See you

in 10 hours

When you're young...

...you like to believe you have a right to ignore any rules. You want to provoke.

And so you go to some abandoned and cordoned off place to take some silly pictures :)

4 days left until you come to our house in Germany. 

Holy moly me oh my - how time passes!

I cannot wait until I see my dear little S again!

To my beautiful D,

It's been such a long time since I've posted and I have so much to share with you. You are looking so amazing like a little model, clearly the attractive half of SD. I know your essays will be first class as usual - you put me to shame. 

I have missed blogging to you my sweet little cousin, so here is a brief timeline of what has happened to your S over the last few months:

September: I got a job : 

It's good to know I'm contributing to heart disease, diabetes etc. Last night it was the McDonalds Christmas Do. It was pretty wild. My verdict: 1/10

October: As you know I am moving to Germany next year. Gradually I have moved on from my ambition to work as an intern for a law firm in Zurich to voluntary work with Anyone doing Anything, Anywhere. I have written CVs for everything from accounting firms to the Jewish Museum. 

November: I wrote an essay. I know - please hide your shock but I got a first. 

December: I got another job. 

It was love at first sight when I saw the interior of the new hotel I work at. It is a prestigious, boudoir hotel; I get to serve champagne and canapes and more importantly I don't have to wear a brown hat with a yellow 'M' on it.

I am missing your enviable clothes and bravery to sit with black fish. I plan on keeping you updated and of course look forward to your replies. Love you loads, 

S

"Somewhere inside, I am still this child, seeing the world with wide-eye wonder, forever free, and wild "

Quote by Susanna Cole King

 I had to swim with dead leaves and black fish for this one. O-em-gee.

Talking to you on your handy mobile phone is always nice, little S - but I figured it was difficult with the train dashing in the background, and so I am writing on here after a long period of silence.

As I have mentioned: I had my English Oral Commentary today where we got a random passage from Hamlet or a poem by the poets we have studied - Frost and Donne - and had to talk about it in detail. I was the first to go and I was very relieved once I got it over with. At the same time, I will miss Shakespeare's archaic and complex language, Donne's poems about platonic love and Frost's "The woods are lovely, dark and deep/But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep...."

Time is passing so quickly while at the same time I find my self sitting in lessons counting down the minutes until the light blinks (we don't have a school bell). I am in my senior year and I enjoy all my courses. Yet sometimes I just cannot concentrate, perhaps due to dehydration or the fact that I spent lunch times revising.

After the mock exams in December there is very little to cover and so my IB life is coming to an end. TOK and extended essays will be done, Internal Assessments shall be completed and from then on it will be: reviewing, reviewing, reviewing. 

I have learned so much over this and last year. I expose myself to different perspectives on a daily basis and thus learn so much in such a short period of time. I have grown a lot while at the same time learned to stay young. I think at the end of this year I will have left my youthful self-centeredness and developed into a passionate learner. Hopefully I will have learned to fully accept my imperfections as well as those from the people around me. 

I still don't know where my future will bring me - or more precisely, what I want and expect it to bring. But that's ok. And I have become highly confident in my course choice - ain't no Psychology PhD necessary to help fellow human beings with their concerns when they ask for it. Just humanity and compassion. I have found a passion in watching documentaries - about Ghandi, John Lennon, Children in India....which reminds me: you should watch the documentary "Born into Brothels" sometime. It is excellent and something I would love to do sometime when I visit South Africa next. 

These are just a few thoughts. Of course, they might change...we constantly change and that is important. It would be a dull life if I still had the same style to dress or the same haircut, wouldn't it?

Hope you are well, S.

Mom took this without me knowing. I think she is an excellent photographer, don't you? xx

Hamburg

Over the weekend I visited one of my friends in Hamburg - a popular city in the North of Deutschland. Quite inspiringly, my friend Eva lives and pays there everything by herself. She attends some kind of webdesign private school that she pays off, first by working in a bar in Hamburg's famous Reeperbahn, and now being hired by an actual agency. Since her parents pay none of it, a girl that used to party every weekend like all of my other old german friends turned into a modest full-time worker who knows her values.

She showed me the bay in Frankurt which, frankly saying, is by no means pretty - though Hamburg itself is a neat city....for German standards. The older I get, and the more I see of this country, the more I appreciate Germany's beauty in its agricultural landscapes and quality of living rather than trying to discover some urban qualities that would attract people of my age.

We also visited mentioned Reeperbahn - a place where hotels hold the paradox signs "Rooms for free" and also "From 30€ onwards" and shops are titled "Sex paradise" - so basically, where German prostitutes make most of their living. I felt awkward and disturbed at once walking through this "paradise of sex". I kept thinking about how sad it is that women could find themselves in situations where they are forced to lose their values like this and allow lustrous men to abuse them like that.

Two highlights of my trip was seing the musical of Disney's Lion King and walking through a MiniaturWunderland, where I felt like Gulliver in Lilliput, taking a million pictures to document this miracle. The musical was formidable! It consistet of colourful costumes, wild dancing, epic puppets, and african singing that would would raise a nostalgic feeling in me. It was an amazing show - though in German. The performers were mostly Afro-american or original Africans, which made their voices evidently beautiful, deep and strong.

Your Dilly

Autumn shopping

I went shopping for the next season today although it is rather warm in Germany - it's going to reach 27°! Oh my! I felt like showing you what clothes I got:

Thought it would be cool to have my vest and boots matching. They both so comfy.

That's the cotton of the grey shirt that you see in the picture above. It somehow reminded me of you and so I bought it.

The white shirt you see is an angel-like dressing and the brown shirt is just really really cozy.

So yeah, those are my shopping highlights of today. All, of course, from ZARA.

Gotta love that shop.

90's

Remember when I took photos of the pictures of the  little us-es from Nanny's photoalbum?

I finally felt like posting some of them here.

Sooo....meine Damen und Herren, es ist mir eine Ehre die jungen SDs Ihnen vorstellen zu dürfen:

S is the posing one on the left, I'm the one with the doll in her hand. I carried her around everywhere. Every-where. Her name was Baby. This photo was taken at our old house in Turkey, in a small town two hours away from the city, Istanbul. It was a fantastic place to have spent our childhood's summers - until there was a massive earthquake in 1999, and we rarely ever go there ever since.

I love this so much. And frankly saying, I would wear any of those dresses again nowadays - what fashionable little girls we were! S's  dress looks like a dress from Topshop, mine perhaps from Zara? And then my big sister is wearing a dress by maybe H&M? With a jeans jacket from Urban Outfitters? The pure white dress that S's little sister is wearing could be of any of the above stores.

Another thing that I associate with this time - along with watching stray dogs have babies, creating a whole playground with the use of only one chalk and making up stories near the Alladin-like houses - are our beloooved jelly shoes. Oh how obsessed we were with them!

This is also a favorite of mine. I like the Alladin doll that lies on the lap of little S and I find her Mini mouse T-shirt very stylish. But most all, I like the facial expression that she is pulling. Oh my silly little S!

How I miss these times with you. 

Bath you hair in berries, watch your hair grow real quick

My future plans are changing somehwat at the moment:

As much as I would love to go to St. Andrews university, I just might not be able to. I have thought about it a lot recently and realised that although I am trying my best the chances of me getting into such great university are low - it's not unrealistic, but frankly saying, it should be difficult.

But just because I am not stressing myself - mentally - as much anymore, doesn't mean I have stoped trying. I am still giving 100%. I just think I won't be as disapointed as I would have been if I don't get in.

New ideas have entered my mind - where only the thought of them almost take my breath away:

I am fascinated, curious and wonder.

  

I'm getting more and more fond of the idea of spending some time abroad. Not in England. Not in Turkey. Somewhere completley new, somewhere fresh. South East Asia and Australia are the two places I am definitley considering. I keep researching organisations, and have already found one that sounds pleasing in everything it does. It's - unfortunatley - only a four week programme where I can go to either Thailand or Australia and voluenteer to work in, for example, teaching orphans or getting close to exotic wildlife and learn to interact with monkeys and elephants!

The third and fourth week would consist of lots of adventure programms such as diving in clear aqua blue water or taking on real physical challenges such as climbing mountains. 

Sounds magnificent to me.

Also, at the moment I am housing two native Canadians -they are here to get help from the Germans to protect the rainforests that the White men want to cut down, which they in turn, however, need for survival. It was very sponatneous of me taking part in this activity - I didn't know they were coming until yesterday.

They gave me their tribal medicine - some kind of leaves that smell really well - which they use in case of headaches or when they feel sick. They also shared lots of other secrets with me on how to get your hair growing faster and told me stories that they pass down from generation to generation - they still have three of their great grandmothers living with them! They are really sweet, and the elder of the sister is going to braid my hair in the morning.  

So we are spending the weekend in the Primary School of our Campus undertaking lots of challenges! Should be fun, nein? 

Yesterday I have realised how frustrated I am with the books we read at school - they are plain and boring. So I ordered like a million children's classics on amazon yes - including 'The Secret Garden', 'A little Princess', 'Peter Pan' and both books of Lewis Carrol's Alice.

Also Sylvia Path's journal. 

I guess I will get some reading done until we see each other again. Hopefully soon, maybe for St: Andrews' Open Day. Ya?

I love you once, I love you twice,

I love you more than beans and rice. 

What I Do Sometimes

So this week I travelled East to a little village called Swanton Morely to look after the cousins that I love a lot less than you, D!  E and J are 11 and 8 years old and I've never really known them. They are extremely cute like little Mäuse, big blue eyes, tiny noses and fluffy blonde hair, but aso kindof really dull. I will talk you through some of the highlights of my adventurous week.

On the first day:

S: Thank you very much for letting my stay in your room J

J: Well I didn't get to choose

When picking J up from school three days in to the week:

J: This is my friend Kai. Kai this is my cousin...what's your name again?

J's friend Kai pointing to a birthday card in the living room with 'Happy Birthday Bitch' printed on the cover:

Kai (definatly): That is one of the eleven swear words, you know. You must never EVER say it.

 As you can guess, I developed a prettygood relationship with my cousins. One of them even said goodbye to me when I left. Big smile.

 What I really enjoyed though, was getting to know my aunt, a fellow 'S'. She is very pretty and slim, recently separated from her husband but still so vibrant. She shared some stories and secrets with me, as well as her dark orange chocolate every night over a cup of tea. She gave me a big gold box the day I left and had filled it with things associated with my time in Swanton Morely (lol). Some washing up gloves, pasta, chocolate and a card she'd written and forced her kids to sign.

Time of my life

So in the last two weeks my past has caught up to me. I revived a relationship with my ex best friend, ex therapist and ex 'I Am Spy' bandmate, who I thought I'd still be mad at, but fell in love with all over again as soon as I saw her. We sat talking in a quaint cafe for hours, two years older now, but still exactly the same. We caught up on each others' our 'new lives', both eager to impress, but her eloquent, melodic phonemes flowed through one ear and out the other, as I stared at this person I'd shared my whole life with, wondering if she too remembered that time we won a prize for that mnemonic we'd made up in Chemistry.

Postcards from Italy

Last week my family and I went to beautiful Italy - partly, because of my 18th birthday, but also because we all wanted to go to Italy for such a long time and finally got around to it. Our hotel was a villa in a small town in the centre of the north of Italy, half an hour away from one of the most visited vacation spot by the Germans: the Gardasee. And after arriving at our hotel and swimming a bit, we went to Bardolino where we spent lots of time going through the quaint boutiques, and had dinner next to a beautiful sun-set.

On the next day we went to Venince - a splendid looking labyrinth. We walked through heaps of alleys, each and every single house looking adorably antiquated. Some being blind alleys where you can't go any further because there is water - and even if you can swim, you would probably get run over by a water taxi (which we took on the way back 'cause although our eyes were wide awake, our feet were somewhat tired).

We also visited Verona and Guiletta's balcony where her Romeo would wait for her. And Lazise, which was again near the Gardasee. On the last day we went to Milano, which was also very pretty.

Overall, the four days in Italy were amazing and I hope I will be able to go back again soon - maybe with S?

Now some pictures of Bella Italia...:

This was in Bardolino, at the Gardasee. I just love water, boats and basically just harbours.

Sunset behind the Gardasee. You must recognise the beauty of apricot colours. It's magnificent. I have seen too little sunsets and rises in my life but when she is there we will all watch it as a family. 

Venice, a beautiful maze. More ships and more water that I like. 

 You probably remember this dress that we bought in Turkey together. I was wearing it on our day in Venice, it matched the color of many of the houses there. Beige-ish pink.

I thought these were quite neatly hanged here.

Alley in Verona at night-time.

I will post some more pictures about the food or ones that have a story to it soon, too. Miss you. 

First day of school, bro

....and first day of being a senior. Yaya.

I guess H - my dear little Honey bunny - does not really like posing. Or maybe it's too early in the morning. We'll take some better ones next time ;)

I woke up having a very bad dream in which someone stole my suitcase on my way to Australia and Honey was in that. I immediately woke up and ran upstairs to check if my cutie was still there. And she was. ♥

It began with eye-contact.

It proceeded to chemistry.

It developed into love.

Lilly

I hope it never ends <3

Dearest of Ds,

You have probably heard about the situation in Manchester by now.

The riots in England are really getting on my tiny tits. Like whatever, mayhem is fun in small doses and movies but I'm truly horrified by what I've seen. Moronic 'young men in a complex mix of social and racial backgrounds' have been smashing and burning whatever they come across for a variety of un-agreed upon reasons, expressed by a drunken cacophony of  expletives and 'inits'. Right now everyone's glued to their tvs, waiting  in suspense; will there be a 4th night of anarchy? Will there be a fourth night of watching thugs through misty eyes, destroying the shops in which I used to buy cheap jewellry, and the beautiful streets on which I shamefully dropped my litter. The shop outside A's flat, as well as cars outside it, have been set alight and I am using all my energy impotently worrying about what will happen next.

'I wish we could all bake a cake made out of rainbows and smiles and we'd all eat it and be happy'. Wise words.

I hope you're having a better time than I am in Italy, cara. 

I miss you and humanity very much.

Last minutes of being a 17-year old

In less than an hour (in German time) I will be turning 18. Strangely, it doesn't feel unnatural. It's time to grow up, be mature and take responsibilities. I shall go voting, drunk and with a cigarette in my hand. I shall drive as soon as I get my license (which will probably take another year) cause now I'm allowed to do all these things. Suddenly, from one day to another, I'll be allowed - how strange and bizarre those man-made rules are. 

But will anything really change? Probably not. I will stay the childish, cheeky good old me. I do have goal though: to be kind and more selfless this year. And to work harder than ever, just this final year of school. 

Being 17 is one of the greatest ages, I think. It certainly has been for me. It was a happy joyful year, probs because I finally accepted myself and knew what I wanted. I'll post more about the good things came with this year later.

I will now just leave you with my favourite Marina and the Diamonds songs: 17.

I will now move my body to this like a dancing queen, who is 17 (I am alluding to ABBAs famous song, duh - there are so many songs about 17 year old). x

Kleine Kästchen

Little sparkling box.

Crafted carefully by two girls.

For a special someone. 

Who hides it under the bed.

Ein Brief voller Erinnerungen

So I have written my letter for you and there also happens to be a little something for A in it. Nothing special, kaum der Rede wert. It's labelled as "This is not for you, S". Haha.

Which reminds me of that one time we took a box and decorated it so that you could give it to him as a rather considerate present. We put all sorts of lovely things in it, do you remember? Old portraits that we didn't need, plastique Barbie-ribbons, and we emptied a game card's packet so that there could be a little shelf in case he secretley wants to put something in it. How clever we were.

I wonder if that box still exists. I don't think A was too pleased with it since I never heard him thank me for my efforts....

Mise à jour

What S did:

1) So of the 100s of jobs I applied for, I got a reply from the one that doesn't pay. 

Candid Magazine is an online publication with a heavy focus on 'student interests'; art, music, film and fashion. At least I will be able to shamelessly promote your photography, ma petite cousine. 

2) I saw my A yesterday. I thought we'd waste the day with some ça-va ça-vienta but we went for a picnic and played Top Trumps. Talk about a dichotomy. On the back of one card though I found a sweet something you had written when you were younger:

My name is: D

My pal's name is: S

Country: Katzen

I miss your funny. I miss your everything. 

3) Oh and I'm going to take up French next year. I know that you will understand why.

LOL ich bin ein total Lauch. 

Random

Look who is in my purse...!!

Creating a tangible photo-album

Working on my EE on Nabokov's Lolita

I finally have my new lens - a canon 50mm f 1,8 ii - which is tiny, very fast and perfect when using la lumière naturelle

I'm wearing my beloved ocean-blue shirt. Favourite Colour, btw.