated. It's hard to cut back on expenses, though, when you want to see the world. Sigh. I wish I could get paid to explore the globe. This just means take it easy on the drinks and try not to go out to eat so much. Of course, not going out is impossible - this is Germany, and trying the local cuisine and partying on weekends are a must. I'm in Europe and I'm going to take this chance to travel. I think I'm doing pretty well, I just need to stay conscious of where my money is going.

Another good reason to cut back: my waistline! Before I left the U.S. I had lost some weight, which felt amazing. I think that, with a little conscious effort, I can lose it again. I invested in a blender to make smoothies, which I love. It makes it easy to eat a serving of spinach because I stuff it in with some strawberries and bananas and I can't taste it at all. I'm looking into joining a gym, but in the meantime, I found a great road that I can run on. I walked along it yesterday just to see where it went, and the answer is, a cornfield.

It turns out that if you walk about 10 minutes from Vogeliusweg, you hit a cornfield. On one side is a golf course, and the other is just fields. When the golf course ends, there's just fields. Eventually you hit another road, and there's a sidewalk that's good for running, which is surprising because it seems to be in the middle of nowhere. There are some people who walk their dogs along it, and I ran into some Spanish girls that I knew. I never really felt alone when I was walking, but I'll be alone enough that I could run without worrying if I look stupid.

Update: I joined a gym a few days ago, and while it's a bit pricey, it's worth it to me to have the place close by to work out.

I'm also trying to make steps toward improving my German. My semester course started today, and I like my teacher (more on that in another post). I'd also like to join the Tandem program, where I get paired up with a German speaker who wants to learn English, and we have conversation hours in German and English. Tonight I went to go see a movie in German. I didn't like it and could only understand the gist of the action, but hopefully in the long run experiences like these will help me improve (or at least lessen my awful accent).

It's closing in on midnight here and I have a 7:30 a.m. class tomorrow morning. Ciao!