In exactly a month from now, I will be on an airplane flying over the Atlantic on my way back to Seattle. On one hand, it depresses me. On the other hand, it excites me to know I will see my friends and family back in the States.
My last month here is quite packed, even though my grant period officially ends on July 15. First and foremost, I am in the midst of writing my final Fulbright report that I am eager to finish and be done with. I'm not really even bothering about doing things until I finish it by Thursday.
Then next weekend will be busy as I will be attending seminars and workshops as part of the second annual HIA International Conference. Thankfully, it's in Berlin this year, so I really don't need to travel anywhere. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have signed up for it, given how close it is to my Fulbright deadlines. It will be fun to catch up with Senior Fellows from my year (2008) and meet plenty of new ones as well.
On July 4th (Happy Birthday, USA!), Brandon has organized a day of softball and grilling for the Fulbright Diversity Institute, which is a group of students from the University of Kentucky visiting Berlin for a few months, I think. In any case, he invited me to join them, so I'm excited to hang out with other Americans on Independence Day.
After that, I'll be spending plenty of time with Dream Project people, since many of them are coming to town, either through the UW Honors Summer in Berlin program or simply to visit me. I've already promised that I would take them to a beer garden and grilling in a park. We also are planning to watch Harry Potter 7 Part 2 when it comes out on July 15. 'Twill be fun indeed.
Today though, I woke up after sleeping for 15 hours. I guess I really was exhausted from the past week of vacationing that I needed a break from my vacation. My foot felt a whole lot better, and it's been much less sore today. I even went and bought 50€ worth of groceries this morning.
Tonight, I decided to be a bit more adventurous with my food (it's not very adventurous at all), and I combined some ideas I got in Greece and Germany to stuff peppers with seasoned ground beef and baked 'em in tomato sauce.
Here, I'll even walk you through the steps since I was so excited about this. First, I chopped up an onion and who knows how many cloves of garlic. Then I mixed them into the ground beef with olive oil, white wine, oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper. You can see that I already hollowed out the bell peppers too.
Then I stuffed the peppers—not too tightly, just enough to fill the space. Didn't want to worry about undercooked meat, you know?
Then I added the tomato sauce and some more basil. I also threw in some of the leftover onions and garlic into the sauce too. I also drizzled a bit more olive oil in.
20 minutes later, the meat was cooked all the way through, and the whole platter was smelling delicious.
I'd cooked up some fusilli pasta too and seasoned that with sesame oil and a bit of oregano. Good stuff.
Delicious. I should've seasoned the beef with more salt though. Otherwise, it was quite tasty and honestly did not take long at all. Boy, if I compare what I was cooking a year ago to what I'm cooking now, I'd say my Fulbright year has been a success. Thank you, U.S. government (edit: and German government), for such a wonderful year of learning and exploration. :)
Now back to work...
Sam
My last month here is quite packed, even though my grant period officially ends on July 15. First and foremost, I am in the midst of writing my final Fulbright report that I am eager to finish and be done with. I'm not really even bothering about doing things until I finish it by Thursday.
Then next weekend will be busy as I will be attending seminars and workshops as part of the second annual HIA International Conference. Thankfully, it's in Berlin this year, so I really don't need to travel anywhere. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have signed up for it, given how close it is to my Fulbright deadlines. It will be fun to catch up with Senior Fellows from my year (2008) and meet plenty of new ones as well.
On July 4th (Happy Birthday, USA!), Brandon has organized a day of softball and grilling for the Fulbright Diversity Institute, which is a group of students from the University of Kentucky visiting Berlin for a few months, I think. In any case, he invited me to join them, so I'm excited to hang out with other Americans on Independence Day.
After that, I'll be spending plenty of time with Dream Project people, since many of them are coming to town, either through the UW Honors Summer in Berlin program or simply to visit me. I've already promised that I would take them to a beer garden and grilling in a park. We also are planning to watch Harry Potter 7 Part 2 when it comes out on July 15. 'Twill be fun indeed.
Today though, I woke up after sleeping for 15 hours. I guess I really was exhausted from the past week of vacationing that I needed a break from my vacation. My foot felt a whole lot better, and it's been much less sore today. I even went and bought 50€ worth of groceries this morning.
Tonight, I decided to be a bit more adventurous with my food (it's not very adventurous at all), and I combined some ideas I got in Greece and Germany to stuff peppers with seasoned ground beef and baked 'em in tomato sauce.
Here, I'll even walk you through the steps since I was so excited about this. First, I chopped up an onion and who knows how many cloves of garlic. Then I mixed them into the ground beef with olive oil, white wine, oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper. You can see that I already hollowed out the bell peppers too.
Then I stuffed the peppers—not too tightly, just enough to fill the space. Didn't want to worry about undercooked meat, you know?
Then I added the tomato sauce and some more basil. I also threw in some of the leftover onions and garlic into the sauce too. I also drizzled a bit more olive oil in.
20 minutes later, the meat was cooked all the way through, and the whole platter was smelling delicious.
I'd cooked up some fusilli pasta too and seasoned that with sesame oil and a bit of oregano. Good stuff.
Delicious. I should've seasoned the beef with more salt though. Otherwise, it was quite tasty and honestly did not take long at all. Boy, if I compare what I was cooking a year ago to what I'm cooking now, I'd say my Fulbright year has been a success. Thank you, U.S. government (edit: and German government), for such a wonderful year of learning and exploration. :)
Now back to work...
Sam
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