Day 110

I left for Austria on May 10, and will be returning for Christmas vacation on December 16th, a period of 220 days. Therefore, today, my 110th day, is the half way point, and roughly the 1/3 point for my entire internship. It is so hard to believe that I've been here for 110 days. So, I've decided to reflect on what has changed, and what has stayed the same since I've been here.

Before I left I had only ever been in 3 countries (Canada, US, Mexico). Now I'm up to 11 (Canada, US, Mexico, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary) with realistic plans to visit at least 6 more (England, France, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Greece).

Before I left the longest I had ever been out of Canada was for 11 days, now I've already surpassed that 10x's!

Before I left I had been on a train only a handful of times (max 8), now I take 3-4 trains a day, 5 days a week. (If when I return to Canada I never ride a train again I will be eternally grateful)

Before my 'foreign' friends were Canadian students at Queens who were born in the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Africa etc.. but had been living in Canada for the majority of their life. Now I know people from all over the world, and they actually live there! I have coworkers from Columbia, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Turkey, Uruguay, the Czech Republic, and India!

Some things that have stayed the same: I download all of my TV (with the exception of the BBC), I live mainly on a diet of spaghetti, biscuits, ice cream, and Diet Coke, and I see all the big movies in the theatre (in English).

Things I miss:
- family/friends
- 430 1/2 (my old home in Kingston)
- the river
- incandescent light
- timbits
- polite waitresses
- catching random bits of conversations in public
- good reliable produce
- fluffy white bread (they have it but it can be hard to find)
- whole wheat pasta
- open stores/banks (a sight I rarely see anymore)
- buying things on Sunday
- driving
- Swiss Chalet
- unlimited Internet
- the drugstore isle of the grocery store

Things I don't miss:
- flying insects (there are so few 'bugs' here that NONE of the windows have screens)
- KSTs
- Matlab

Hopefully the next 110 days are filled with as much travel, fun, and adventure as the previous 110. They will include: the return of the students (new friends?), Oktoberfest in Munich, Neuschwannstein in Füssen, Halloween in Paris, Christmas fairs in Salzburg and Vienna, and many other things that'll just pop up along the way.