Comfort Food

I’m not homesick. I promise, I’m not. It is just that I sometimes miss home. There isn’t a certain person or place I miss in general, it is just that I miss the familiarity of being in my home country. Now before this gets out of hand, let me set the record straight and tell everyone that I am really enjoying my time here. I’m now in my third week at the DAAD and I’m really starting to get used to the way things work in Germany. I just occasionally miss home.

Photo: Flickr/ a1photoworks

And this isn’t uncommon for me, I feel like wherever I have gone in life I have experienced periods of time when I have missed home. This recent bout of missing home was probably brought on because I wasn’t in the States for Obama’s inauguration. For the short time I was home in between China and Germany I worked as a volunteer for the Obama campaign, and not being able to celebrate in America really hit me hard. But that is the thing about living abroad, life and people move on when you aren’t there. I’m still coming to terms with this fact, but I know that the experiences I’m gaining from living in new cultures and places is something I could never give up.

So how do I get out of these ruts of missing home, so I can enjoy this amazing experience to the fullest? For me the answer is simple and works like a charm. It’s FOOD. For me food is that thing I need, that can bring me back home, and gives me that sense of familiarity . One of my favourite restaurants in the US is a Mexican restaurant called Guadalajara. So this Friday when I was feeling a bit sad I made some of my favourite Mexican dishes for the family I am staying with.

Everything turned out wonderful! That’s another great thing about Germany, many of the grocery stores here cater to people from abroad. There were two entire shelves packed with all the things I needed for my fiesta: chips, tortillas, refried beans, taco seasoning, and all the vegetables were bio (organic). I was able to get fresh avocados to make guacamole and the pico de gala was to die for. I don’t even think I have to begin talking about how wonderful the cheeses are in Europe.

We topped off the evening with strawberry margaritas, as all good fiestas are not complete without margaritas, and then went bowling, another thing I love to do when I am at home. So even though I was feeling a bit sad during the middle of the week, by Friday night I was back to my happy, content self.