This year's Christmas tree

Happy holidays to everyone! :)

A quick study update

So...

I'm studying for my "World literature" exam I have next Tuesday. The thing is that study materials are extensive and so much reading and no exercises (like in syntax, for example) bores me immensly. And what happens? I remember all the stupid things instead of the essence of the subject I'm studying. For example:

• Seneca was a Roman philosopher and dramatist. Roman emperor Nero accused him of "I-don't-know-what" and he was sentenced with a suicide. He was forced to kill himself! How's that possible? Can you imagine something like that? In further reading I realized this was Nero's speciality so ... nothing unusual I guess.
  
  
• A funny thing to me is how literary historians and theorist describe authors. They always tell what his / her father's occupation was. How is that relevant? Ok it's relevant a bit in the case of Flaubert, for example. He practically lived in a hospital because his father was a doctor and that reflected in his works. But come on.. John Keats' father had a rent-a-horse /carriage company. How is that relevant?
  
  
• ... and other irrellevant information. How many times they were married, which one was gay, what school they didn't finish (it's usually like that with writers, yeah ..) and what stuff they used to get high. William Blake's father voted for oppositionist liberals. ??? Nice one. :)
  
  
• One of the funniest facts today was that pre-romanticism didn't really exist. French intellectuals made it up because Germans already had romanticism and they just couldn't afford to have the same thing in France. Not appropriate. :P

Yeah.. something like that. Now I probably have to focus on the relevant things.
Maybe tomorrow, I need some sleep now to think it all over :)

Poppy

More Amaryllis pics

I just have to share! Click to enlarge. :)







And some "blooms-to-be":

Poppy :)

The Bloom

I defenitely don't have green fingers. I am not talented for gardening at all. The only type of plants that I am able to take care fore are those green plants that only need water from time to time, that are not offended when I forget to water them and are definitely not sensitive. No wonder my beautiful Orchid died. :(

That's why I'm surprised by my lovely amaryllis! I Bought a bulb and had no idea what I bought. Fortunately the lady at that store told me this is a huge plant and it also needs a huge pot, otherwise I'd probably kill it. The pot she gave me was at least five times bigger that the one I intended to buy. Oops! :) So ... I planted it, and something green came out of the bulb. Succes! :)

At first I had to help it with a little bit of support:



... and it actually grew!

.. and then... it actually bloomed! And it bloomed beautifully. :)

I absolutely hate this weekend because of all the s**t that's going on but this beautiful bloom made my day. A green finger succes! Can't believe it. :P I have to try my luck with Poinsettias - the Christmas stars now. :)

Poppy

This year's Christmas cards

It's that time of the year again. :) I'm just in the right mood for calming down and getting into the holiday mood but I still have a test, an exam and several lesson observations at school. However, I still found time for Christmas cards. I always make my Christmas cards myself. I like them to look home made - they just look more genuine to me. :) This year I chose red + colorful. :) So these are some (not very good) photos of this year's cards. Maybe some of you will get one of these. ;)

Happy holidays to all of you :)

Poppy

St. Andrea fair

Despite my swollen face (wisdom tooth surgery) I HAD to go to St. Andrea fair in Italy. It's 15 minutes away by car and represents the beginning of christmas spirit together with the St. Nicholas's presents on December 6. And what is it all about?
CANDY!!!

I would love to have some but my jaws are not ready for chewing just jet. :) But that stick of roasted almond torrone St. Nicholas brought will wait for me. :)

Poppy

Surgery

Wisdom tooth surgery in an hour, wish me luck! :S

Too much imagination

I said I'll go to bed soon tonight because I was so tired today... I couldn't sleep last night (which happens way too many times) and a crying homesickness attack didn't help much with getting me a proper rest. I know, I know. I leave home for 4 days every week and I get homesick. Does this make sense? Not really.

However ... a lot has been going on lately, especially with my doctors. I have this weird groin pain problem for over a year now and last week I decided to get another doctor and get things fixed. Successfully? Not really. Well yes.. getting another doctor worked out great, I'm really happy with her. But groin pain? Went to the ultrasound and they checked for about thousand things bud didn't find anything special... I was really frustrated about that, driving home in tears ... I'm a whimperer, I know. Can't help it. :) We went through my medical file with my new doctor and what happened was that we realized we forgot about one thing.

I have a bone disease of some sort, that I "inherited" from my dad. Well it's not really a disease, I just grow extra bones where definitely NOT needed. :D It is called hereditary multiple exostoses and in my case it is definitely not as bad as you can see on the photo on Wiki. I have already had two surgeries but considering the fact I was a cheerleader and a dancer for 9 years that wasn't an obstacle. Well now as I'm getting old(er) it's becoming an obstaclce. My groin pain is most likely to be another exostosis that is irritating the muscles around it. I'm getting an X-ray on Friday and then we'll see.

I totally made this post too long. What I wanted to say in the beginning was that I was trying to go to bed and had some stupid thoughts...maybe a bit inapropriate too ... :)) That always happens. However.. I was thinking about how stupid it would be to have another operation ... and on my hip! P.E. professor was making fun of me because I wasn't really active at his class. "Do you have a plastic hip already?" Well, maybe we're not far from that, lol! And then I started to think about how unfair it is to inherit a disease. And then! I just started to sing a (slightly adapted) song in my head:

"I got it from my papa,
I got it from my papa!
Baby where'd you get your weird body from?
Tell me where'd you get your bones from?
I got it from my papa, I got it from my papa!

He would kill me if he heard that ... :D

Poppy

Our Beloved Professors.

I'm not in a very good mood right now. Looks like the time's not right to be in a good relationship with our professors. When I just started to believe things get a bit more humaine and adult when you get to the university my last two classes proved me wrong.

At linguistic practice class we were working on an article about travelling. What is the difference between a traveller and a tourist? Does travelling broaden our minds?
"Yes, of course," I said ... every new information broadens your mind a bit, especially if you experience it yourself. No matter what that is. And the professor asked: "Really? Are you sure? Do you get to know a country when you go sight-seing?"
In my opinion you always see and notice other things besides sight-seeing. You can't just be blind for your surroundings or what? You see people, little shops, places they live and everything. While you're doing sight seing. I don't believe in that phrase anyway.
"Well do you think you really get to know people and their lifestyle there when you stay in a hotel?" Then my eyes started rolling around. That's an automatic when someone annoys me. I guess she never couch-surfed or stayed in a HOSTEL. I just don't think the tearm "broaden" should be limited to knowing the country and people (if we're talking about travelling now) in-depth. I don't see it as some kind of enlightment or revelation, great discovery! Small things can broden your mind too! She claimed you have to be there at least three weeks to get to know things well. Well I don't need to know everything! I was in rome for 2 hours when I discovered that it's a dirty and smelly city full of gipsies who want to sell you stuff everywhere you go. Is that broadening my mind? Did I see the real picture of the "eternal city" I think I did.

Today we had word formation class which pissed me off even more. Last time I couldn't come because I had a presentation in some other class. Yes, it's really cool to be a double-major student, you have 2 classes at the same time, yay!
However, there was a homework to do. We had to find clippings, acronyms and initialisms, 10 examples of each. Of course, no problem. Unfortunately I started doing that before I copied the notes from the lecture so some examples were the same. Then a girl who was called before me listed even those "new" clippings that I had left. When I came to the blackboard there were only 2 left that weren't listed before. Great. She wasn't impressed. For initialisms I first listed ASAP and she said that doesn't count because that's computer language. Well I'm sorry if you're falling, behind, dear professor but that is everyday speech! I'm afraid someday thoughts like this will just escape through my mouth ...

And suddenly the professor started yelling at me!
"Is this a homework or what? You are not creative at all! I Expected more, you know ..."
I was just staring at her... at the age of 21 I was scolded for not doing my (stupid, primary school-like) homework properly! I felt like in 5th grade when my math teacher called me up, checked my homework and wrote a notice to my parents because I only had hearts and scribblings all around. Pretty much horrible :P

I'm just going to rock another stupid home task on word formation. This time I'm looking for blends so if you have any, please share. I'll have a cogent argument for her - these are from native speakers, dear professors. I Hate you too. Thanks. Bye. :P

Poppy

Soccer.

Yeah.
It was Wednesday and there was this so-very-important soccer match. Slovenia vs. Russia. Only one can compete in the world championship, who will that be?

I SO don't care. :P I just wished for Russia to win. Of course people would be disappointed but they would forget about it in a week or so...

And what happened? Slovenia won! And what now? I will have to listen about it for months! People praise them 24/7, players have receptions at the President's, singers are already writing anthems, the mayor of our capital, Ljubljana, promised a new stadium and nonsense after nonsense ... And I'm so sick of it! They talk about them like they're some kind of gods or something and I can just imagine them competing at the worlds ... and coming to grief because they became so full of themselves they will forget how to play. (Just like once before, remember? )

I'm sick of them because we have many other good (or better, in my opinion) athletes, who constantly show us their qualities but are quickly forgotten (by their sponsors, too) because their disciplines aren't that popular. For instance, I'm talking about Aljaž Pegan on horizontal bar, his colleague Mitja Petkovšek on paralell bars, our excellent cross-country skier Petra Majdič, Slovenian sailors, Olympic and world champion in hammer throwing Primož Kozmus ... and everyone forgot about Rajmond Debevec and the rowing couple - Iztok Čop and Luka Špik because they have won so many times it's not even interesting any more ...

On Wednesday evening facebook was full of South Africa stuff, full of "yays" and "congratz" and "Slovenia's going forward" and I just thought how stupid everything was.

Bleh. :P

Poppy

Postcards

Are there any more postcards coming? Should I announce the winner already? :)

Don't know what this post is about?
Check HERE.

I'll give you another week. ;)

Poppy

Time flies

About a month ago I had to do some fabric shopping. I was going to make a beautiful birthday present for my friend. :)

However ... I went to that shop and met a lady that used to live in the same building. Her son is 22, a year older than I am. We used to be best sand-box friends. She obviously needed some time to figure out who I was and when the shop-assistant was preparing that beaufitul blue shiny fabric for me she said: "Oh, hey, Poppy ... are you getting some fabric for your prom dress?"

I just smiled and said that I'm just going to be creative a bit. I didn't mention that my prom was 3 years ago ... time really does fly by fast and I couldn't expect her to know I am 15 years older than I was 15 years ago ;)

Poppy

American literature task

Will you help me do my homework? Pleeease? :)

There's nothing much to do, really, but since I have some followers from the US I decided to turn to you. :)

I have to prepare a presentation about Benjamin Franklin and his Autobiography. I have already looked him up and he did soooooo many things!

I'm interested in your opinion; what do you think is the most important thing he's done? What do you first think of when you hear his name? What does he resemble for American people?



Thank you very much for your help! :)

Poppy

Autumn weekend

I found another part time job some time ago and I can do it whenever I want and as much as I want to. It brings me enough money to and so I deciced to quit my other part time job in a cafe. I have weekends for myself now, I can do whatever I wand and my legs don't hurt any more either. :) Weekend free time was so cool. It actually gives me time for some activities! Autumn really kicked in in the last few day so we also had some autumn activities. :)

Halloween is't a tradition here. It is considered commercial and "imported" and a lot of people don't like it because of that. We didn't do any trick or treating, but we carved a pumpkin anyway! :) It can't be compared to Skye's pumpkins but I like mine because of its simplicity. :) I am low-key. Since I almost killed last year's pumpkin my boyfriend decided I should only choose a stencil and he would carve it. This is what it looked like in the evening. :) Difficult thing to carve, right? :)

A funny kind of creepy. :) We finished our carving experiment with a good measure of roasted chestnuts and a glass of red wine. :)


On Sunday I decided to take a walk in the nature and photograph some of those beautiful autumn colors. I am not much of a photographer and later it also turned out it is still to warm in our valley for those shades of red, brown and yellow. But the yellow vines really pop out in that green grass.

Foxy didn't seem to mind any lack of colors. As long as there's a stick to fetch, of course. :)

And there was also a very curious Mr. Horse.

To find some more autumn colors we headed for the hills in the afternoon - and we were awarded. After a cold morning we were surprised how warm it was 800 meters higer. Thermal did it's thing and the paragliders took advantage of it. :)

Foxy is crazy about any kind of outside activity or field trip, but a nice view, that's something new. :P

And we finally found some more colors!

The weekend is over and I'm back to cold, rainy Maribor. Back to school. :) But another weekend isn't that far away. :)

Poppy

First set of postcards

Ok. I didn't get any postcard for 14 days and then some people felt sorry for me and sent me some. :D However ... I was asked to put them online so here's the first set of them. I'm expecting more, of course. :P

The first one I bought myself. It is just so cute. There's this little guy called Lumpi which is actually some big Slovenian merchant "mascot" but is very much loved among us. :)) This postcard says "I think about you a lot" and I just had to have it. :)


The second one is from my friend who locked me in that day. :D That's also a very nice postcard. It says: "What makes me happy? An empty head. Because I know I had carried out everything I had in mind." :)

Next is Skye. She sent me 3 lovely postcards with old pictures of her town - explanation included! In these pictures we can see the old train station, an old elevator and a local gallery that was previously a library and a post office. Thanks Skye! :)


And the last one is the funniest! I just got it today. It's from my friend Tine who found a good idea online. He googled my nickname and then used pictures that came up! Nice one, I have to admit. :))

Here are some details:


I can't wait to get more! Although the student responsible for the mail thinks there's something weird going on becaus I got 5 postcards in 2 days. :))

So long :)

Poppy

A Visitor

I am still redecorating my new dorm room. It takes a lot to make it a cosy and comfortable nest. :) Today I installed my new cork board to put my timetable and some little funny things up there.

Obviously my notes are very interesting because a visitor already came and started reading "27 directions for better Slovene" article.


Did I mention I am crazy about lady bugs? :)

Poppy