Changes

This past week, I made a pretty big change in switching jobs.  I am now officially employed by Gallup and it's basically the greatest job ever.  Every single person I've spoken to has greeted me with an enthusiastic and sincere, "Welcome to Gallup!" Everyone has been overwhelmingly kind, inclusive, and welcoming.  People are excited to get to know me and work with me.  A coworker told both Matthew and me that he is really excited to work with me and thinks getting to know me will be really fun.  It's been an overwhelmingly positive experience when my previous job was not always that.

I'm especially excited because on my third day, last Friday, I was invited by a few guys in the NOC (network operations center - my home base) to join their team in a fitness program called 'In the Zone'.  This week, there is a fitness relay that involves each team member doing a particular exercise and then "handing off the baton" to the next person when they're done.  Yesterday I had to walk/run 2 miles for relay #1 and today was to walk/run 3 miles for relay #2.  We haven't gotten to relay #3 yet because the poor anchor of #2 has to do 50 pull ups before we can finish.  Regardless, whenever we do move on to #3, I'm demanding something that doesn't involve my legs.  The walk between my desk and the NOC is a pretty decent trek and I'm averaging walking it 10 or so times a day.  My legs are ready to murder me.

The best part of the fitness thing though, is that I am completely accountable to my group.  If I don't do my part, they can't do theirs.  I've struggled with not really having anyone to be accountable to, so having these guys is awesome.  Plus, there are trainers at Gallup who come up with a fitness and nutrition plan for you as a benefit of employment.  Even better, they are known to really hold you accountable by sending emails (or talking to you in person) as gentle reminders of your goals and plans if they see you, for example, eating something you shouldn't.  Physical Wellbeing is one of the five focus areas of overall Wellbeing and Gallup goes out of their way to make sure you have ways to improve or maintain it.

Quite possibly even more exciting, the change I realized tonight that I've fully made: I have officially moved out of plus sized/women's sized clothing! Depending on where I shop, my size is far from consistent but I have even managed to fit comfortably into a few designer brands.  I skipped weighing myself last weekend after a week when I failed rather miserably at my goals of not up going out to eat, etc., but I have definitely made progress!  I have some shirts I got last summer that were a little snug when I got them.  They got a little tighter over the course of last year, but they've become comfortable enough that I actually wore one to work today.  I'm very excited to keep up with the exercise and have people to continue to hold me accountable so that hopefully I can drop even more weight or a few more sizes before the trip to Austria.

Overall, things are going just peachy for me.  I'm looking forward to the future and seeing where things go from here!

"I know this is a silly question before I ask it, but can you Americans speak any other language besides English?"

The title is a quote from Bridget Von Hammersmark in the movie Inglourious Basterds.  I've watched it a couple of times recently because it helps to hear German spoken by natives since there aren't many opportunities like that here.  This quote struck a chord with me because it's so true.  In the movie, basically every single European character (and the actor) speaks at least two languages fluently but the only attempt in the movie the Americans make at speaking a second language is laughable at best.  The saddest part is that it is a completely accurate depiction of most Americans and it's depressing.

When I started thinking about writing this post, I realized that a lot of the time, I feel like I was deprived of so many cultural opportunities because I was born in America.  I understand that many Americans think that America is THE GREATEST THING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF ALL TIME EVER, but the rest of the world doesn't necessarily agree.

Most people I know didn't start learning a second language until middle school at the earliest.  The best chance you have of learning a new language is when you're still very young.  I guess this isn't entirely shocking when we're led to believe that since everyone else can speak English, there's really no need to learn a second language; and quite frankly, there's really not much of a use for it when you would have to travel more than one or two or three thousand miles in any direction to get somewhere where you can actually use the language you're learning.

Since I started attempting to learn German, I picked up a lot pretty quickly.  I can write well and read well, even though I still have a long way to go.  I can't, however, speak well or comprehend spoken German well which is why I've been watching the movies with German as the spoken language and listening to the Harry Potter books in German.  Even with all of that, the opportunities I have to interact with people in the German language are limited mostly to my short and infrequent trips overseas, occasionally Skyping with a native speaker, and talking to my older sister.  It's so frustrating to know that in order to really be able to become fluent in the language, I need to use the language on a daily basis.  In order for that to happen, I need to live in Europe.  In order to move to Europe, both Matt and I need to speak fluent enough German to get jobs to support ourselves.  Either that, or we can win the lottery.  Honestly, I'm not sure which one is more (or less) likely to happen.  It's why I get so frustrated sometimes.

I'm not trying to minimize the things that I have in America that I am so grateful for - my husband, the rest of my family, Husker football (it had to be said), etc. - and I know that the grass isn't always greener, but in this instance I am absolutely 100% sure that it is.  The language-learning opportunities in Europe don't exist in America and they can't.