Thursday, August 20, 2015

London, Baby!

I recently came back from a week in London with my mum. We do this every year and it always is an amazing time-out and time to recharge your batteries and talk about our plans for the next "year" (yes, as a student and teacher to be my year still starts in September). Today I want to share some pictures with you.

How cool, Tower Bridge opened up for us :)

We discovered Temple District and enjoyed the calmness there. 

A cup of coffee, London's buses and a bit of people watching before going to the huge Paperchase at Tottenham Court Road. 

We spent some time at Tate Modern and visited the Sonia Delaunai exhibition. What a view, right?

At the Globe we watched "As You Like It" and mum and me were both a bit confused. What a strange story.

On our last day we spent some time around Little Venice and took a boat tour from there to Camden Lock via the Regent Canal. We love taking boat tours and I still cannot believe it that it took us this long to take it. 

Don't worry guys, I also spent some time in bookstores and bought some things:


The "Mr. Men in London" book is for my little godson Erik while all the others are mine. I love coloring books and this one is amazing. I also needed the little book by Terry Pratchett which is his speech talking about his Alzheimer's disease. I started the forword in the bus on the way to the hotel but stopped before I came to the crying part. 

I'm also so happy to finally have a Books Are My Bag bag and I adore the Waterstones bags and I think I get one every year (I have 3 now and love them all). 

After 11 years of going to London in the summer I experienced my first tube strike. It was a bit of an inconvenience since some buses didn't even stop because they were so full. In the morning we got up late and had a long breakfast but in the evening we had to wait quite a long time to get a bus back to the hotel. It was an experience but I really don't need to experience again.

Monday, August 17, 2015

My most personal post yet

My last post was my 800th on this blog. On the one hand it feels a bit like a milestone but on the other I must say I feel like I lost my blogging mojo this year. So I sat down and thought about it for quite a while and I think I now know why that happened.

A really good friend (yes, I'm looking at you, Judith) told me last week that sometimes you just need somebody to listen to you rambling to figure things out. So I'm taking her advice and start rambling to you, my friends.

As some of you might know, at the beginning of 2013 (what a f**ked up year, I can tell you) medical problems started to appear quite regularly and no doctor was able to figure out what I really had. It took them almost the whole year to come to a result and I had more visits to doctors this one year than my whole life before (I'm guessing here but it sure felt that way). In the end we were able to get me on some medication which is working pretty well (knock on wood) and I am fine - most of the time. What I never realized was, how much energy this whole procedure took from me. I felt tired, had no motivation to do anything university related, felt drained and like crying a lot. I never really talked about it - either with friends and family or with you guys. The only people who really knew how hard it was, were my parents because they were right there, living through it with me. I cannot tell you how important mum and dad were during that time (I mean, they always are but I would have broken down way more regularly without them by my side). After being on medication for a while, it still took me a long time to regain trust in my body and myself again and I'm still not 100% where I was before this all started. I still have days where I don't feel secure enough to do certain things but I'm getting there - slowly but surely. I have a wonderful family and great friends helping me through more difficult times and it means the world to me when friends are attentive. One of my best friends recently postponed his leaving the bar because we had the same way home and he let me finish my drink first. He just knew that it would make me feel better if we went together. I will also never forget when I told Judith about my medical conditions and told her that I would totally understand if she would prefer finding a different babysitter her one year old son and she looked me in the eye and told me she trusted me. That literally meant so much to me.

In July 2014, after over a year of misery, anger and self-doubt, something clicked in me and I realized that I only had one life to live and I started changing - on the outside and on the inside.

I changed from this person
to this
in a year. 

Not only did I lose a hell of a lot of weight, I also gained confidence, feel way more happy because I'm able to do so much more and see such a huge difference in my experiencing the world, I also - and I think that's the thing I am most proud of - did it just for me! I don't care about numbers on a scale, I don't care about compliment (don't get me wrong, they are nice and flattering), I don't care about the size of me jeans. I just wanted to feel better in my own body and I absolutely do. It really hit me when I saw this picture of me and little cousin and liked it so much. I always hated pictures of me but this one I truly love (so much that I downloaded it from my aunt's blog just so that I have it on my computer).


I'm still trying to figure out my life and what I want to do. I'm determined to get my degree and to overcome my fears but I'm confident that I can do this.

After seeing all the things I accomplished in the last 22 months, I have to say that I'm really proud of myself but these transformations in my personal life also took a lot of energie and willpower. I really do hope that I will soon get back into the swing of things with living my life more confidently and being more sure about myself, getting my university degree back on track and getting back into blogging - which I really miss. I want to finally be the person I always dreamed I could be and I'm on the road to achieving this dream. I just know it!

Read you soon guys and thanks so much for listening!