My week: July 5 ed.

The theme of the past week was: friends, being way too hot, the swimming pool, and hanging out with some doggie friends.

The week was miserably hot, with some days hitting almost 100 degrees. Since air conditioning is rare here, it's hard to handle the heat. My apartment felt like an oven and all Moo could do was lay around. Oh, wait, that's what he always does anyway.

-I met my (German) friends at Volkspark later one evening. Usually I would just ride my bike but it was so hot that I couldn't bear the thought of making any exertion so I drove instead. We sat around in the grass and I was forced to speak German. Therefore, I understood about 75% of the conversation since my friends were speaking so fast. They taught me some expressions that we definitely would not learn in class ;) It was a nice evening but I was an itchy mess when I got home because I'm allergic to grass and stupidly let it touch my legs.

-I hung out with two of my little doggie friends. They wanted to cuddle and smoosh me, which is cute, but it was rather hot for that. Plus, I'm allergic to dogs too. I'm sure my doctor just loves that I am always practically bathing myself in animal hair. Oh well, YOLO, and the doggies did get some cuddles.

-It was 4th of July weekend. Normally I'd travel during the American holiday but this year I just wasn't feeling it. I was supposed to go to a camp out but it was just too dang hot. I don't want to do anything, much less travel, when it's hot like that.

Instead, I ran errands on Friday and then met my friend J for lunch at Urban. It was great to catch up with him and I do like Urban so it was good to catch up while they were actually open (they close too early, at 7 pm, so it's hard to get there for dinner).

-My friend Cl. and I spent the good part of Saturday at the Freibad Waschmühle (swimming pool), in Morlatuern, a northern suburb of Kaiserslautern. It's the biggest outdoor swimming pool in Europe and was an excellent place to escape the heat.

On Sunday, I was feeling physically ill from the heat. I couldn't stay in my apartment any more so I returned to the swimming pool. I alternated between swimming and reading my book in the shade. When I was there, I thought to myself, hmm, wouldn't it be funny if I ran into my coworker here, since she likes to swim? It's funny that I thought that because indeed, I did run into her a bit later! I love not living so far from work any more so different parts of my life can be more connected. That might sound strange, since most people want to escape from work, but I'm very thankful for a job that I like and exceptionally nice coworkers whom I enjoy seeing outside of work too.

All in all, it was a sweaty but mostly relaxing week. I enjoyed the balance of seeing some friends but also having a lot of time to myself. As an introvert, I like to recharge during the alone time. I haven't had much quiet time alone since...well, I can't think of the last time, so hanging with the dogs and going to the pool by myself were a nice diversion. Maybe it's funny that I was surrounded by other mammals at those times but also felt alone in a good way.