I’ve just finished the cleaning of the century. at least for me. I cleaned with a ferocity my room has never known. It was quite fun to tell the truth. I found things I forgot I had.
including:
a root beer can from the Berlin trip in twelfth grade.
three copies of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell – all of which I’m keeping
an old Beatles calendar – unused
a large set of spillikins (*plockepin*) – I forgot how fun that is to play with 50 cm sticks
the lost eye of my hybrid teddy, a hippo with a pouch - hipporoo?
books which I borrowed from a friend about ten years ago
11.92 €
old photographs and attempted art work made by yours truly

and even though I didn’t keep all this stuff, but most of it, it was fun to see all the things I saved. it must have meant something to me at one point of my life. I hope that the next time I do this, in twenty years?, I won’t be so grownup that I only see crap, but all the treasure that lies within said crap.

oh. what about the things I thought I’d find but didn’t. where did that stuff go? fairies and tiny trolls maybe?

last week I was on the second on-campus session with my course and we did a thing called a freewrite. you have a limited period of time (we had five minutes) where you write anything that pops into your brain. Darius told us that this type of exercise is good when you’re stuck and even though 90% might be unusable there is always something which is worth pursuing. and when the time was up we had to find that part. we were then divided into eight groups and we had to make our bits and pieces into a whole thing. and I give you the result:

a moment of great disappointment
She was crushed, her life was over. These godawful speciments from an alien lifeform that she would never be able to understand. Her friends were trying to keep her mind off it. Why did he have to spend all his money on that stupid new car? When she had asked him about it, he had answered:

"I like to drive and have my own car, it makes me feel free".

Sad, isn't it?

I hope you can't tell which part is mine :)

it's been a while since I last updated this thingy. I know you’re all dying to know about what’s been going on these last weeks ; )

last week I discovered something truly amazing, it was at F&S and I could feel a strange lump on one of my thighs and there was one on the other too. weird. all of a sudden it dawned on me. I’ve actually got some live and active muscles in my thighs. who knew? and even better, yesterday they were still there. sometime life is amazing in my shallow little world. true, I won’t be able to flex them when I watching TV for the pure joy of them being there like I do with my upper arms but it’s still nice to know that they are there.
what else is there… oh yeah. one more thing to prove what a weirdo I can be at times. last Thursday my parents went to IKEA and bought a kitchen drawer. not very exiting maybe. but I’m a sucker for putting furniture together so we spent one a half hour, starting at nince pm, building the thing. fun fun fun.
to prove that I'm still me I'll tell you what happened yesterday. I had to turn in a written assignment for the Creative Writing course and true to my nature I started with it about three hours before it was due. it wasn’t a very big or important task, but I still wish that I could change the way I approach tasks like that. it’s not like I do much these days so I should find some time do them before deadline. I guess that I will try to improve on not only my writing skills but also my not-doing-things-last-minute skills.

let’s see how it works out, shall we.

every day - an adventure
or it could have been if we would've ignored the traffic lights and used the shortcut to get over one of Crete's most active streets.

our vacation started last week. with an anxiety attack. for some reason. the night before we left I couldn't sleep at all and all I could think about was how little I wanted to go and wouldn't it be nicer to stay home and focus on my next move. but once we were on the train to Kastrup's airport those feelings went away (thank God)

we arrived in Crete with very little sleep behind us and not sure what to expect from the hotel and it's location, the suburbs of Chania - which turned out to not be such a great thing.

the view from our balcony

the first few days nothing much happened, we found our local shop and the beach, we got royally bored with the restaurant at our hotel, we figured out how to get into the city and we swam in the pool. pretty much the boring charter life of a seventy something lady...

Monday morning we went to the supermarket and bought our tickets to the bus which would take us to Chania and our first sightseeing trip or maybe shopping trip, however you want to look at it. funny thing is, you don't have to wait at the bus stop; you just wave at the bus as it passes by and if the driver sees you he stops.

a very tired and warm dog, he was breating - we checked

Minoan Excavations in Chania

the Old Venetian Harbour

our next adventure wasn't until Wednesday when we, rather bravely, went up at six am to eat breakfast and hopefully get on the bus to Chania in time so we could catch the bus to Iraklion. and in Iraklion find another bus which would take us to Knossos, the Minoan palace. this trip lasted the whole day and we spent about eight hours travelling, one hour waiting for the guide to gather a large enough group and one hour looking admiringly at the old palace and imagining what it once looked like. a very productive day I must say.

The Moutains from the bus window on the ride to Iraklion

The sign to the entrance of the palace area
I do wonder why you are forbidden to bring your guitar with you

Knossos

View from the bus ride home

Thursday we spent at the beach and in the evening we went to our favourite restaurant which we found on Tuesday, our waiter greeted us with a smile and gave us water with the words "cold bottle water the life elixir of Crete". after dinner we were given a bottle of raki, one of the famous alcoholic beverages of Greece , and watermelon - we discovered that even if the booze was quite strong, you were ready for the next shot after a piece of watermelon. ~ we were given raki last time we ate there as well, only we didn't know what it was at the time. I thought it was water so I filled half my glass and took a mouthful of the liquid. boy, did my throat burn ~ anyway, after we had almost emptied the bottle of raki we went back to the hotel or rather the hotel bar where I ordered a glass of ouzo and let me tell you, that went straight to my head. I've never gotten that drunk that fast. dangerous stuff, especially when T could tape you at the time. which she did. so bad.

The restaurant where we drank our first raki

Friday morning I woke up with, what I believe to be, a sprained neck. I had to pay to my crimes from the other night I suppose. I quickly texted my mother begging for help to survive a day being the perfect tourist in Chania. after arriving in the city we didn’t get very far until I spotted one of my greatest weaknesses. shoes. more specifically. shoes on sale. needless to say I spent my last euros on those shoes. I could hardly feel the pain in my neck while shoe shopping. who says money can’t buy happiness

the perfect ending to the vacation

on the bus from the airport to the plane I even found the most adorable guy who I flirted shamelessly with. to bad he was in his pram and about one year old…

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the school thing.
let’s face it. it’s soon time for me to make a decision: will I go back or not? after a lot of contemplating (and I do mean a lot!) I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not quite ready yet.

here's how I see it: as a teacher you should know a thing or two about life and the students should be able to ask advice from someone with a wee bit of wisdom and knowledge (still not talking about Buffy trivia). and I don’t have it!
I guess we all grow up at different paces and I suppose I’m a slow grower. I might be mature enough to work at an old folks home but I’m definitely not ready to help raise the future citizens of our world. and trying to guide them when I don’t know where to go. not such a good idea. sure, I’ve got three more years until I’m finished but I don’t think that’s enough time for me. I'm going to wait at least one more year ‘til I go back, maybe even two.

I do know I want to be a teacher one day. I just need to know who I am before I can try to help other people to find their way. I’m still a bit lost, but not in a identity-crisis-panicky sort of way (thank God) but more in the sort of way where I know where I’m headed and I just need to find the right path.

if that makes any sense…