after the trip talk...

So my plan to blog while in Japan didn't work out. The internet was bad, my telephone didn't function properly and I was so tired every night. But I did try to remember what I did and experienced and I am going to post it now, after the trip, instead. I will maybe not write about all of them at the same time, I don't have the energy to, and I also need photos from my boyfriends camera so you can see all the wonderful things we experienced!

two days left!

Today I woke up early and the first thought in my head was: It's only 2 days left! In two days we really starts our trip to Japan. We will be leaving 6 am on Wednesday to travel to Arlanda (the airport). Take-off is then planned 12.55. Then we will spend the following 13 hours flying and changing flights before landing in Narita. It will then be 8.55 in the morning japanese time (1.55 am in Sweden) and I hope that we at that point had the time to sleep on the plane ^_^''' 

I also hope that my finacé still will be as happy as he can be. He sometimes have trouble to be still, and doing nothing for such a long time on the plane can make him really cranky (yes, like a baby!). I think we both have to try to sleep a lot on the plane, so that the times flies so to speak.

Today we are going to wash the last clothes we want to pack and tomorrow the luggage will be filled and ready. We also needs to clean and stuff here at home, like emptying the fridge and so on and hopefully I don't have to do it all on my own. Maybe I will also have time to meet upp with some of my friends and say goodbye to them. 

I think I am going to miss Quinn the most when we are away. That cat is like my baby and splendid two weeks on the other side of the earth is going to make me miss her. She will be staying with M's mother and Quinzel's cat-brother. She is going to have a great time, getting fat on all the nice food and have somebody to play with all the time.  Hopefully her brother wont teach her stupid things so that she will miss-behave when she comes back home to us ^_^

It's time!

Yes, it is time to write again! Finally I have a lot to write about. Last week I visited my parents and had time to spend time with my grandma and sister as well. It was wonderful to meet them again <3I got to help my sister move and I went shopping with granny. I also spent a lot of time with the dogs and Bessie is so old now, you can really see it. It was nice meeting all of them but I was also happy to get back home, especially because I missed M so much!

This week was also my birthday and I celebrated a bit with my fiancé and his family, and of course I got money and flowers and stuff from my own family but we celebrated together before, when I was there. We tried to get our chocolate fountain working instead of making a cake, unfortunately it was a total flop. I got a bit sad because I turned one year older and nothing really wanted to work for me on that day, but I tried to just be happy for all the nice people I have in my life instead!

Yesterday I got together with some of my friends and celebrated again for both myself and for Sy, who is born the day before me. It was a given that we should celebrate together this year! I baked muffins and J helped me bake a red velvet cake. We also had dinner together before we got to eat all the sweet stuff and it was great. we played some Zatzy and Sy won! Then we tried the cake and it was wonderful! I got a lot of nice presents at well and the night was fantastic over-all. I really love spending time with nice people! 

When it was time to end things I was really tired and I fell asleep as soon as i laid down in bed. Today I think we will start the last things before our Tokyo-trip, it is only four days away now and I am so looking forward to it! <3 We have to wash and clean and read and pack.. There is always more thing to do before a trip. I will get really stressed out but I think that as soon as I set foot on the plane everything will just flow away. I am not going to care about anything else than just having a great time in Tokyo!

(But I will really miss my Qunzel Princess here at home, I do really love my cat!)

... some tihngs about my life and about E3

When you live with the worlds biggest gamer the time before E3 is kind of hyped and I am starting to feel it too. It is one of the time that I will be able to catch up to the gamingworld and sureley we will both be watching in the nights next week (yes, it is in the middle of the night in Sweden), especially when I finaly have done my last exam for this semester. Maybe we even will make it a party and find some snacks to eat while we at it.

Today I watched some videos on Gametrailers.com as a start-up and I especially liked the new video from The Final Bosman about Nintendo and how they are kind of forgotten for E3 this year. He had some really nice statistics and I think he is right. I am somewath bias towards Nintendo myself, I have played Nintendo sience I was small and it feels comfortable and safe, but I still think that they are worth more interest than they are getting right now. 

On another note I can tell you that the job interview I wrote about last time didn't turn out good. Unfortunatly they wasn't able to hire me if I am in Japan two weeks in July. As I can understand. So now I have to use plan B and just enjoy the summer. I was joking with my fiance yesterday that I would be his housewife this summer, cooking and cleaning and shopping for him and make everything so much easeier for him. I think he liked the idea v(^∀^*) so that is what I will do. I will also be reading, watching drama, watching anime and hang out with my friends when they are free. it is going to be nice even if I will be short on money.I still have some savings I can use. 

The most expencive parts of my summer will be the trip and my need for new clothes. My closset really need new additions, everything I got is so old and nothing fits well anymore, I have also realized that I have underwear that is older than our relationship ( I have been together with M for seven years in June)... So it is time to buy some new things... And for the trip I alredy have a special account and the planeticket are allready paid for. 

It is going to be so much fun! I am so looking forward to this summer!! Ｏ(≧▽≦)Ｏ

Some sun in the darkness

My world have been kind of dark lately because I haven't gotten a job during the summer yet. I have really been so frustrated because I don't have enough money to survive this summer besides the money I have saved up for my trip to Japan. All the workplaces I have applied for have chosen someone else over me and a lot of them haven't even told me about it themselves. But today I got a call and I will have a job interview next week. 

Even if I haven't gotten the job yet and I know that maybe it will be a problem that I am going to Japan for two weeks in the middle of the summer, I am still really happy that they at least are interested in me. I have a chance! If I get the job then... I will be really happy! Yes, I already have a B-plan for the summer, with money saved up that I can use. And yes, it would be nice to have a whole summer off and just be able to take it easy in the sun. But a job would be even better. I could make money instead of loosing them, I would have something to add to my CV and I would have something to do. I also have friends working in the same place and hopefully I will be working in the same department. 

It isn't a glamorous job, I will be working in a chicken factory the whole summer, but it is still a job and I can promise that it is better than my last job as a on the phone customer service employee where I got yelled at all the time. So I am really hoping for this and even if I don't get the job I will see it as a good experience and still be happy that I at least got an interview! Wish me luck!

Hello cyberspace~!

Hello~! It's been a while! How are you, cyberspace?

Maybe you are wondering what I have been doing recently. well I have been studying hard, started to work out regularly and watched a lot of Naruto. It has taken a lot of my time and I haven't been doing much else, that's also why I haven't been writing here. But now I am back~

So besides all the things above I have also tried to concentrate a lot on the upcoming trip to Tokyo (on Wednesday it is 10 weeks left!) and have been studying what to do in Japan. I have also tried to lern some kana, but I think I have to wait until the end of this semster, I have to concentrate on my "real" studies right now. 

Maybe you think, why care so much, it is over 10 weeks left?? But I have been looking forward to this for so long, it is a trip I have wanted to take for as long as I can remember. But maybe I have to wait and be patient a little bit longer ^_____^

Whit my recent researching on Japan I have gained a interest in jpop and j-fashion again and I have found myself searching fairy kei on google. I really want to buy everything an I even want to paint my own pair of fairy kei shoes. Unfortunatly my money aren't going to cover it because I haven't gotten any work over the summer yet and the trip is going to be expensive. But perhaps I will be able to do it after the summer when I start to get money again? In the mean time you can get inspired by these shoes:

Hopefully yours
Vea <3

Hopefully

They say that it is two different kinds of people that wants to become a teacher, the ones that was really good in school and those who had it really difficult. The last category wants to become teachers so that they can make it better for the new generation. 

I don't really know witch category I belong to. I didn't have such a hard time with my studies even if I sometime was lazy an other times had to high ambitions. But at the same time some periods was really hard even if it had nothing to do with the school work... I guess there is also a group in between, people like me, that know that they maybe can help people as a teacher.  Hopefully...

Ni No Kuni

Finally I have been able to test the game. If you are wondering why I havent written i so long it is because I have only focusing on studying and gaming the last few days. Both takes a lot of my energy and time.

Maybe you allready know but I have been waiting for Ni No Kuni for a really long time now and now when I have it, it is as good as I hoped! I love how they really captured the ghibli-feeling in the game and how it is like playing a movie. The story is really moving along the usual story-structure of an anime movie. And the art is awesome! it is so nice and bright and detailed. It makes you happy just watching it. 

I still haven't come very far in the game, even if I have played for 8-9 hours right now. Maybe I will make a new update when I can write more about the story?  Tell you all if I finds something I don't like with it or so?

Diet, day 8

Yes, now I have made it trough my first week of dieting and it works. I have lost almost 3 kg (2,9) and the calculated was 1,2 for my attack-period. I am happy! But it was a bit hard, my body misses all the sugar so a couple of nights I have really been craving it, I have also easily been cranky over small things and I think that also is because of my body and everything it is used to have and wont right now :/ But I succeeded! So now I can start adding veggies to my food and it is going to be so good <3 

It feels like my fiancé doesn't really care if he is dieting or not so I have to stick with it even harder right now, I want to loose some more! I know that we both will cheat a bit on Saturday, we are invited to a party, but sometimes you have to have fun as well!

Before then my new course is going to start, history 1. I am both happy and afraid, they say that this is one of the hardest courses you can read on this level of studies but at the same time is it going to be so fun to study something new. Hopefully it is going to be ok, I am waiting for the first lecture now. In the mean time I will be able to listen to some old and new music ^__^

Diet, day 1

Yesterday was my first day of dieting, here is the list of things I have eaten:

Breakfast
Mini-Yogurt (no sugar nor fat added) 
A boiled egg
Water 

Lunch 
grilled meat (from yesterday) 
A little bit of quark (I am not sure that this is right translated but Kvarg in swedish anyhow) 
A boiled egg
Water

Dinner
Chicken 
Scrambled eggs
Milk


I have realized that I am going to have some fun making new things for this diet. My sister have given me some recipes to try and later on I am planning to try different things myself. I thing te first day went really well, I haven had any troubles yet.

The princess diet

After some thinking and discussions I have decided to try a diet my sister have tried. I am usually not found of dieting, I think you looses something when you always think about what you eat. But right now I really need to loose some weight and I can at least try.

So the thing I am going to try is Dukan (AKA the Princess Diet, I really like that name <3). It is a diet where you eat a lot of protein and excludes almost all carbs. Dukan is built on four different phases; the first one you eat only protein like meat and egg, the last one you eat as you usually do but have one day each week for meals on only protein. It is a way to restart the way you eat and the way your body takes care of your food (it is hard to describe in English >__<) and for me that sounds like something that can work.

I am not to sure how well this is going to go for me personally, I don't like not being able to eat what I want. But hopefully I can loose some weight at least (even if I don't really think I will loose all the weight that the web generator calculated for me). The best thing is that my fiancé decided to also try so at least for now we are two fighting with it! But maybe that will be a problem later on if one of us gives up because I think it is hard for the other one to continue alone...

Well, we will see. Maybe I will post some updates here about how it is going because it can be a nice way for me to keep track myself when I usually don't like to talk about these kinds of things, with all the people around me, when I am so afraid that I wont succeed >___<

FIGHTING!

2012

Finally it is 2013 and looking back on the year gone by I realize how important this year has been in my life. To start with, I started with, the beginning of last year was a lot of planing for our trip to Paris and Music Bank. It was one of my best trips in my life! So nice to travel with all my friends <3 and the concert was wonderful! and the food and the sightseeing... It was a fine way to start up the year ^__^

I come home and the life went back to normal for a while. But me and my fiancé started to look for a place. We found one and in June we was living together. It was also something wonderful, a step in the right direction for our relationship. After we got our apartment we spend a fun summer together, travelling to Göteborg and Stockholm, spending time with friends and family and just having a great time. We also bought our cat Quinn, our little baby.

The autumn was not as depressing as I usually finds them, I had my family to thank about that. Some small trips to meet friends have also helped. Another thing that was important was the preparation and the weeks at my internship at the school, I once again realized why I want to become a teacher. Unfortunately I think the internship should have been longer...

We survided the 21st of December and then we are finally at christmas, where I got to spend bouth in Katrineholm and Söderhamn ans also the days wen my sister wisited me at the end of the year.  In many was all of these moments have changed me, hopefully into something better. And now, looking forward to 2013, I really hope it is going to be a new great year!

When it comes to music it was also a great year, with Big Bangs Alive, the debut of some rally great artists and PSY's Gangnam Style, just to name a few. Maybe you would like to check out my playlist for 2012? I have also prepared a new playlist for 2013, hopefully it will be filled with great music!

The day before christmas eve

I will probably not have time to write much this coming week, I will be have to fun celebrating Christmas with everyone I know. Tonight we visited my mother in law and started the Christmas-celebration with porridge together with my fiancés brothers. We also played some Nintendo land before we went home. Tomorrow we will have a traditional dinner at M's grandmas place and on Christmas day we will spend some time at his fathers. on Wednesday I will be travelling home to Söderhamn to visit my own family and will be there until Saturday when I take my sister with me home again. 

So as you can understand I have a lot of things going on. But may be I will find some time to write something? Hopefully I will at least post one more text before new years ;) 

So what more have I been doing? yesterday we cleaned the whole apartment so now everything is really nice. The Christmas tree looks good as well even if Quinn still wants to climb it. We have a lot of gifts underneath it.Today I spent some time finishing my crotched kittens and then I baked. I made a cake to take with us tomorrow. So looking forward to it! Soon it is time to sleep, so it will be tomorrow really soon!

A dream

Sometimes I have the most crazy, wonderful dreams. After a lot of animewatching yesterday I had a new one, really sweet. I wanted to share a piece of it with you after writing it down this morning. But just so you know, everything was playing in my mine as a anime episode or a book story so the girl in it isnt really me even if I could really feel her emotions. 

Lucia and some other things

Yesterday was December 13th, Lucia, and as the good swede that I am I baked. Saffransbullar or lussekatter or saffron buns if you like, it has a lot of different names but the main point is the saffron. The buns turned out really great, I dont thikn I ever made them that good before! 

Unfortunately i didn't have the chance to see any Lucia-event yesterday but last Sunday I watched the coronation of Katrineholms Lucia (the official lucia in my hometown Katrineholm). So with this in mind I wanted to share two pictures with you. 

Lucia in katrineholm (sorry for bad pic)

Lussekatter in different shapes

I really like the Lucia-tradition, we all need a little light in our darkness thes time of year. 

Beside Lucia the countdown for Christmas is really going along. Unfortunately I haven had that much time to bake and cook but the Christmas tree is up (something that Quinn is really happy about) and the gifts is also almost finished. I have also bought the last ingredients for gingerbread today so maybe I will be making the dough tonight and bake it this weekend. 

On a side note I am really looking forward to tonight, we are going to watch the Hobbit, a movie I have been really locking forward to! so hopefully I will post about it tomorrow.

Edit: A  frined of mine sent this on facebook, I thought it worked in this post. 

 

2012 EYK Awards

Damn what a great kpop year it has been! I am right now voting for the 2012 EYK  Awards and a lot of the videos from 2012 are great! For example B.A.P with warrior that has become one of my personal favorites because it was newly released when me and my friends went to Paris in February and watched Music Bank. Or the new album by Big Bang? or G-dragons solo album with That XX, Crayon and other songs?  

Not to mention all the good girl bands like T-ara and Sistar that really have grown on me this year (even if 2NE1 have been missed). Lee Hi's debut is also worth to mention. They are so many! and it is so great that they are getting the publicity they deserves. We have to than PSY for a lot of the publicity. 

Even if this year isn't over yet (and neither are the nominees in the 2012 EYK Awards) I am still really looking forward to next year. Hopefully it can be even better or what do you think?

So much to do, so little time

Yes, it was over a week I posted my last post here. Sorry! 

So much have been going on in my life. I have been working hard as a teacher candidate and spent a lot of time in school, the rest of the time has been spent on my homework. 

But can you belive it, it is finally December! Soon it is christmas, my favorite holiday of the year! I have already been preparing for it by wrap some gifts, decorating my tree and the rest of the house. Just have some gifts left to buy and then I can concentrate on making sweets and stuff at home.

Here are some pictures of my christmas-themed home (dont forget you can click on them for bigger pictures): 

A lesson about bullying

Yes, this week I started my first "internship" as a high school teacher, For five weeks I am going to make lessons and hopefully teach the students something. So today I was going to work on one of my assignments for next week but unfortunately I got stuck on Youtube instead. Maybe because I realized that there are so many good videos out there that you can use in the classroom as a way to make the subjects a little bit more interesting.

Anyhow, I was watching "Teens React" and one episode is about Bullying and the video made by Amanda Todd. Maybe you don't know her? Amanda Todd is a girl that made a mistake in 7th grade that hunted her for years, she was bullied and got sick and depressed. She made a video that she and told here story through notes for the whole world to see. she wrote about being followed by the bullying, trying to commit suicide and hurting herself. About a month after posting the video online she did committed suicide and the video got a lot of views.

This got me thinking. I would really liked to talk about this in class someday. Bullying is important to talk about as a way to defeat it and I would want my students to get active to prevent it. So instead of making the lesson I had to work on I made one about bullying instead. I am going to share these with all of you and I would get really happy if you used the idea!

Bullying

Video: Amanda Todd - My Story 

Intro: Start with asking the kids if they know about Amanda Todd and her video on Youtube, just as a way to start up. If no one knows her just let it be with saying that you are going to show them the video. If someone do knows just say good and show them the  video as a way to refresh there memory. 

After the video is done you hopefully can get some different reactions from the students. Maybe someone feels sad and maybe a couple of them don’t really know why this is something you show them. Now is a good time to ask them “what did you think?”. After some short answers you can inform them that one of the reasons this video has so many views on Youtube is because the girl really did committed suicide about a month after the video was posted online. This will hopefully get there attention and they are ready to discuss.

Questions to ask:

•  Why do you think she posted this video?
•   What do you think about the “friends” that followed her with their bullying? Were they really hoping for her to end her life?
• Could anyone have prevented this?
•  Why didn’t anyone do something?
•  Why do you thing that a lot of people online post comments to the video saying: “she deserved it” and “she was the one that made mistakes and killed herself”?
• Why did the video get so much attention?
• Can you see tendencies to this kind of bullying in your life? 
• what would you do if it happened to you? how would you feel?
•  What can you do about bullying?

After this you can make a follow up assignment for this class. Maybe you ask them to make something to show that they care about people, like writing a text themselves or together, they can make their own video and post online, find out information about who you can contact if someone is getting bullied or anything other just to spread the word. That way they get the inspiration to do something creative and at the same time learn something about bullying.Of course you can get a spin on the lesson just to make it fit the subject that you are teaching, a video or a text can be a language-assignment and not just about bullying.

A Weekend in Stockholm

I spend this past weekend with J-chan in Stockholm and had a great ti me! I arrived at Friday around 6PM and started with spending a lot of money to buy the access-card for the metro and buses and then we went to J-chans apartment. Or room really, she is living in a kind of dorm, where she shares the kitchen with other people. We left my bag at her place and went back. We got some taco to eat and then it was time for movie night. We saw Breaking Dawn 2, I will write about the movie in a separate post. After the movie we took the train back and spend a lot of time just talking in her room before we finally fell asleep.

The Saturday was spend shopping. Found myself some clothes and also got a hold of some Christmas gifts for my fiancé. Wanted a lot of things in SF bookstore but only bought a manga there, I was happy to be able to say no to myself. But unfortunately it was the only time this weekend, I spend a lot of money >__< but all the things I bought I can use so nothing unnecessary... I tries to tell myself at least. We finish the day with some thaifood befor going back to watch some tv and then sleep.

The sunday we got back downtown a bit to early so we walked aroud for almost two hours. Happily they had a fleemarket on hötorget and we spend some time to look at all the things. we also bought some hot chokolate. When everything was open we went to panduro and I wanted to buy everything! Spent my last money there. afterwards we went to SF once again befor goning back home to fetch my bag and got ready for going back home to Katrineholm.

It was nice when I finally got home to be welcomed by Quinn and my fiancé and hot food <3 It was a really nice weekend!

About SD and Almqvist - as if we didn't know...

I was going to post something happy today, it is a happy day for me personally, but these couple of days there have been something else going on in media that I want to write about.
Maybe you know that last time we in Sweden held or election a party with xenophobic thoughts (sverigedemokraterna, SD) got elected to our riksdag (parliament), something I then wasn't so happy about and still isn't. A couple of years ago there was some online debating between on of the higher members of SD, Erik Almqvist, and a swedish comedian called Soran Ismail about a event that occurred one late night/early morning in Stockholm. Soran told his follower on Youtube that Almqvist and two friends he was with that morning (also from SD), came with racist attacks towards him. The same morning Almqvist and company cot in contact with a couple of other people and started to fight with them as well. Almqvist made his own video as an answer to Soran and told that he hadn't said anything racist at all.

This week the media got a hold on some video from that morning and off course Almqvist and his friends did say really nasty stuff, first to Soran about his origin (he is Kurd). They then got in a fight with a drunken man and also said racist things to him. A girl started to question them about it and then they called her a whore.  Almqvist did try to get out of this yesterday by telling a story about a how he at that time was depressed and drunk. He also mentioned that the unknown man they "was attacked" by said that he was part of a criminal gang and that they had to defend themselves.

Almqvist did quit all his work in SD yesterday after all of these reports, but he can still take part in the parliamentary discussion because you can't get fired from your seat there. He have to step down himself and right now it is unknown how he will do.




After these events I thought it was over but no, even newer videos was posted and now you can first see how Almqvist and CO finds some iron pipes and tries to go after the drunk man, they also talk about how they know that he isn't part of the criminal organization that he said he was. Not so good for Almqvist?

Not good for Sverigedemokraterna at all. There support is shrinking and a movement online is going on. In the video of Soran and Almqvist they both uses the words "det här är mitt land" (this is my country) and the tag #dethärärmittland has on twitter grown and people of all nationality and backgrounds is writing about who they are and how long they have been in Sweden, as a way to show that they accept the multiculturalism as something good.

So hopefully now you know what is going on? And I got to write it all out as a way to start to let go. And maybe this will get the people to change there thinking because I personal doesn't think that SD have anything to do in our riksdag.