No Balls No Glory, My Cell Phone Story.

Prik & Tik 

spotted: lonely feathered creature livin' on the edge in Ghent

a bowl of soup a day...

Montpellier memories.

Montpellier souvenirs.

Yet again.

        

study breaks with ninja sister, hoodie included.

BOEKENTOREN.

kitchen entropy-->maximum reached.

Must.Understand.Weird.Symbols.

Swagger Shoes.

wandering through the halls of university

Writer's block out.

So the time has finally come, exams out!  I've got three days now to finish off my literature study about *shrimps*, sustainability of our future food resources and convincing people that with the research I'm doing one can prove which impact it has whether you buy frozen shrimps in your supermarket or get them grey Belgian shrimpies in your local fish shop (Blankenberge FTW).
Can you imagine why my mind sometimes wonders what the heck it is I'm doing?
I can't imagine common people laying awake at night about their next days shrimp decisions... But just so you know, half of all fish you've been eating last years is produced thanks to aquaculture farms cause there ain't plenty more fish in the sea...


Anywayz, if I succeed in writing this exciting piece of nerd literature by friday I'll enjoy my week off, crashing fifty percent of the time with my bootie in the snow, as a free spirit. Cheers to that damned procrastination behaviour!


Holy Moly, I really need a break from uni cause I'm totally going loca with everyone weening (including me) about their thesis progress. Gosh, I'm sure here in 12 months I'll laugh my ass off even thinking about it.


Meanwhile, can someone please order me one of the costumes below? The universe will thank you with eternal supply of cocktail sauce.

Save your breath to cool your porridge.

Hi di Ho, 
haven't told much about my Nicaragua adventure the last weeks cuz it's an all round working game here.
Getting up at 6.30 AM, sometimes skipping breakfast to go on a lab or farm visit early in the morning. (before the sun burns too strong). Some days, working at the company = running, mailing, stalking people to give you the information you need. And then from time to time realizing that all the hours you've put into some file or document was all for nothing, just because you or they misunderstood. 
Yes yes, thesis time gotta love it. But it feels damn good after being busy with something for so long ( not knowing at all if it's right what you do ) and then hearing your thesispromotors say that they think you're doing fine. I doubt if it will stay that way...


Anyways, I knew it wouldn't be a piece of cake and research goes with ups and downs, but I'm a bit stressed out at this point. And we all know how I get when I'm stressed.
Luckily my good old crazy granny and crazy friends are approachable for peptalk even at 2 AM int he morning (thank you Skype).
It's all about diplomacy here, trying to stay calm and friendly with so many people as you try to explain them as good as you can what it is you need. Not so easy if you're thesis research is about "exergy" and "life cycle assessment". Say whaaat?
Since I've got to deal with quite enough stuff lately to train my "I'm not gonna lose my cool" face(I thank the universe for that), I'm not behind bars for murder (yet).
So we keep going, I still believe that at some point it will all fall in it's place.


Last weekend I didn't even left my place just to continue to find some structure in the whole catastrophic mountain of data... But this weekend I'm out with our weekendtravelcrew wherever it is we're planning to go... Do I hear roadtrip, surfing and saving turttles in the same sentence?


Don't get me wrong I'm still happy that I'm here and not in rainy Belgium but it's just frustrating to be in such a beautiful country and only being able from time to time to do the things I really want to do. (surf surf surf and hike volcanoes, that too) 


One more year of schoolmess dude and then I take a long break from seriousness.  
Enough Einsteins in the world to save the planet.


And in the meantime, 
a caipirinha a day keeps my nervous breakdowns away.
Cheers.

A little tornadoooo.

Round 3 of the most annoying exam period ever is happening right now. Studying makes me a bit twisty so folks be warned and walk in a circle of at least 500 m around me if I cross your path. The last exams went "comme ci comme ça" so we keep or fingers crossed and hope for miracles and forgiving professors who are mentally incapable to read my scientific epistels in Erasmus french.


So what did we do in between these periods of nerdmodus lifestyle?


Visiting the FISE (festival internationale des sport extrèmes every year in Montpellier!) and extreme it was!

"holy guacamole"

wakeboarding or as Lien calls it "watersnowboarding :-)"

And it rained in Montpellier and if it rains it rains for a loooong time so...

Little raincloud above my room

... let's go to town and buy weird second hand stuff

Sarah tried on the granny hat

...or a Kazoo and scare the hell out of innocent people or try to start a conversation with a pigeon

... and rain or no rain a bbq is always possible

awesome garbage bin construction

Theresa thought it was all fine.

Sebastian and Jenny

Sofie and some FISE fellows

Mexicans, how awkward

 And if you order " un petit steak pour le bbq" in a hallal butchershop this is what you get...

I still feel sorry for the cow.

And in the meantime seven more days waking up with the thought of starting a carreer in the fruitsection of Lidl's supermarket and never ever studying again...

And after that only five more days of Erasmus cause I'm going home the 21first of june... I'm getting nervous if I see my lonely planet standing silly on the bookshelf above my head cause there's so much stuff in it that I still need to do.

And still many people are leaving... but some come back like Anaaaa (crazy supagroparadisewomen who turned her room into a bar/hotel/restaurant)... So happy.

So my brain needs some sleepytime cuz the next days are gonne be legen -wait for it- dary, boring. (yes I finally started watching HIMYM)

Note to self...

Proof is here!
When temperature raises above 30°C my stresslevel reaches more than astronomic heights.
Nothing more to do than keeping calm (or cool) and grow a moustache!

Insane in the membrane.

We're back in Ghent, that is my sister and me. After the christmasdays at home we moved back to studyland. My concentration level during exams has always been at an artic level (read: far below zero). My day goes like this:
I plan to wake up at 8 am, but mostly I wake up around 10 and then realise: "holy moly I already should have studied for two hours now." And then after a superfast poppin' breakfast (love vanilla oatmeal) I start "studying" like a crazy turbo nerd. Around 12 am my brain goes into stand-by modus and decides to take a break. A loooong break mostly. In the afternoon I'm a disaster if it comes to concentration. And by night when it finally get's dark again I can concentrate again. So I stay up too late again and wake up the next morning also way toooo late. So this goes on and on and on. Luckily my sister has a more productive way of studying and we decided to study together in the appartment she lives in (her roommate is at home during the holidays). Crazy hilarious scenarios here during our studybreaks. We brought a longboard from home and sometimes longboard through the hallway (we had to stop it because the neighbours from the floor below asked us what the heck we were doing at 1 am in the morning. woops.). My sister also has this constant urge to clean the appartment, so if you don't mind your step you fall over the vacuumcleaner or get suffocated by a whelm of "Mr. Proper" when you enter the bathroom. And then there's the cooking part of our studytime together, if we don't dance on crazy music during our breakes we create funny recipes in the kitchen. Really we should write a cookbook for (wannabe) insane students.  Ok, now that I've update the world about my new living situation,(Wich is in fact still pretty boring because studying IS boring.) I'm gonna try to stick my eyes to my book and study!

Cheers,
and to all fellow students: I know how it feels (bad bad bad!),
so goooooood luck!

ps. I need a party