Liechtenstein in the Olympics!!

I’ll definitely keep this one short A. because I tend to get a little lengthy in my normal posts and B. last night’s 21st birthday festivities left me a bit lazy today…

Speaking of birthday’s yesterday was in fact mine and thanks to my amazing friends and family it was one for the books. After an all day boat cruise to the barrier islands we returned home to cake and presents and most importantly a cold shower! Salt water on Stevie = not a good combo.. Mama has made the same cake for my older brother and myself every year for our birthdays and this year was no different and the cake was just as amazing!  With a full belly, a sun kissed glow, and 5 great friends we headed out for the night…in a LIMO!

Yes, Cree (my older brother) had rented a limousine for the night and we arrived in style that is for sure! What can I say….I happen to have the best big brother ever!! Luckily he doesn’t read little sister’s blogs so he will never know I admitted that! Gotta keep him guessing.

It is hard to believe that in less than 2 weeks I will be headed back to Mother Millsaps for my fourth and final time. It has taken me a while to come to terms with that sentence, and I can’t say that I am completely “to terms” with it yet, but I love college, I love Millsaps, and I will be excited to be back!  I counted the other day and it has been nearly 9 months since I have been surrounded my the Millsaps family back on campus. Incredible!

Speaking of incredible….I had an incredibly amazing moment on Friday night that just HAD to be blogged about. My dad and I were watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics (which have an all new importance now that I have friends all over the world) and out walks LIECHTENSTEIN!!  I knew they would have representation at the Winter Olympics, but it hadn’t occurred to me they would be in the Summer Olympics as well!  I literally (ask father for confirmation) jumped out of my seat and was more excited for this than when Team USA walked out!!  If nothing else at least Liechtenstein had good uniforms, but that is another topic for another time.

I promised to keep this one short so I’ll be wrapping this one up right about….now. Tcheuss!

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Goebel goes Global: Entry #27

Hiking in Liechtenstein!

What’s in a name?

So I thought about this little tid bit for a blog a few weeks ago as I was bawling my eyes out on the train from Vaduz to Zürich en route home. I’m not exactly sure why this particular topic came  to mind, but as I was reflecting on all of the amazing memories and people who I had met, I began to think about the stories I would tell when I returned home. I envisioned these stories involving breathtaking events and priceless memories, but then I realized they would also involve people and more specifically names that no one (except Jennifer) would ever really know or understand.

After nearly five months in Europe I learned a number of things, but perhaps one of the more interesting ones was the differences in names across the world. In the US a girl named Stevie or a boy named Ashley is quite odd, and names like Magda or Radek or Insuk are most often unheard of. But as I spent more time abroad I became used to butchering just about EVERY name when I first met someone, and everyone came to a pretty much mutual understanding that Jennifer and I would likely never get their names exactly right.

I mean it took us nearly the entire semester to get Elina’s name down, and even then I still managed to put my own Southern drawl on it! It was nearly a month before one of our Latvian friend’s Zane (pronounced Zan-ay) corrected me on the pronunciation of her name. Most often if we met someone new that didn’t live in the dorms it was inevitable that I would forget/mispronounce/or not even understand the name the person was saying!  I came to accept this, but as I was riding in the train I thought how interesting it was that while people may seem so similar and alike at the basic level of humanity there exists some cultural differences that will never (and should never) disappear.

Take for instance our Finnish friend, Roope. I’m sure most of you reading this post just mentally said Rope as in a braided form of string; however, his name is actually pronounced Row-pay and is a completely normal name in Finland. If someone were to be named this in the US, I can only imagine the terrors the child would face let alone how many times the child’s name would be butchered in school announcements! But the thing is while Roope may be normal in Finland the culture in which I grew up in would classify this as one of those crazy names a celebrity gives their child, and I am okay with the difference!

This difference in cultural normalcy of names is what makes the world and the country others live in so unique!  Meeting and living with people from all over made me aware of some of the most unusual names that I will never forget. Some of which include: Insuk from South Korea, Radek from the Czech Republic, Svea from Liechtenstein and a number of others.

Interestingly enough my own name was odd to those that I met. Most had never heard of the name Stevie or if they had considered it a boy’s name (much like Americans do). I have always loved my name if not for the fact that it fits me, but for the fact that it is unique. Very rarely do people forget my name, and any interview/competition/other ordeal my name tends to stick out and stay in the minds of those making the decisions. Thanks Mama and Daddy for the leg up!
I’m not sure if there was in fact an actual point to this post, but if nothing else I hope to have increased your awareness of just how different and unique names are across the world. Like many other things a name’s “weirdness” is culturally dependent, and for us Americans names like Josef and Garvin just might not ever be normal!

Goebel goes Global: Entry #26

Cooking with a local!

The memories seem to be fading.

It seems like time is flying now that I am home!  I’ve officially been state side for nearly 3 weeks, and while it is more than great to be home I’m faced with a daily dilemma: forgetting. Everyday more and more of the small memories and experiences I had while abroad seem to slip my mind and are only conjured up if I think deeply or take a trip down memory lane on Facebook.

You would think such an AMAZING experience would be almost impossible to begin forgetting, and don’t get me wrong I’m not forgetting everything, it is just so much happened in the nearly 5 months I was gone that not being surrounded by the culture and people everyday reminders seem to come less often.  I am constantly asked “How was your trip?” or “Oh you’re back, how was the experience?” and while the questions seems an easy one, easy is quite the opposite. You see I have come to understand that when someone asks that question they don’t in fact want to hear EXACTLY what it was like and where I went on this trip, or what I did that weekend, or who I met there they simply want to express their interest and nothing more. This being the case, I have come to answer these questions with a simple “Oh, it was fantastic! I can’t imagine not having done it:, and what do you know? This satisfies the inquirer and the conversation usually takes a turn either A. to another subject or B. if they really are interested to “so what was your favorite part?”

This question brings along an entirely new dilemma, because you see everything was my favorite part! Having to choose ONE part is nearly unimaginable, but I have developed a rather strategic answer to this question. It goes somewhat like this:  “Geez, I loved everything about the experience!  I really enjoyed traveling and seeing a good bit of Europe, but I also enjoyed the culture and Alps that surrounded me in Liechtenstein. It was also pretty neat getting to learn about the US from the outside looking in in a lot of my classes, but I think one of my favorite parts was just living with all of the different people in the dorms. We lived with people from all over the world, and go to hang out, mess around, go out, and cook all kinds of amazing international dishes which was a really neat experience!”

Give or take a few bits that is pretty much how I answer those that ask me to choose a favorite. I admit that doesn’t exactly highlight ONE particular part, but it embodies a good bit of the amazing things that took place in my months abroad.

I could not be more thankful to my family, Millsaps, and the big guy for the opportunity I had, and for Jennifer for being the amazing friend that I know won’t ever let me forget our time abroad. If I hadn’t had her abroad, I fear I truly would forget a great deal about the people and experiences, but I know once reunited we will have each other to reminisce about perhaps the best experience of our lives. (mine for sure thus far)

I apologize again for the lack of pictures, but maybe I’ll make it up to you soon. And after spending  time on this post, I shall now begin organizing and scrap booking my pictures from the semester so I will never completely forget!

Goebel goes Global: Entry #25

A typical class at the University of Liechtenstein!

Goebel goes Global: Entry #24

The US Ambassador visits the University of Liechtenstein!

Nothing but photos!

The weekend was filled with friends, family, and good food as we celebrated my return home in true Coast style with a crab/shrimp boil. While the following pictures are not of high quality, I am pretty proud of myself because I cooked a few of my first European recipes for the family. So as promised, a post of only photos!

 

 

Yummy Czech fruit cake in the oven!  Didn’t turn out quite like Magda’s did when she cooked it at the Uni but…still pretty darn good! Especially with homemade chocolate chip ice cream. Delicious!

Mama’s baked beans about to go in the oven. I sure missed her cooking while I was gone, and there just isn’t anything that comes close to baked beans on a summer day!

 

Finished product of the Czech fruit cake.  Very cobbler like, but much better and even the brother that doesn’t like plums ate it up! Mission accomplished.

 

 

Fried okra. Enough said.

 

 

 

This is how we serve boiled crabs on the Coast…dump them out on the table (or in an old boat) and dig in! There is just nothing better.

 

 

Daddy didn’t stop at boiled crabs. No, he added 30 lbs. of boiled shrimp too! Another taste of home I missed so much.

 

Finished product of the Swiss/Liechtenstein meal I cooked for the family. On the left is a Blechrosti made with potatoes, bacon bits, cheese, and eggs and on the right Zuri Gschnatzlets or chicken with mushrooms, cream, onions, and white wine sauce. A Rueblitorte (carrot cake) was for dessert, and surprisingly enough it tasted EXACTLY like the one we made at the Uni!

Till next time!

 

 

Grocery shopping strikes again!

Well I lied…this post won’t exactly be a picture only one to be honest it won’t have any pictures at all. I know I know disappointing yet again, but the topic was just so important that I had to write about it before I had time to find some pictures.

What topic do you ask? The GROCERY STORE..dun. dun. dun.

Now that I think about it I seem to blog quite a lot about food, but I guess that makes sense because I LOVE it so much! A little shy of five months ago, in my young inexperienced study abroad times, I blogged about how overwhelming the first grocery shopping trip abroad was for Jennifer and myself. I talked a bit about how difficult it was to decipher what products where what, find things that we knew how to cook, let alone operate the crazy shopping carts with 360 degree rotations! Well I ventured out to the land of Super Wal-Mart for the first time today, and oddly enough I had the same overwhelming experience.

The store was not only twice (possibly three) times the size of what I had become accustomed to, but there were SO many options. Cookies here. Cookies there. Pizzas in that aisle. Chips and dip in this aisle. Pop tarts, oreos, Tostitos, granola bars, ice cream, popsicles, and much more EVERYWHERE. I didn’t fully realize how much I had streamlined my grocery shopping process in Europe until I was faced with the task of grabbing a few items and fighting the temptations of so much caloric and mouth-watering American landmines.  I can truly see how America has become known for its weight problem, I mean when you have  two entire aisles of every kind of cookie known to man people are obviously going to buy them! And you know as well as I, buying leads to eating, and eating leads to weight gain. (Learned that one first hand in Europe…wince.)

Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some Oreos and frozen pizza, but I have learned that my body can’t take that everyday of the week (or really more than once every other week) and not see any downward facing changes. I’m not sure that I have a solution nor that there even is one, I can simply state that after nearly five months away returning to the “super sized” world of the American grocery store was certainly insightful.

I can say however, that Europe did rub off on my grocery shopping habits a bit! After seeing how wasteful and unsustainable we are by using ridiculous amounts of plastic bags EVERY time we go to the store, I brought along my own shopping bags to the store today. I know this isn’t a new idea nor is it even my own, but it is such a simple change that if more people would catch on to could really make an impact. PLUS I was able to bring all of my groceries into the house in only one trip because of the bigger bags. Now tell me that isn’t a good enough incentive!

So the next time you head to the land of consumption and plastic waste, I challenge you to bring along that duffel bag stored in your closet and see just how much better your experience will be. Plus you might even save a planet or two…

Goebel goes Global: Entry #23

Euro 2012