Land of Milk and Honey

One of the beauties of being a foreigner in a completely new country is the incredible varieties of food that you have never eaten before! For me it was such things as avocado, papaya, mango, peanut butter, broccoli, smores (Whoever came up with that one??!!) and the list goes on….I also took on liking the American “milk”. Yes, the box did say something about “Half-and-half” but how would I have known what that meant?? The fridge also offered an option of “Non-fat milk” but I wasn’t planning on poisoning myself with that weird substance. So for about a month I kept putting this “milk” not only into my cups of coffee but also into my cereal and was drinking it by the glass anytime I felt like a cold glass of milk. And every time I tasted that “milk” I thought to myself: “This is America! this is what everyone was talking about….even the milk tastes so much better here than in Czech!”

About a month later I started to realize that I had been suspiciously gaining weight. I kept blaming it on the lack of movement ( In
Prague one would daily run/walk about 5 miles just by trying to catch the bus or a tram on time). Well, finally my host mother caught me gulping down my daily glass of “milk” one day and proceeded to enlighten me on the situation. I was quite embarrassed, I have to say. So during the next grocery shopping we bought real (WHOLE) milk and a week later I was 15 pounds lighter.