Awesome Thing About Living in Europe #12

Awesome Thing About Living in Europe #12:  Sleeping with Fresh Air

Almost all of the apartments here do not have air conditioning...including ours.  Now, I am sure some of you are gasping to yourselves right now.  But, no worries.  The Polish summers are not nearly as warm as they are in Chicago.  (Poland is on the same latitude as Winnepeg, Canada in case you were wondering).  So, in order to keep the apartment cool we keep almost all of our windows open almost all of the time.  We get a great cross breeze that comes through the apartment.  At first we were worried about bugs and mosquitos but since we are pretty high up it hasn't been an issue.  It is especially nice having our windows open at night.  Its such a wonderful feeling to fall asleep and wake up to a nice cool breeze...ahhhhhhhh!  Its so funny that this simple pleasure brings us so much relaxation. Now, lets hope that the Polish summer stays normal and we don't get any crazy hot days here.  : )



A Great Surprise!

I use a google tool called "Blogger" to write and format this blog.  And, when I initially created it I was required to sign up for a Google email address (gmail) in order to set it up.  So I set up an email address and thought nothing of it.  I still continued to use my yahoo account that I have had for years.  For some random reason the other day I logged onto this Gmail account that I set up.  And, I was in for quite a surprise.  There were a ton of emails in response to our blog.  Apparently, if you get the blog emailed to you and then hit reply and send a message it goes to this account.  Makes complete sense.  I guess I hadn't ever thought that people would respond.  It was so fun to go through and read people's messages. 

Thank you all SO SO much for the words of support, appreciation of the blog and advice on movies and TV shows!  It means so much to us.

Part of me felt a tad silly that I hadn't realized this sooner.  But, it was really a wonderful surprise to read all of the messages.  I'll now start checking that email account a little more often in case there are new surprises along the way.  : ) 

Awesome Thing About Living in Europe #11

Awesome Thing About Living in Europe #11:  Pedicures

I realize that this one might be a bit random, so let me explain.  I have always enjoyed getting a great pedicure as a way to relax.  And, the pedicures over here in Europe are simply amazing!  The technicians here treat your feet like a work of art and spend a ton of time working on them to ensure that they look and (more importantly) feel abolsutely awesome.  Because of this attention to detail pedicures here defintiely take longer than they do in the states.  I had one that lasted close to 2 hours!  At first, my American mentality took over and this annoyed me.  "Two hours, I thought....I could be doing so many other things right now.  Why is this taking so long?"  But, I have grown to enjoy it.  Now that my expectations are set I bring a good book and enjoy some "me" time every few weeks.