green thursday adoration

i'm not sure why, but in germany they call today (the thursday before easter) "green thursday." as far as i know, in america there's no special word for the thursday, i guess just "easter thursday," then "good friday," "holy saturday," and "easter sunday." but i could very well be wrong about that. (i just googled it and yes i was wrong about that. it's holy thursday, not easter thursday, which now i'm like ohh of course)

i guess it's been several years since i've attended anything at church on a holy thursday, but what i remember from the u.s. was a semi-regular mass, but with people from the parish chosen to get their feet washed like the apostles. i'm very fuzzy on the details, but i remember wondering who would be chosen each year. 

i expectantly hoped for something similar here in germany, but perhaps it's just an american thing (and maybe even parish specific? not sure...catholic churches have sneakily more differences than you might expect). 

to be fair, i also can't read german very well at all, and also didn't look very hard at the names of the events today, so i was free to imagine my own thing. but when we arrived, i found out it was adoration of some kind, with some readings and songs interspersed with long stretches of silent adoration. 

initially i was disappointed that it wasn't going to be a holy thursday like i imagined. it was also at a different church than the one we normally attend, and the pews and kneelers were much more uncomfortable than i was used to, despite the fact that these kneelers were actually padded. 

the pew seats were narrow and the kneeler was fixed in position, so finding a comfortable position for my legs was quite an acrobatic endeavor. i sat internally grumbling, trying and failing to not move very much. i was sleepy from a hard day at the gym and the unexpected bouts of silence (of indeterminate length) threatened to lull me into a slumber. 

then i remembered that my fiancé had just mentioned how the apostles were in a very similar position, being asked to wait up and watch over jesus while he prayed...and despite how hard they tried, they fell asleep. it felt like we were in good company. even really great role models are still just human at the end of the day, and even when you care about something, sometimes it's just hard to overcome tiredness.

i also realized that there i was, complaining about a bit of discomfort, when we're literally in contemplative silence for someone who suffered and died on the cross. i recentered and tried to sit with my discomfort, rather than wish for it to go away. 

it also helped to shift away from complaining and nitpicking and focus on the positives instead: how thankful i was to be there, how thankful i am to live the life i live, and thankful i am for all the love i get to experience. and i'm thankful to experience easter with my fiancé, and see it with new eyes. 

fascinatingly linear blog growth

it's now my fourth calendar month of blogging. so far, the amount of monthly views my blog has gotten has been almost perfectly linear, to my surprise and delight. feast your eyes: 

click to enlarge!

january 2026 views: 421

february 2026 views: 880

march 2026 views: 1294

so if you could all coordinate to view my blog approximately 1727 times (no more, no less) in april, that would be fantastic. 

(as a side note, who are you people????? i am aware of like a handful of people who regularly check my blog, and other than that i have no idea who all these views are. please say hi!!!) 

no offense, but i am pretty!

a few years ago i realized that it hurts no one if i think i'm pretty. as in, a part of me felt like i could only think i was pretty if other people agreed. but then i realized i could independently decide to find myself beautiful and there's nothing anyone could do about it. 

though i still occasionally find myself acquiescing to a hypothetical objector, i often have moments of clarity where my insecurities fall away and i see myself as others might see me: i see someone who is pretty. 

the nuances of this experience endlessly fascinate me, specifically because my feelings about whether or not i am pretty seem to have very little correlation with whether others actually agree or not. for example, i've noticed a pattern where feeling ugly functions as a defense mechanism against the potentially vulnerable situation of others paying attention to me. 

it helps to ponder from this birds-eye view. it doesn't feel good to waffle over my own beauty, but being patient and open and as objective as i can about it helps me untangle what's beneath it and works towards the ultimate goal: not really caring very much regardless, or at least not basing my worth on it, while also reliably being able to pull a few levers (like doing my hair and makeup) when i want to turn on the beautiful switch. 

or maybe that's not exactly it. oh right, my ultimate goal is right there at the top: being able to see my own beauty regardless of others' opinions on the matter. 

eh, that's not exactly it either. i'm not sure. but i would at least like to have less moments of questioning my beauty (and thus my worth). kinda hard when i'm also actively pursuing (and getting rejected from many) modeling opportunities. but hey, a girl can dream. 

i'd really like to have a solid sense of appreciating my beauty, though, and for good reason. you know how some people (often older women, at least in my life) can't stand any photos of themselves? it breaks my heart that they can't see the beauty that's so obvious in my eyes. so i'd like to be able to appreciate photos of myself throughout my life, especially so that i don't deprive loved ones of capturing my image. 

and really i'd just love to free up the mental space "am i pretty" apparently continues to occupy in my brain. some things have made a significant dent, but it still comes up from time to time. 

we packed our first moving box

our international move is quickly approaching. i've been putting off packing anything because there's no point packing all the things we frequently use until we're actually moving, and all the other stuff seems so easily done it's not even worth doing yet. 

however, after packing the first box, i found the latter was not true at all. my mission today was to pack the cds and vinyls. easy, right? apparently not as easy as i thought. 

the moment i started putting the first vinyls into the box, i realized it's quite a big box, to the point where i'd certainly have to think about weight before i ran out of space. that was the first complication. what seemed like an easy "put some things in a box" now became mental math and shape rotation to find the optimal balance of space and weight distribution, while still maintaining thematically appropriate contents. 

i had started this task while my fiancé was out, and i resisted the temptation to just call him and ask what he'd do—i knew he'd have a plan sooner than i would. but there are already so many moving tasks that he's in charge of due to my inability to do it (like calling our german landlord about things and calling swedish moving companies about other things), i've been trying to take as many other tasks off his plate as i can. so i decided to persevere on my own. 

i hesitantly filled a box and didn't realize until afterwards that maybe i should have taped in together on the bottom. moving out of my apartment in the u.s. flashed in my mind—i had packed a couple boxes without taping them together, and they of course bottomed out. but these boxes seemed a bit more secure...i decided i'd tape them anyway, just to be safe. 

what followed was the worst tape job you could imagine. i realized i didn't really know what the tape was specifically supposed to accomplish, so i just placed it along the bottom seam, and a bit up the sides. it was clear packing tape, and i tried to rip it with my hands, which accomplished little more than tangling the tape up in on itself and rendering it surely more useless than it had already been placed. i tried to bite it, which worked to finally tear the tape, but tangled it just as much, if not more. 

by this time, my fiancé was home, and i gave up doing it on my own, to at least ask him how he would go about taping the box. this was the correct choice: as expected, he had a strategy immediately. he also mentioned how the vinyls i had already placed should typically be placed upright rather than laying down, which to my credit i did at least wonder about. 

after re-taping the box more securely, i managed to pack in all the vinyls and cds into that one single box, thinking there was simply no way it would be light enough to carry. but after breaking out the bathroom scale, my fiancé declared it was actually 10 kilos below what it was rated for on the outside of the box. 

so, our first moving box is officially both packed and not overweight. now that i've done one decently well, with the help i ended up asking for, i feel empowered to pack more on my own. and honestly, i don't think i was doing as badly as i thought anyway, i just didn't immediately have confidence and efficiency, but both are simply a product of doing something enough times. i'm glad i asked the questions i did, because even though i want to take things off my fiancé's plate, it doesn't really help as much when it's done poorly, so better to make sure it's up to snuff before i really go to town. 

oh, and for the record, the box that felt so big to me that i'd surely have to consider the weight of the items i put in it? apparently it's one of the smallest moving box options available...

hannah montana plot hole

today i watched the hannah montana 20th anniversary special, a heartwarming walk down memory lane. but one thing that stuck out to me is a giant plot hole in the series. 

in the show, miley is a normal girl who has a secret double life as a super star, hannah montana. she goes to great lengths to preserve this secret, including disguises for her friends and changing limos to avoid suspicion. 

throughout it all, however, her dad is incredibly un-disguised. miley the normal girl and hannah the popstar have the same dad, save the faux mustache he puts on when with hannah. but his name and identity as a famous country star (billy ray in real life, but "robby ray" in the show) stay the same whether he's miley's dad or hannah's dad at the moment. 

so how did no one discover this very easily discoverable secret?

i'd wondered this before, but today i decided to search to see if anyone else was talking about it, because surely they had to be. indeed, i found several articles about it, as well as other lengthier lists of further plot holes. 

in the end i don't actually mind too much, as long as i'm not the only one wondering about it, feeling insane. as long as we all acknowledge the absurdity of it, i'm more than happy to suspend my disbelief and accept that no one caught on, or that there's just some in-universe logic that makes this make sense. 

the best döner in berlin

ok, i haven't had enough döner to declare which is the best one, but this one was pretty delicious. my fiancé and i were out last night for a church event, and heading home, we passed a kebab spot with a line out the door. we had been rushing home because my bladder was about to explode, so we kept walking and agreed to come back and try it sometime. we took two more steps, then i realized, since we're here, why don't we try it? i can hold it a little longer. 

so we did. we waited in line—which surely would have been shorter if they had more than one vegetable frier and more than one vertically spinning meat contraption. the place is nondescript, looking like they've either just moved in or have been operating on bare bones for several decades. seems like a mix of both, as my fiancé tells me they used to have just a food truck on the other side of the street, and the storefront location is relatively new. 

the menu shows exactly two options, other than the drinks listed on the side, and a mysterious third option which has been unceremoniously covered with a swath of tin foil. the two options are straightforward: a veggie kebab (which is what they're known for, apparently), and the same thing but with meat: a chicken döner. you can order it with "everything" or specify whatever you want left out, especially of the sauces and final touches of greens and onions and such. i didn't expect many customers would request modifications, but we heard quite a few while we waited in the cramped space inside—there's no seating room, just a narrow rectangle of space to place your order, and of course the whole sidewalk when the space indoors fills up. 

we had already had dinner that night but were hungry after lifting hard at the gym. we ordered one chicken döner to share and headed to the subway, eating it on our way. the thing was massive, and it was a challenge to fit the whole thing in your mouth because it stretched so wide across. it tasted incredible. we traded off every few bites, and after each of my turns, i couldn't help but stop to say how delicious it was. 

we had eaten maybe a third of the way through the döner before we made it onto our subway car. we didn't want to drip it everywhere, so for our entire ride home we simply held it, tauntingly, not taking a single bite. the warmth and aroma wafted upwards. i couldn't tell what was harder: holding my bladder (you remember, i still had to pee) or holding myself back from the döner. 

finally we arrived at our stop and exited the train, immediately resuming our alternating bites. then soon enough we were home, and my bladder was blissfully emptied. i'd been struggling to eat enough the past few days, and after eating the döner i felt so satisfyingly full and content. 

today rolled around, as did the topic of what to eat for dinner. i hadn't thought about it, but a little voice in my head said the döner wouldn't be a bad idea...but logically it seemed like a long shot. it was kind of far away, and we just had it yesterday. to my delight, my fiancé said, "i wouldn't mind having that döner again..." and before we knew it, we were back on the subway, headed right to it. 

this time, the line was out the door when we arrived. we were maybe third or fourth from the door, and as we wait, the line swelled to perhaps a dozen behind us. the indoor waiting area was cramped full of perhaps another dozen. i'm not sure how long we waited, but as we did, my fiancé—after noticing the awning outside was repurposed from a coffee shop, with "COFFEE" still visible on the inside border—pondered the power of private equity and how they really could improve efficiency and queue times here so easily with just a few changes...

but honestly, the line felt like all part of the plan, with no intention to change it. as we waited, several people stopped to take a gander at what could possibly garner such dedicated queuers. i looked up their website, which was as sparse as their interior, yet one of the few items included was that they "often have a long wait." it's simply part of the experience! sure, waiting in line is tedious and annoying, but it also feels good to care enough about something to endure the sacrifice.

and man, did it pay off. this time we got one chicken döner each, and wanting to avoid the same subway-temptation-trap as yesterday, i suggested we walk down to the next subway stop as we eat. i only had forgotten how cold it was today, so my fingers stung with cold as i gripped the giant döner, bobbing my head around like a chicken to find the optimal bite positions. 

it was one of those moments i'll always remember: stride by stride with my beloved, eating the best döner in berlin, tromping all over the city because we get to do whatever we want whenever we want, and because we're more in love than anyone has ever been in the history of the world. 

my tutoring session went so well!!!

i had a trial lesson with an online swedish tutor today. i was so nervous, but ended up not having much time to sit in the nerves; we got home with mere minutes to spare. i had just enough time to log on and be nervous for sixty seconds, that's it. 

it was only a half hour lesson, and was mostly introduction and discussing goals and lesson format and whatnot. so in hindsight perhaps i didn't need to be so nervous, but if it had gone poorly, then maybe i would have thought my nerves were justified. 

conversation flowed nearly effortlessly. she asked if i wanted to speak in english first, which i did. then about 2/3 of the way through the session, we had settled all the introductory logistics, and she asked if i wanted to jump right in and try speaking swedish. 

something about her made me more comfortable to speak than i have been before. she's calm and kind, but also smart and thoughtful, without lacking cheekiness or candor. she gently corrected some verb forms just by noting the correct form and moving on, then later she could tell when i didn't understand a more advanced word she used, and stopped to explain it in both english and swedish. 

most importantly, i left the session on my tiptoes, prancing into the other room and beaming a grin at my fiancé. i didn't feel bogged down or embarrassed or stressed. i felt like this (speaking swedish) is actually something i can and will do. 

(i've been thinking a lot about therapists and coaches and things of this nature recently, including how you can tell if you've found a good one: one of the most important bits of information on this front is how you feel afterwards. and then i thought about how that's true of romantic partners too, and how sometimes i used to feel like i'd lost a part of myself after spending time with someone i was seeing, and how with my fiancé, it always felt like i was discovering new parts of myself. find someone who makes you feel like you can fly!)