Tee-hee II

see more crazy cat pics

Tee-hee

see more crazy cat pics

Appalled

Today I was with my bike in the train, on my way to a french lesson I was going to give in the northern part of Berlin. The wagon was pretty full, and I started noticing the different people. Among them, a woman, dressed up for work (skirt and jacket), who seemed to be around 45 years old, and had great legs, which she showed off by wearing a skirt. Now, the skrit wasn't indecent at all, keep this in mind.

A young man, maybe 18 or 19 years old, baggy clothes, huge baseball cap, huge earphones, is standing in front of the woman (who was seated). All of a sudden, he spits (in the train!)on the florr between her feet. She takes no notice of it and then finishes her phone call and resumes to chatting with the woman next to her, completely ignoring the young man. He then tells her loudly to "close her legs, because it stinks in here". (Her legs weren't wide spread or anything!!) She continues to ignore him. As if it wasn't enough, he decides to leave the wagon, or at least walk down further away from the woman, but while doing so, he makes sure to step on her little foot with his huge sneakers. The woman ignored him, and when other passengers finally spoke up, she said :"Don't worry, he's probably psycho, I'm just glad he's gone".

Now, nothing happened, because everybody ignored him, but I really had to question myself. How in the world can there still be misogynists, especially at such a young age? WTF??

Crazy people.

Today

Today I rode my bike through the city, with its parks and streets and bike paths in the sun. 12.5 km.

Tonight I did 90 minutes of Power Yoga.

I feel alive.

Hip Hop

This semester I've signed up for a weekly hip hop class and last night was our first session.

I had forgotten how much I like it, it felt really great! The teacher is nice and funny, although the hip hop teacher I had in Montreal was incredible and irreplaceable...

For those of you who don't know what a hip hop class look like, here's a vid:



This is what a hip hop class looks like ( except that my group is a beginner group and we aren't quite as good as these guys).

But hey, practice makes perfect! Besides, my muscles are so sore and it feels great!

Tonight I'm going to my second power yoga class...

Awwwwwwwwwww

Even though this is bad grammar, I just couldn't resist...

A Day in the Life of Pouki-Helmoutte

I normally clean Pouki-Helmoutte's cage at night, since hamsters are nocturnal animals, but this week it just wasn't possible, so I had to do it during her sleep hours. I thought, no big deal, I'll just move her in the summer residence (small cage), she'll continue to sleep and when I put her back into the big cage, she'll have to rebuild a small nest and continue sleeping... boy was I wrong!

I HAD to throw her nest out, because she wakes up during the day, and used to drag herself to her food, with one eye open, munch a bit and drag herself back to her nest. Lately she discovered that it was way more convenient to store food IN her nest during the night, so when she wakes up for a midday snack, she has it all there. While I don't have a problem with her doing that with dry food, it gets kinda gross when she does it with fresh food (veggies fruit and cheese) but forgets the food somewhere in there.

So off I started with the cleaning...



While I thought Pouki-Baby was quietly dosing off again in her summer residence, little did I know she was wreaking havoc on the other side of the room.




She then realised what I was doing...



"What the... Hey, let me outta here!"





"I said, LET ME OUT!!"

At the same time, in another top secret location, I was cleaning the bottom part of her cage, and quite happy with my work.



Everything had to be squeeky clean.





I was quite satisfied, until I heard a little voice...




"Hey! Down here! There you are. How dare you clean my room!? BAD HAMSTERMAMA!!"




"Ok, ok, I said I'm sorry, can I come out now? Pretty please?"




"Step 1: Pretend to have regrets and apologize. Step 2: Keep quiet. Step 3: ... Step 4: Escape!"


This is what her clean cage looked like: perfect! (I give her 24 hours before it looks just like it did before...)



By that time, she was really pissed off at me.



"I said, I'm not talking to you!"

But then I was able to convince her to give her clean cage a try, even if she was in a cranky mood.



"So clean...but...



...dude, where's my nest?!"



"Excuse me while I comfort myself with food... I am SO going to bring this all back up in therapy in a couple of years, you know that, right?"


Ah, the ups and downs of being a hamstermama...

Power Yoga A1

Tonight I had my first power yoga class. Part of me was a bit scared, part of me was curious. The description of the course said it's the most physically demanding type of yoga.

I'd been thinking about it all day, and was frankly quite nervous. I walked to the studio, and had butterflies in my stomach. I kept asking myself if I could really do it and what the other participants would be like. I really felt like a first grader on the first day of school.

Finally, the class went really well and I was able to do all the different exercises - I'm really proud of myself!

90 minutes of discovering muscles you never knew you had was amazing! I can't wait until next week...

Fine Young Cannibals

This song used to be my favorite song when I was 6 years old. And I still think it's prettty good, too!

You know it's SPRING when...

I choose to skip the subway and take my bike instead.

It did rain a bit on the way home, but the ride was wonderful, and having those little interludes of "fresh" air and physical activity between the various stuff I have to do during the day.

So, I rode my bike from home to uni, from uni to work (other uni), from work to back home, then from home to tutoring (I was giving french lessons today) and then back home again.

Total today: 26,9 km (16,7 miles)

Not a bad start...

All night

In my top five all time favorites...

Thanks

Thanks for the great phone call, it was nice talking to you after all this blogging. Can't wait to have a few beers with you in Berlin!

Deichkind - Looooove it!!

Remmidemmi

Vacation pics!!

Finally here are some pics from my France vacation - after my exam on Monday I was feeling pretty shitty on Tuesday and Wednesday - sick, sore throat, the works...

But now I'm better :)

So, here goes nothin'

We started out in Cologne and spent the first weekend in Vichy, where Carsten had spent 2 vacations, trying to learn French before he met me :)

I got to meet the family where he lived back then and we also visited the town, including its springs, where you could test different spring waters...









Here's the street where we stayed... Needless to say, your driving skills here have to be really good, since many streets are pretty narrow.



We then drove down to Millau, and saw the bridge that has been constructed.


After Millau, we headed towards Provence, and the route was beautiful. We took a little road through the Gorges du Tarn, the Tarn being a river. We had lunch in this awesome medieval village, and everywhere there were flowers in the trees - spring starts earlier in France...



and here is the Tarn:


We then drove on to the village of Uzès, where we spent a wonderful evening in a small Creperie, eating amazing galettes and drinking rosé wine.

The next days, we drove to visit the Pont du Gard, which was built by the Romans and was part of the roman Aqueduct:




By the vegetation, you can tell that we were getting closer and closer to the Mediterranean area: here's a cypress tree.




After the Pont du Gard, we headed down south to the Camargue region, and were rewarded with this beautiful sunset on the beach:




We had finally arrived in Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, which is an amazing village on the Mediterranean sea. We had once again a scrumptious evening meal in a restaurant, great wine and all in all a very romantic evening.

During the day, it was pretty hot in the sun, I even got sunburn! But the Mistral was blowing very strong, so it felt around 10 degrees...



We wanted to go horse-riding, but it was too cold, so we opted for a Camargue-safari instead...



where we saw typical Camargue landscapes, horses, flamingos and bulls.












Oh yeah, and we also saw this really cute stork!




NO, I'm NOT pregnant! ;)

Keep tuned for hte other half of our vacation...

Love it!

Just because

This is what I am listening to and doing my victory dance to:

1,3

Veni, vidi, vici

The exam was pretty hard, but apparently I made a good impression and managed to answer the questions in a satisfying way: I got a 1,3 (A for the north americans)!!

I am so proud of myself! (And SOOO grateful for the help I received in preparing)

Showdown in 90 minutes

In 90 minutes, I will enter the professor's office. He will be sitting there, with one other examiner, whom I don't know.

He'll ask me some questions and we'll discuss semantics and morphology.

20 minutes later, I'll get my mark. And be so relieved...

Exhausted

I'm exhausted. My brain is on overdrive. I've spent most of the day and evening studying, and my brain refuses to do anything more.

Thank god my friend Julius came over this morning to help me prepare for the exam, it really clarified it all up, I don't know what I would have done without him! :)

Thanks Julius!

And the rest of you, you better think of me tomorrow at 3:35 pm (9:35 am in Montreal and I guess somewhere around 6:35 am in L.A./ Vancouver)... please?

I'll let you know tomorrow when I get home ;)

Exam on Monday

I've been back but studying hard for an important exam on Monday!

Wish me luck!

ps. the vacation was awesome!