Keep it local…

The last month or so has been quite a roller coaster. To help me maintain some sort of buoyancy, of the financial kind, I've gone back to babysitting. I was happy to walk away from babysitting when I moved to Germany 2 years ago, dismissing it as a job for high school students, but with my regular job scheduling less hours and after the student that I home schooled on my lunch breaks moved away, I noticed that my income had tapered off.

I'd been seriously fighting to pay off my undergraduate loans (all $36,000 worth) while still traveling as much as possible and I just had to get back to babysitting to help me get back on track.

It turns out that I'd actually kind of missed taking care of kiddos. When I first moved to Germany, I'd thought that I wanted to get married right away and start having kids, but once I started working, I changed my mind. I decided to wait on the whole "settled down" package, but babysitting helps me get my fill of time with little punkins (with occasional emphasis on the "punk").

However, babysitting has also made my schedule a bit crazy. I was spoiled in the states, because I could walk to most of my sitting jobs, but out here, everything is a drive. It's easily 30 minutes from my house to a sitting house, another 30 minutes to work, another 30 to another family home, and 30 more minutes back to my house at the end of the night, so even though I am moving around a local area, I feel like I'm spending a ton of time commuting.

One thing I am truly grateful for, though, is that many of the villages that I'm now visiting on a daily basis are absolutely beautiful and are located in just the right place that if I've done a good job scheduling myself, I get to sneak in quick walks or can eat my lunch in a field of sunflowers or some such wonder of the world.

… it's always nice to know that if I can manage a few spare minutes, I can spend them somewhere inspiring…