Whew!!

Yesterday’s discussion was intense. There were some great conversation and comments happening though. It actually ended up going a little bit more into religion then I meant it to.

I have a post about religion and what I believe brewing around in my head, I just need to find the time to put it down into a post in an articulate manner. Those kinds of posts can be hard to write!

Anyways, moving on. I thought we’d go with a little bit of a lighter topic for today.

{My planne screams at me every time I open it. I swear!}

Life has been kicking my butt, lately. Seriously, someone remind me why I thought it would be a good idea to take on three part-time jobs + freelancing + a full-time course load + training for a half-marathon. Anyone? Someone slap me next time I try to do that, OK!?

So I was browsing through my old posts the other day looking for something and I stumbled on this post where I wrote about the things I was looking forward to in the next day, week, month and year. I thought it would be fun to do it again!

In the next day, I am looking forward to watching Grey’s Anatomy tonight and tomorrow being Friday. The weekend is here again already, hurray!

In the next week, I am looking forward to getting some big assignments done and handed in next week and the fact that I only have one more week of classes left before reading break! I’m also looking forward to going out this weekend. I haven’t gone out-out in forever.

In the next month, I am looking forward to going home on February, 17!  SO MUCH! It’ll have been 6 weeks since I last saw Eric, which is the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other EVER. I am also looking forward to moving into my new apartment on March 1! More on that next week…

In the next year, I am looking forward to graduating university, going to Europe, starting my career, training for and running a marathon, meeting blog friends. There are so many things I’m looking forward to in the next year! Can the next year just happen already, please and thank you!

What are you looking forward to in the next day, week, month and year?

I’ve seen these types of posts floating around on lots of blogs, including Your Wishcake and Oh! How Lovely, to name a few, so I thought I’d join in.

I’m currently obsessed with…

• Lighting those beautiful j’adore candles. They make my apartment smell so nice.
• Going to the gym. I’m loving lifting weights and going to group classes again. I feel tough.  
• Calling Webster ‘Monkey’. I come home from school/work/wherever and open the door and go, “Hi Monkeyyy, how was your day.” Or when I call him I go, “Here, Monkey.” *imagine this in a baby voice*. When Eric was visiting I also called him Monkey a few times, apparently it’s my new term for things/people that I feel affectionate about.
• Food blogs. I just added a handful more to my reader. I love all the great recipe ideas and food pictures. I kind of want to write one but I know I would not remember to take pictures of all my food all the time!
• Blogging. I swear I’m getting more obsessed every day. I am constantly thinking about new blog posts, how I can make the blog better, my blog friends etc.
• This cool weather. It’s perfect running weather and it makes me want to run every day.
• Working on a new weekly feature that is coming to Girl with the Red Hair soon. I’m really excited about it.
• Fall TV – I’m loving Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters and Gossip Girl this season. Grey’s not so much.
• Writing, I keep getting these urges to write at weird times of the day so I have several unfinished drafts in my blog and a bunch of papers with scribbles on them in my school books.

What are your current obsessions?

Something I’ve always wanted to do is travel. Last year, I had the opportunity to spend 10 days in Germany with my younger brother. I jumped at the chance. Lately, I’ve been itching to do some more travelling, even though I know that won’t be happening for at least another year or so. So, I figured I’d do some reminiscing about the one and only time I’ve traveled abroad!

We were staying with family friends in Northern Germany in the small town of Ankum. Since we were there for such a short time we didn’t get a chance to visit the southern parts of the country like Munich and Frankfurt, but we did get to spend two days in Berlin.

This is the house that belonged to the friends we were staying with. Bernd, the man who owned this house, used to spend summers with my mom and dad in Canada when he was younger.

We walked and walked around Berlin for hours. My feet were covered in blisters that day because I had no idea how far we were going to end up walking and I just wore flip-flops. We visited museums and saw the Berlin wall, it was fabulous. One of my favourite things about Berlin was the cobblestone city streets and the beautiful architecture. I took so many photo’s of buildings because I thought they were so beautiful.

I fell in love with this building in Berlin, I thought it was SO gorgeous!

One of the things that hit me the most about my trip is the European culture. It’s very different. We walked and biked everywhere, we wore our shoes in the house (although, I hear Americans do that too?), we sat outside when we went to restaurants, everybody smoked, everybody drank beer on the streets, it was very different. My brother, who was 15 at the time, was able to order a beer and drink it on the street, no problem! I hate huge amounts of meat, break and cake. So much cake, yet at the end of 10 days I’d lost two pounds because we did so much walking and biking. I LOVED all the clothing and styles so much, unfortunately, because of the crappy exchange rate I didn’t do too much shopping.

Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate.

Another thing I noticed was how close together everything was. I remember the friend we were staying with said he was going to take us to a “small city of 250,000 people.” We were thinking, ummm, that’s NOT a small city! Haha. Mind you, we grew up in a “city” of 18,000 people! Also, they said we were in the “countryside” yet there was still tons of houses! Logan and I grew up in the real countryside, where there was a house every six or seven miles!

Me in front of a castle in Munster, the “small” city of 250,000 people!

Oh, and the autoban; don’t even get me started on that. I am prone to car sickness, so when we were whipping down the road at 240 km/hr (approx. 150 mph) I tended to feel quite nauseous. I don’t think I could handle driving that fast all the time, it was pretty scary!

Also, every time we got introduced to other German people we were asked if we were French-Canadian or English-Canadian. I guess that’s probably normal for Canadian travelers since Canada is a bilingual country, but it was weird for us since we are from the far West where there aren’t very many French-Canadians, and neither of us speak French. Logan is really good at languages though, by the end of the 10 days he was forming full sentences in German. Me; not so much.

It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to go back for longer and experience more of Europe. I also want to take Eric with me next time. I had a great time going with my brother, and we really bonded, but I kept seeing things that I wished Eric could see too!

Now you guy’s get the chance to make me oh so jealous! Tell me about some of the fabulous places that you’ve travelled, I know many of you have done your fair share of world travelling! Have you ever been to Germany or Berlin? What’s your favourite city in the world? (I loved Berlin but I still like Vancouver the best, it’s just such a beautiful city surrounded by the mountains AND the ocean!!)

PS: A little off topic, but I was sorely disappointed in Grey’s last night. Did anybody else notice how Alex had no facial hair in one scene (where he was outside on the park bench and Meradith came to talk to him) and then had facial hair in the very next scene (where he came to Izzies room in his tux)?? Shabby work, Grey’s producers!! I don’t know, the plot line is getting kind of old. Will she die, will she live. Make up your damn minds already. Hopefully next weeks episode is as good as the preview makes it out to be!