Girls' time out

The evening turned my mood at least 90 degrees - for better :)
I had another girly evening out - in the cinema with M., watching "Away We Go". Very nice movie, funny and moving. It is so good that we both like watching movies that give us something to think about! Our guys not necessary like that, at least not too often!
Last week we saw "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee", also a great movie. I hope this will become a weekly tradition :)

So it's autumn again...

The last day of September was the last day in here for my sister and her boyfriend. They left today in the early afternoon for their flight home... It's going to be quiet and empty in our place now...
And on top of it, the weather is getting worse, so my mood is going down :( Recently every early evening I found myself so tired that I am falling asleep over a book! I don't know what's the cause of that, but as soon as I reach home after work, I feel like somebody takes a plug out of my body, and the energy is gone.
I have to do something about it, there is so much to do - for example, I have already signed up for the English exam at the beginning of December, so I have to start studying, really hard!
I started taking lots of vitamines, but I guess my body has not recognized this change yet ;)

High hopes

Okay, so I gave it a try. I gave myself a chance, so at least, if I don't get what I am reaching for, I won't be dissapointed and won't be regreting anything. Do I have big chance? It actually depends who else decides to give it a try... I know I need more knowledge and experience, but I have good feelings about this one... I really really think positively about the results... And I am going to do my best to prepare well and perform well at the interview.
I have to keep on visualising myself in the new role. New place, new desk, new description in my email signature. I know it is possible.

New picture

Here it is, new background picture of the blog. I think it looks nice. It was taken in the first days of September, on the beach by Atlantic Ocean... Brings a lot of good memories. I think it's a good change. The previous picture was taken during a really nice winter day last year, in December, but it had a very symbolic meaning for me too. It was reminding of the difficult times we were going through, the toughest ones so far, I would say. The feeling of powerlessness I experienced back then was one of the worst I've ever got in my life.
I hope this picture will take sad memories away. Although, there are some things, from which you cannot run away, even if you forget about them. Next year a new battle for a new passport and a new visa will begin... I hope it only sounds so scary and in fact it will be much easier than I can imagine right now.

Film festivals

Every year in September (actually, from the next year on it will be May), there is a film festival taking place in Gdynia, a city nearby my hometown. This festival focuses on recent Polish cinema and I used to go there and watch selected movies, trying to find extraordinary ones, those worth remembering because of their form, their story or their message.
For the last two or three years I couldn't be there and see any movies, but I am always looking for information about the winners... And today I was reading the article by one of my favorite movie critics about this year's festival. How happy I was finding out that the overall level of the movies presented was quite high... I cannot say: very high, we are still far from that, but comparing to other years, it is sooo much better :)
And now there are, again, several new Polish movies I really have to see, and I have no idea how to do it... I used to (if I haven't seen them during festival) spot them later in the local cinemas, but now... This will be more difficult. Probably I will have to wait until they show up on DVDs or on television. The thing is, most of these movies, if they don't find a company who wants to buy some copies and distribute them in cinemas, will probably never be "famous" enough to reach a random television or DVD-watcher, or a big cinema fan, who lives far away...

Making decisions

I had a really interesting training at work recently.
It was about making decisions - how do people make them, what is the process and the methodology they use, why do they often delay making up their mind... We had an exercise, in which we had to "rescue" six people from a cave, which was filling up with water. We had to decide in what order we would we rescue those people. We got brief description of each person. The results of this exercise were very interesting and showed us how different approaches and priorities we have, what is the most important when making a choice and how we make our decisions...

Yyyh...

And so it happened. I caught cold. I'm not surprised really, with all these people coughing and sniffing and sneezing around! I wish my immune system was stronger though...
So, I am sitting at home, in big warm socks and with a scarf on my neck, having bread with cheese and garlic for breakfast (my beloved bought me a croissant as well!). I just hope I will get better till tomorrow, really want to have some good times with my beloved, my sister and her boyfriend... :(

I know

Yesterday I heard these beautiful words, which I never expected to hear in my life: You know how to make a man happy.
This made me feel very very happy, especially that I heard this from my beloved. So what have I done? I just got some letter trays for him to put on his desk and organize his papers... :)
... or maybe there is something more?

Mission not accomplished

I would so much like to say: essay plans - mission accomplished, but I can't! On Monday I was so tired that I couldn't write anything. On Tuesday I spent hours and hours writing this what was supposed to be done on Monday... Today I am trying to chase up yesterday's stuff... I wanted to work on it during lunch at work, but my fantastic and super-protected work mailbox rejects emails from myself! :P
At least I made it to the gym - for the second time this week today, as I promised myself, although some parts of my body hurt terribly...
I still have some time to write the essay and then finish it off, but maybe... I will wake up earlier tomorrow, just to write a little bit? My brain really isn't eager to create intellectual paragraphs after 8.00pm...

Achievement

Yesterday night we've made our first small step to celebrating the real Polish Christmas altogether. I taught my fiance the chorus of one of the Christmas carols. Just three lines, from which the first two are the same, but still - in Polish! And with very accurate melody :) I just had to call my parents tonight and tell them about it. I can't wait when we will sing it together, and when my beloved signs it to my grandparents as well. I will be so proud! Of course I am planning to teach him much more... ;)

A little bit of sunshine

Tonight when I came back home, I saw a bunch of white and yellow roses on the table. They look like huge, bright piece of warm, shining joy in our room. And my fiance said that they looked just like me :)

First signs...

On my way to the gym I sticked my eyes to the ground in the park and between leaves I found chestnuts, acorns and beechnuts lying around. Already! That reminded me of my childhood and the times when we used to go with my sister for walks in the forest with my dad or my mum. We were collecting beechnuts to later give them to the woodman to feed the animals in winter.
The autumn is creeping from the corners of parks and forests, she's looking around from behid the trees and spreading her beautiful signs of presence...
I wish it was more colourful here though. In my home country, autumn turns the nature into mixture of greens, reds, yellows, browns, golds... Well, maybe I remember it so well, because I could see a forest from my room's window.
Here I have the seaside, instead :)

Goals

I am starting this week with guns blazing. I have two goals: first, go to the gym, and not once only - three times! Second: write at least half of my final essay (well, 12 out of about 18 pages would be actually about 2/3, but let's not make the expectations to high...).
I really have to strain my muscles and my brain, and try to do the most of it. I know this will make me feel good. Though, hard work at work ;) doesn't help much, really.
I managed to get to the gym tonight and it felt gooood... Now it's time for the first two pages of the essay, assigned for today. The process of creation is not as easy as the process of physical tortures and sweating, but I have to hold faith in myself :)

Movies' time

September means shorter days, darker evenings, colder mornings... It's time to prepare for autumn and take the warm sweaters out of the wardrobe. And get ready to spend lots of time on - at least in my case - reading books and watching movies!
This year I started this second activity quite early (have I ever stopped that at all? ;) I can't live without good movies!), probably because when we came back from our holiday, there were so many movies I wanted to see...
The day before yesterday I saw (500) Days of Summer - a really nice comedy, which I heard about during this year's Sundance Film Festival, an event where independent American movies have their time.
I must say I really liked it, although there was no typical happy-ending. The truth is sometimes bitter, but it's good to see a piece of a real life for a change, instead of sweet, unreal stories. Or maybe I am wrong? Well, that's only my choice I guess, but I warmly recommed this movie.



And yesterday I watched Broken Embraces, a new movie by Pedro Almodóvar, with - as usually fantastic - Penelope Cruz. This was a typical Almodóvar piece of art, with hot blooded Spanish women, mysteries and funny situations. Actually I think that this one was maybe less funny. There was more of a complex story in it, with many characters involved, with different points of view, emotions and desires. There were no good or bad ones in this movie, no clear answers to all the questions. Of course it was worth seeing.

On the west coast

Another day we decided to travel across the island from the east coast to the west one. I didn't take us long, even though the bus had to visit a couple of small towns on the way, like La Oliva and Lajares.
We tried to reach the lighthouse, but it turned out to be far away from the beach outside the town called El Cotillo, where we arrived. So we decided to walk a bit south, and visit the old tower El Castillo, which was a point of defendence for this Spanish territory from English and French pirates.
After spending quite a while looking for a bakery we read about in th guide, we gave up and had some Spanish ice cream, which were extremely fruity and refreshing in the 30 degrees and full sunshine weather.
The combination of bright blue sky, white sand and blue ocean, which we saw there, is in my opinion the most beautiful and the most calming set of colours I have seen so far...

Park Oasis

On one of the days we decided to go to the south of Fuerteventura, and we visited Park Oasis - amazing place with lots of animals and plants. We took lots of pictures with elephants, giraffe, zebra, camels... We aslo saw parrot show, reptile show and sea lions' show - can't believe how smart some of these animals are...
On the way back I was thinking about how weird it is, that some people in our age find pleasure and fun in for example getting drunk and losing consciousness, and some are happy enough, when they can have tasty smoothies or see some animals...

Water and fire

One of the best days on Canary Islands was the one when we took a trip to Lanzarote island. The travel by fast boat was very refreshing. I even saw flying fish - for the first time in my life! But it was difficult to take a picture of them, as their colours are as blueish as the ocean :/
Lanzarote, as Fuerteventura, is a volcanic island. Lots of the ground here is covered with a thick layer of dried lava. These rocky fields and mountains (actually - active volcanoes!) have a whole variety of colours: black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green and grey. The guide told us also that these colours change depending on the season and the time of the day - the sun light changes its appearance in a nearly magical way...
The trip to National Park Timanfaya and the travel by a narrow, curvy path between active volcanos was thrilling!
During this trip we could also see green lagoon and boiling springs by the coast...
In the evening - chilling out in the pool :)

Mmm...

One of the little, but very pleasant and happy discoveries during our holiday: a "juice/shake/ice cream" place called Secret de Sur. Situated somewhere near the end of the main street of Corralejo, is serving probably the best smoothies in the world!
Of course we could not end up going there only once - we had to try all three fruity combinations: with mango-banana-apple, raspberry-banana-apple and strawberry-banana-orange...

Los Lobos

Close to Fuerteventura, there is a small island Los Lobos, which makes an undeniable impression of a mystery. This place is empty, with no streets, no shops or houses, no people, except from those who walk along sandy paths in silence.
There are no plamtrees giving shadow, no flowers growing around, no animals, maybe only small lizards. Smaller hills are surrounding the paths, and above them rises the mountain La Caldera. Unfortunately, the extreme heat didn't allow us to climb it...
The trip to this deserted, undiscovered, kind of lonely place, so different from the toursit centres and at the same so close to them, was one of the most interesting experiences during the time spent on Canary Islands.

First impressions

Feuerteventura is an amazing island. It doesn't look like a standard "tropical" island, where you go for exotic holidays, jumping in the waves and lying under plamtrees... This place welcomed us with rocky mountains, red and brown deserted spaces, and a beautiful, constantly changing coastline - from unfriendly rocks to beaches with white silky sand...
The weather is the kind that I love the most - it's hot and sunny, no rain, no dampness in the air. Clear sky, and light cool breeze in the mornings and in the evenings...

Back home...

Okay - so probably the next ten posts or so will be about our holidays in paradise, which have finished just last night...
I will write about our exploration of the Canary Islands and try to put some pictures as well...
Coming back to reality is a bit of a pain, but it's good to be surrounded by familiar places and friendly people. It will be fine, I just need some sunshine :)