Day 3
Seeing as how I’ve been in Germany for three days now, I’ve almost fully settled in here. There are still some things that I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do yet.
The garbage system around here perplexes me. In order to promote better environmentally friendly practices, people here separate their garbage into different bins for different kinds of garbage such as compost. I know some places in Vancouver do this, such as UBC, but in Germany things get a little more complicated. They don’t use names such as compost, or garbage or anything like that. Maybe a language barrier causes this problem. I see names like “residual waste bin” and I have no idea what I’m supposed to put in here. What is helpful though is a list of what is supposed to go in there. I suppose that’s fine, but the next thing that confuses me is that I have no idea what the residual waste bin looks like. Sure I know what garbage goes into, which bin, but I can’t exactly throw out the garbage properly if I don’t know what the bin looks like.
Cooking poses another problem. This isn’t something specific to Germany, but is more of a problem with my lack of cooking skill. I am totally not used to cooking for myself. Now that I am here, I find myself frantically looking online for easy things that I can cook. It also doesn’t help that my laziness inhibits me from going to the store to buy what I need. For now, I’ve decided on trying to see if I can cook simple things like mash potatoes. I must start from the basics. Makeuseof features an article on learning how to cook, which I frequently read to learn how to cook. Chances are, my hunger will smarten me up so that I become less lazy to go out and buy food.
Laundry is the next issue that I have yet to deal with. So far, I am told that I can do my laundry at my workplace, which sounds kind of funny. At the same time, it could make sense since Bosch does design home appliances such as washing machines. I’ll check that out when I start work.
I have no doubt that I will be able to overcome these obstacles as I settle in this country. This is a huge test for me as a person to see if I can become independent. At the end of this eight months, I am confident that I will be able to live independently.