Day 3: My kitchen

The physical, tangible item I miss the most from back home is probably my KitchenAid mixer.  I used it a lot.  I would use it even more now.  Since coming to Barcelona, I've had to basically re-learn everything I knew about cooking and baking because pre-made, pre-boxed, pre-packaged doesn't exist here.  I was super frustrated at first, but I'm actually really enjoying it now.  Don't get me wrong, I still have frustrating cooking moments, but for the most part I've gotten past the whole having to make every single thing from scratch and have become quite a good cook.

That said, I'm really thankful for my kitchen here.  I've visited lots of friends' apartments here, and even though I find our kitchen seriously lacking, theirs are always worse.  No one has mixers or blenders or anything necessary for making anything.  I don't really have a mixer either.  I don't even have one of those crappy hand mixers.  I have an electric whisk.  But it does the job.  I have learned that it is not uncommon - and according to Alisha totally the norm in South Korea - to not have an oven.  I can handle learning to make things from scratch, but not having an oven??  Preposterous.

So while today's focus isn't really anything deep or profound - I think most of these actually won't be - that's ok.  I actually think it's important to be grateful for every single thing we have and not just the big friends and family things.

So tonight, thanks to my beloved oven:

I was able to make super delicious things:

That look like this:

And since I just talked about it yesterday, I feel it appropriate to note that today was another awesome day at work.  I was busy all morning and then at 1pm, I left the office with Carlos (in his super awesome mercedez benz convertible), who is the head honcho - not gonna lie, was a little nervous about riding alone in a car with him because I thought it would be totally awkward since he's always so important and stern and imposing, but was actually pretty nice - and headed to the Barcelona Botanical Gardens.  I had never been, but OAB actually designed it, so we were giving a personal tour to the group of students from Washington State University I saw yesterday.  The park was amazing.  The students were soooo nice.  Carlos was a charming tour guide.  I was an awesome translator.  It was an incredibly beautiful, warm, sunny day...basically perfect for leaving work in the middle of the day to go walk around a garden in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  Blessed.