My summer. Part 2 - Germany

UNIVERSITY STARTS TODAY!!!
Can't say I'm entirely happy about it. Just because I'd much rather work than study. But now that I'm back in dorms and am already chilling with my friends, it's not actually that bad. I just hope I can make this year as awesome as the last one. If not even better!

My dorm room :)

Now time to continue about my summer adventures. Two days after the kid's camp I flew to Germany to live with my sister for a month. As I said in the previous post - I was surrounded by kids all summer long. My sister "works" as an Au Pair nanny for a 5 year old boy. I put work in quotation marks because she is just more like a big sister to the little cutie. That family is so amazing, they took me in as their own the whole month I was there. So yeah I basically had to spend a whole month with little Oliver. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but if you know me you also know that I'm not a big fan of kids and I honestly have no idea what to do with them. But somehow the days flew by and we spent them playing football (soccer for you American folks, lol), throwing dance battles and playing all sorts of games. And to be honest - I had loads of fun :)

On our free time me and my sister got to do and see some amazing things, places and events.

One of the things I really wanted to do while in Germany was to improve my German. And to do that I wanted to go to the Cinema. Cologne's cinema is probably one of the most awesome ones I've ever been to. We watched the movie Tammy. It was quite funny and the best part was that I understood almost everything! I guess my German isn't as bad as I thought.

A chocolate tower and pictures with some friends :)

One of the weekends was the Cologne's light festival. It was so amazing and spectacular! A half hour long firework show, great music, tasty beer and lights EVERYWHERE!

 This is from google just so you can get the idea what it was like :)

Also from google

Another weekend was the Bonn's beer festival. It was probably my favorite one. Not because of the beer. Which I also like, lol. But because of the whole event - the scenery was absolutely gorgeous! And yet again -  good music, great beer, great food and great people! There were things to do for everyone! Around 700 different beer flavors can be tasted at this event. And no, I did not get to taste them all! But I did try one of the best beers I've ever had - Belgium Cherry beer. I tell you people - it's the BEST!

 How amazing is this view?

 Even little Oliver had a blast!

With my sister :)

One day me and my sister decided to go shopping and do a little sightseeing in Cologne. To be honest - it is probably my favorite city on earth. Do not be surprised if in couple years I write new posts for there. Because I can easily see myself living there :) 

 What a gorgeous view :)

 Cologne's cathedral

 It's spectacular!!!

 The bridge is covered with more than 40 000 locks :)

In between those events of course we went to Bonn and Wesseling for some shopping sprees, we also went out for evening walks - my sister lives a half our walk away from the river Rhine. It's so peaceful and beautiful. All in all - I am in love with Germany. Always have been and always will be. There's just something about that country... I love it! And the month I spent there was probably the best one of this summer :) 

That's it for now. Wait for part 3 :)

Take care

-B- 

I did things! My summer. Part 1

For someone who's not so fond of kids I've been spending quite the time with them this summer! But hey, I ain't complaining! Since this has honestly been the best summer of my life!

Because of my job I've had experiences for life! In a good way! Mostly...
I'm a Project Manager's assistant. Basically, my boss writes all these projects etc. and I have to participate in all of them and do things I wouldn't normally do. For example - attend Student's ball. I don't go to balls. Not my thing. But I had no choice since I was also organizing it. So I dolled up (or at least got as close to that as I possibly could) , got my friends with me and I actually had a blast. I love my friends. They made this whole thing a lot easier and more fun!

Ready to go!

 Some group selfies!

The next thing I had to do was organize my high school reunion. I had to make and send out invitations, contact graduates, make name tags and on the actual reunion day I had to work till midnight. And only then I could join my own classmates. But it was so much fun. Yeah I was busy working while others were already partying, but everyone came to me once in a while and even brought me some food and drinks so I had loads of fun. Hanging with my high school classmates is nothing extraordinary because even though we graduated 3 years ago, we still keep contact and have parties together. (We had one yesterday!) So we are not out of each others lives :)

So now on to the kids... Right after the reunion and right before I left to Germany, I had to work at a camp for 80 kids. Now imagine my freakout when I found out I was going to have to be in charge of 13 kids for a week! I'm not good with kids. Or at least I thought I wasn't. They freak me out. All I could think about was how awful this is going to be. They won't respect me, they'll be stuck up and rude, I won't be able to control them... KIDS!!!

The camp was called "Healthy and Active". The program was mainly about sports. They had 3 practical lessons - athletics, floorball, aerobics. And I had to guide them everywhere and be with them all day long. I had to work from 8am to 11pm every day... Since those classes were outside in the stadium, of course I got the ugliest sunburn EVERYWHERE! Everything you can possibly imagine - I had that. My face was tan except around my eyes. (thank you, sunglasses). My arms were tan except for the parts of my t-shirt sleeves. My legs were tan except for the parts of my sandal straps... basically I looked awful at the end of the week. 
As for the kids... I got the most awesome kids in the whole camp!!! Everyone was so nice and fun, and active, and polite, and respectful, and chatty! I absolutely adored them! They respected me and I respected them! Each morning they would wait for me with stories about how they spent the night or how they enjoyed the day before! I had no problems at all with my kids! 

On the last day of camp we went on an excursion and spent half the day at the seashore. At first I was nervous because they all went swimming etc. But everything went well and we had a blast!

As we returned to the camp and they had packed their stuff and waited for their parents to pick them up, they all hugged me and said goodbye and it was the nicest feeling ever! I - who does not like kids and was scared to even deal with them - was sad for it to be over! I had so much fun! And it was an amazing experience I'll never forget! And as it turns out - I'm actually quite good with kids... Who knew? LoL.

-B- 

I went places! Part 2

Last day in Germany for me. To be honest - I don't really want to go home. I miss my pets and my friends. Specially one of them cause she just had a baby. (The day after I left for Germany. Sneaky little thing). But other than that I'd much rather stay here. I got to see some amazing places and attend some great events but that's a post for another day.  I gotta finish my story about London . I'm not really sure why I didn't write everything in one post cause quite honestly that was mostly the fun stuff. Now comes the more boring part, lol.

May 26. Me and my sister left London behind and went to Coventry. A town which I particularly wanted to visit for two reasons. One: one of my best friends lived there at the time, Two: I almost went studying to Coventry University so I wanted to check it out.

I hadn't seen Justīne for TWO YEARS! No need to say I missed her like crazy. Since I honestly love that girl with all my heart. And she was more than happy to see us cause no one had visited her in Coventry. She moved to UK after high school to study. Anyways, Coventry is not a big city and there's not much to do but I didn't even care. I was just happy to see my friend. So we stayed in and played cards and chatted all night long. :)

May 27. We decided to go on a little shopping spree and check out what Covetry has to offer. In the town center is a Transport Museum. The entrance is free and honestly I loved it. Me and my sister are big fans of cars and motorsports so we spent hours walking around and checking everything out.

 Justīne chilling with Postman Pat

After the museum Justīne took us on a little tour around the University campus. It is actually really modern and looks amazing! They have a huge library and The Hub is a great place for students to relax and study. I could definitely see myself studying there... Unfortunately I did not like the city itself. It's very grey and dirty. But other than that it was not that bad :)

 The Hub

In the evening we were quite exhausted so we decided to buy few drinks and watch Shawshank redemption, as it is one of my favorite movies and Justīne hadn't seen it. The next day (May 28) me and my sister had to take the bus back to London. My sister got a good laugh as we passed the Sherlock Holmes museum. I really wanted to visit it but we didn't have that much time and as we drove by it, I unconsciously put my hand on the window and stared at it with sad, googly eyes! My sister said it looked like one of those movie moments! LoL. So we got back to my friend's place near London and had a quiet night with some last chit-chat and Latvian songs in the background.

May 29. We packed our suitcases, my friend walked us to the bus station, we got to the airport and flew home.

Above the clouds of Riga

So that was our trip. All in all it was a good one. It had it's ups and downs but I really enjoyed it. I missed my friends. I miss them now! But we had a great fun together and awesome memories :) And I'm actually proud of myself and my sister because this was our first time traveling on our own and planning and finding everything by ourselves. And we survived! LoL. 

Now I gotta go pack my suitcase :( Or in other words - sit and watch my sister do the job.

Take care, everybody. See you all back in Latvia!

-B- 

I went places!

Greetings from Germany! :)

[great weather for some outdoor-writing, lol]

My vacation is in full swing! 20 more days with my sister and  20 more days left for me to learn German! Ja, das ist nicht gut! I'm usually good with languages but with this particular one I'm not in a good relationship. But since German is the only subject I almost failed in, I have no other choice but to learn it.

Anyways, as promised, in this post I'll tell about my trip.

Me and my sister hadn't been anywhere for quite a while. well... she lives in Germany so technically - I hadn't been anywhere. So we decided to go on a trip together. Since we didn't have enormous amount of money and time, we decided to go to London. And since I have the natural talent of being awesome, I had to plan the trip. It wasn't that hard, to be honest. We didn't have to worry about our accommodation, since I have friends who live close to London. We simply crashed at their place. But I wanted to see something outside London as well, so I had to do some research. And with a little help from my sister, the trip was fully planned! May 23rd - May 29th - London! (Probably wasn't the wisest decision to plan a trip for the last week of university (In Latvia schools end on May 31st and in June is the exam session)  Before I left I had to take 4 tests in one day and arrange everything so I wouldn't have any debts). 

May 23rd. Our plane lands in London at exactly 12:25pm and the excitement begins... Only it didn't last very long as we had to stand in a line at the "border" for one and a half hour!  And after the nice lady got to see that my face matches my passport picture (only I don't look beat up in real life as I do in it) we got our bags and finally met our friends who had been waiting on the other side for this whole time! Anyway, we decided not to do anything the first day. Since me and my sister were kinda tired from the flight and I hadn't seen my friends for a while, we just stayed home and had some delicious cherry whiskey and spent the whole day and night chatting and laughing.

May 24th, which was a Saturday, we spent in London. Went to see all the typical tourist places and objects, experienced the famous London weather. As in - chilling with our sunglasses on one minute, soaked wet in rain the next. But we were all in good spirits, excited and didn't mind the weather at all. We even got to see the Bupa Westminster mile (world's biggest one-mile running event - according to google) and got home at about 10pm. It was a day well spent. And my legs could approve that statement, as they were hurting like hell from walking all day long. Honestly - the only moments we sat down were in the underground and the train back home.

May 25th was probably my favorite. Since we wanted to see something outside London as well, I booked a one-day tour for me and my sister. It started at 8:30 am. The thing I really like about London and probably UK in general - it is really easy to find everything. And the underground is the easiest thing to use ever! So we got to the meeting place early, chatted with some nice police officers, according to whom I was in trouble since it was illegal to smile at that place. Oops!

[ Me and my sister before the tour ]

The tour consisted of 3 stops
*Windsor
*Bath
*Stonehenge

We didn't have much time to explore everything in all those places. But we did get to see the huge and beautiful Windsor Castle. I don't think a week would be enough to walk through and around it!

The next stop was Bath. It is so cute!!!

Right next to this park there is a small bookstore where - of course - you can buy Jane Austen's books. I swear I was more than tempted to buy Pride & Prejudice and go sit in the park and read about the charming Mr. Darcy while the orchestra plays in the background! I absolutely LOVE Bath. It's as idyllic as I imagined it would be

[This was delicious!]

The last stop was Stonehenge. And honestly - I was totally disappointed. Not as much about the fact that there's nothing really to see as about the entrance fee! This might be nothing for many of you, but for me... if I have to pay 25 £ to walk around a circle of stones... No thank you. That's half of my plane ticket. So we decided to simply walk from the parking lot up to Stonehenge (about 1.6 miles) and of course if you don't pay, you cannot go really close to it. But from what I saw, it was enough for me.

We got back to London at around 7pm. The tour was actually awesome. We both loved it. And our tour guide was a hilarious and wise man. After the tour we went straight to the train station to head home. At least we hoped for it... London, however, had other plans for us. All the trains got cancelled for some unknown reason so we spent 3 hours waiting for them to start working again. Funzies...Not really. We got home around midnight. Starving, tired and quite angry. But the day itself was quite amazing :) 

That's enough for this post.

Take care everybody!

-B- 

 

Why? Why me?! :D

Oh wow. I've been gone for quite a while. But do not worry my fellow bloggers. I was here the whole time - reading and enjoying your posts :)

As for me, life is good. I just finished my first year at the new university. May I say - it was a great one. So much laughter, adventures and also tears of the pre-exam panic. One simply cannot live without them, lol. But I ended this year with good grades, wonderful memories and no regrets. And to think how scared and doubtful I was in the beginning... Random road trips, game nights, parties and jokes. That's how I'll remember it.I got to go on a vacation too, but I'll write about that in my next post. In this one I actually wanted to write about something that happened to me TODAY!

My high school Latvian teacher died on May 28th. I actually saw her in my dream that night! And as I once wrote in a post - I'm the queen of weird dreams. And I almost never see the dead. So that was freaky. Anyways...She was a special teacher to me and my class so of course I decided to attend her funeral. I don't know the traditions for funerals in other countries, but in Latvia, here's how it goes - everyone goes to the chapel and puts flowers on the floor around the coffin, then stands around the room for a little ceremony...


Now, I've told this before, but I'll say it again - I am the queen of all things awkward. This is not a joke and I'm not overreacting... (and I say I'm the queen of a lot of things, yet, I don't see a crown... Someone should do something about that, lol.) but it's true. If there ever is a possibility of something weird or awkward happening - it's gonna happen to me! Til this day I actually thought it had limits. Apparently not. 

... So I walked into the chapel with my friend, she put her flowers down and then it was my turn... As I crouched to put my flowers down, I suddenly lost balance and totally fell sideways on the floor... The most awkward part was that I couldn't get up... Someone helped me and I just wanted to walk outside as quickly as possible. The worst part is that I couldn't laugh because it was a funeral. My friend Linda already had tears in her eyes but even she wanted to laugh and it was so hard to contain ourselves... but we did. Now, of course, as I'm typing this, I'm laughing in tears as to how clumsy I was! The whole time I was standing there, I was thinking - why ?! why me?! :D 

At first I thought it was a huge embarrassment. Obviously all these people saw me and it was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life...so far. But then I thought about it a little... and I figured how to calm myself down. My teacher was always happy and smiling and joyful. She loved life and lived it to the fullest. And I'll never forget her cheerful laughter. And that's how I want to live my life. So as I look at my clumsy moment - it was a sign from above that this is exactly how I should remember this day. With a smile on my face because I had the honor of knowing her. Or at least that's what I'll keep telling myself to justify my clumsiness. Either way - I'll probably avoid public places for quite a while now. *facepalm*

-B-