Happy Thanksgiving to you! If you live in the U.S. you are probably in food coma right now due to huge amounts of food. This year I decided not to stay at home for Thanksgiving, but to visit Montreal once more. I am glad I did, even though (or because?) there aren’t any turkeys or pumpkin pies around. The Canadians celebrate their own version of Thanksgiving already in October so this one is an average week for them. Being German I think I can forego the whole holiday rather easily because we don’t have that tradition at home. Nevertheless I am of course a little influenced and have thought about what I am grateful for this year.
- I am grateful for my family. My granny has had a difficult year and I am esp. looking forward to seeing her again in about a month. Also I mostly like my parents – except for when they send me photos of themselves playing with their fidget spinner. Like seriously?! As a teacher I can say that fidget spinners are the worst things ever invented.
- I am also glad that my students seem to have moved on to other toys. I don’t mind slime, it doesn’t make any noise. Trust me when I say it was a tough year for teachers with bottle flipping and fidget spinners.
- I am grateful for my friends, who live in different countries all over the world. Thank you for always being there for me!
- I have the best cat in world. If you follow my Instagram account, you already know that we’ve got again mice at home. But Canavar catches and kills them. He is awesome! I am still looking very much forward to the exterminator coming in on Monday.
- Last winter I was sick so often with my allergy that I am happy about every week I stay healthy. On top of this I am also glad that I usually only suffer from that one allergy, esp. since I noticed that people who are younger than me get sick much worse, e.g. with knee problems that can’t really be cured.
- Oh, and our school nurse is amazing! I don’t know what I would have done without her when I cut my finger. She looked after it and changed the bandage every two days.
- My colleagues are great, too! We work well together, sometimes go out in a group, and on bad days we cheer each other up.
- Besides, I am grateful for every day my car starts and drives without any problems; my garage who always manages to fix my car problems; maple butter; my dentist (gosh, I love my dentist and that is not only because of their massage chairs); the opportunities to travel so much; my hairdresser because she knows exactly what I want and turns it into easy to style haircuts; my new Canon 80D camera; Canadian cider, which is mild and comes in delicious flavors like cranberry, pear, and rose; the few men who approach me in reality when % 99.99 only use dating apps; my Amazon credit card and thanks to it me paying very little for my new Amazon tablet, which I am also writing on right now because it is really good; Trader Joe’s Christmas cookies and gingerbreads so that I don’t have to drive to Aldi that often; Jon Snow still being alive at the end of the most recent GoT season; the latest novel by Philip Pullman, “La belle sauvage”.
Life is good these days – minus the mice, the disgusting, horrible mice in my beautiful apartment. But since I am far away and in my favorite hostel, I don’t think about them as often right now.
Tonight when I walked back to the hostel, a few snow flakes fell – and everything felt just perfect.
© janavar
