Everyday successes--without the peanutbutter

I know I just blogged super recently, but whenever I have tiny accomplishments here in my little Lost in Translation life. So yesterday (Sunday) I moved into the apartment where I will be staying for the next 2 months. My room is awesome!! It's huge with hardwood floors, a queen size bed, lots of windows and a ton of shelf and closet space. The bathroom and kitchen in the flat are also huge and fully equipped and excellent as well. There are three other rooms in the flat. One is currently empty, a Portuguese guy is occupying one until July 1 and the other girl is a Hungarian girl who owns the apartment. The apartment is in a fantastic location close to a metro, and buses, and a huge streets. Also, an excellent plus is that it is about 20 min easy walk to my office.
So, I took the bus to work this morning (under a ten minute ride) and then I walked home this afternoon. On my way home, my mission was to find a good, normal grocery. All of the other grocery stores I had been to before were really tiny and did not have much of a selection. I had found the address of one online, but I as I kept walking (I think I passed the one I was looking for, because I was on the other side of the street) I saw from across the road, a grocery store called Match that looked, well, AMERICAN. So I went in and fell in love. While it wasn’t HUGE like a Safeway or Ralph’s it had a bunch of aisles, a veggie-fruit section, a deli section, a meat counter, toiletries etc etc. So, I wandered around there for a while and picked up some salad and dinner stuff, etc etc. I went to go pay, and bought some grocery bags (they aren’t free here, so you’re supposed to reuse them, which I will from now on) and checked out. I had one tiny issue, where I didn’t know what the check out lady was saying to me, but luckily the person behind me spoke English and explained it. So from now on, I should be able to have a seamless transaction at the grocery store. That is now my new favorite grocery and I will frequent there when I need more then milk or something simple. Even though the walk to the grocery store was not far, it would have been a bit annoying in all of the heat and with my groceries, so I TOOK THE TRAM! There is a tram that runs all along this “outer ring road” so I took it two stops and then I had a about a 5 minute walk back to my apartment. So, basically I’m writing just to brag about my excellent exploring skills and tram taking skills. I think I’ll be ready to take on full on exploring and public transportation this weekend!!

OK more blogging later.

P.S. Peanut butter doesn’t exist in the supermarkets. Not even expensive imported peanut butter. But huge vats of nutella, and nutella marshmallow mix DO exist. Weird—kinda.