Because...

starting a career is something I'll do when I'm older and depressed.

Balkan Plan: leaving september 9, 2013

Việt Nam ✈ the final chapter

So where were we? I suddenly remembered that I didn't post the final pictures of my Vietnam trip yet... I've been back in "la Belgique" since christmas but anyhow better late than never.

Here we go! After visitting Tam Coc we took the plane Hanoi --> Hue and visited some pretty awesome historical sites there. Let the pictures be your guide...

Việt Nam ✈ a bunch of pagoda's and Tam Coc

After finishing our two-day boat trip in the Ha Long bay we drove back to Hanoi, city of madness. On the way we stopped by yet another pagoda which was actually not touristy at all and very peaceful. We drove a long time through the green and diverse Vietnamese countryside before arriving there and stopped over in a typical village to buy some cold drinks. I took profit from the

Việt Nam ✈ Hanoi & Ha Long Bay

First impressions on Vietnamese ground will certainly be remembered... 

The passport control at the airport was everything but the severe communist treatment I had expected to get. A tiny Vietnamese officer in olive green uniform was napping in his chair when we approached customs and when he finally woke up from his beauty sleep he had the hardest time ever to peek over the window of his control point post as I handed over my visum. So far the funny officers, later that day I experienced how angry these tiny green men can get when a group of innocent old tourists are taking pictures inside Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. As the poor oldies probably didn't hear his order to stop photographing he started bawling so loud they must have thought the Vietnam war started all over again...

A short Swiss Visit.

The last weekend of September me and my gals took a cheapass EasyJet flight to Switzerland to visit Claire. She left Belgium over a year ago with her boyfriend  to work in a big ass company over there and make some smart career moves. Yes not all of us five are so inefficient and dreamy as me when it comes to work and study related business. Anyways we did what we were supposed to do on a girls weekend out: drinking wine and chitchatting until the morning hours, sleeping till noon, eating massive brunches, did a tiny bit of "cultural" activities (like visiting a wine fair which turned out to be a supermarginal fair) and repeated this whole scenario on sunday. On monday we strolled around Geneva and I finally bought my dream watch as a Swiss souvenir (the only affordable thing in that expensive country). I'll leave you all with some pics, the weather was rather dull so they turned out a bit nostalgic and gloomy. Nonetheless we were very happy to be there that weekend.

all pictures are taken in Lausanne, Geneva and Neuchatel

ps. I'm thinking of starting a new blog or totally restructure this one. I kind of started to hate the layout but don't know much about designing blogger templates so I have no idea how I'll fix that. Any ideas on how to create my own desing with a simple program or ... ?

The Goodwin Project.

A young family leaving their home island, Kalaui (Hawaï) on a surf & nature minded journey crossing all continents. In the end a film will be made of all the beauty and adventure they will come across...


Watch the trailer and dream on...

More about The Goodwin Project here!

What about the future?

picture by Sporadic Soul.

When I got back from Erasmus and Nicaragua I was loudly making clear to everyone that there was no chance of seeing me in a working environment after my college graduation (hopelfully in june 2012). But university started again and every 5 minutes you hear the serious people talk about the future and careers and the economic crisis and blablabla...
On top of that it seems that every single company of Belgium throws a "meet&eat" lately for bio-engineering students. Forced by peer-pressure I felt that I should attend at least some of them and damn these company-people are good at their job cause I started doubting...


But when I think of myself right now (stressy, always in a hurry, procrastinating to the max because I'm bored with what I have to do,...) I always find myself thinking about all the stuff I always wanted to do since I was little but never found the time to do it. And now I'm 23 (in my eyes, almost a granny) and my to-do list only got longer.

TO DO:

-have a band and sing for a living, f*ck yeah

-continue my once started violin education

-take some time off on an island to learn to play properly  guitar instead of just rambling and squeeling around every now and then when I get depressed or extremely happy

-write my (sober & drunk) memoires into a soapstory

-make photographs for a living ( and finally read all the user guide's of the camera's I use)

-save the world from starvation and the diminishing tree population or become some kind of Nelson Mandela/AlbertA Einstein so  I can use my (hopefully soon) bio-engineering degree for at least some purpose

-make a world trip on my own for at least a year and do some journalism on the road

-surf like madderfakking Kelly Slater

-kitesurf like aaahm... a ninja

-be an Après Ski bar waitress for a winter season and become a snowboard ninja

-read allllll the books and novels I wanted to read the past years while drinking rivers of hot cocoa

-be a housewife every now and then, so I can finally make all the recipes I ever bought a cookbook for 

-find me a decent man (probably I'll have to wait until travelling to space becomes affordable because on earth they seem to be extinguished.)

-live as a fashion-blogger in the (luvofmylife) city Barcelona

-ride with a hippie van through Europe in festival season with a bunch of crazy in the coconut friends 

...

As you probably can see my to-do list hasn't got a lot to do with what I studied for the past 5 years of my life. Duh.  I mean every day when I'm supposed to start writing on my thesis, I'm browsing the world-wide-web (thank you God for sending us internet) in search of art educations in La Cambre, music studies at conservatories, volunteering programs in Africa, exchange masterstudies in  far far away from here,...


What to do what to do, Dear Santa Claus bring me the solution...
For now I decided maybe the best thing is just live from day to day. Seize it, or not and finish this year and maybe for once start working properly on my thesis and then we'll see... But a girl can dream right? And you only live once... so in order not to be a grumpy one when I turn 60 I think I should go for at least some tags on my to do list.


Nighty night.
Love Luis. x

Isla de Ometepe.

No better way to take a break from thesis research than by going to Isla de Ometepe, what literally means "island formed of two volcanoes". This piece of paradise lays in lake Nicaragua and you get there with all transportation modes you can probably think of. 

Friday I travelled to the concrete jungle of Managua to meet up with Maurine, we spent the friday night "American style" in a shopping mall watching Managua's rich kids having fun in the frozen yoghurt bar. Quite weird to be thrown back into the modern world all of a sudden in a city so dangerous as Managua. On our way to the mall, we saw this gigantic christmas tree made of neon lights in the middle of a roundabout with Ortega's campaign slogans around it. Apparently his wife likes christmas decoration so it stays there the whole year round. This little anecdote just to give you an idea how politics work around here. 

The white line is the only main road lingering around the two volcanoes of the Island. We stayed in Balgüe.

Saturday morning we hopped on a bus to Rivas. A flat tire, taxiride and smoky loud boatride further we arrived at Ometepe. A bus took us to our hippie farm hostel "El Zopilote" in the middle of the"jungle". Actually it's just highland, but since our dorm was a wooden cabin with a palmtree roof and you could spot monkeys when you looked out of the "window" , it felt like jungle to me. Pictures will tell you more then words can say.

On the boat, left hidden in clouds Volcan Concepcion and right Volcan Maderas.

two happy thesis students in weekend modus

arrival at Isla de Ometepe

Sounds cliché but the moment you get there, it feels like you're in another world. Everything is peaceful, a million colors everywhere, nature is  just breathtaking, people smile and talk to you about life on the island, you can walk around without people shouting "chella" "chella" what is a relief compared to walking around in Chinandega or even worse, Managua. 

On the bus taking us around the island.

Lake Nicaragua

cutie and a big tree

On sundaymorning we rent mountainbikes from a family and the grandfather of the house held  us company the whole way up to Merida. The 62 year old was so proud of biking around the Island with two foreign girls, so funny. We hired kayaks in Merida and a local from the island (who made a weird noise during the kayaktrip to attract Caimans) companied us to guide the way from the river up through river Istiam. And lucky us, we saw a Caiman staring with his mouth (closed) right at us. No picture as we barely saw him 10 seconds before he disappeared again.

Kayaking to the rivermouth with Volcano Concepcion in front of us.

jungle book.

mangrove

On the island one "road" lingers around the two volcanoes: Volcàn Concepcion and Volcàn Maderas. And people live in farms, "finca's" and small houses on and around that road. We stayed in a get away hole for lost hippies near Balguë, "Finca Zopilote". I felt even more stupid I forgot my mosquito net back in Chinandega as I saw this beauty just before going to bed. 

The dorm was just a wooden house with open holes in the middle of the woods so a lot of bugs visiting at night, we even saw monkeys.

There was also a mirador at the farm that stuck out of the trees and gave a view over the island with Volcano Concepcion dominating the view. Perfect zen place.

On monday we had to get back to Altagracia, a port 2 hours away from the farm and we fixed a ride with a guy who told us they were  building an airport on the tiny island for international flights. I guess the tranquility and mass tourism free times won't last much longer...

And now back to thesis-land, my return to Belgistan is getting closer and my work is far from done here.

Lying planet

Yesterday I was bored of being in this hotel and decided to check out some beaches. According to my lonely planet the waves should be perfect for beginning rookies like me. So I just left and took a big yellow American schoolbus used as public transport here. I'm still not used to the staring people, really I'm I the first Kaukasian invading this place? :-)
So the bus dropped me off at this beautiful beach with black volcanic sand and indeed perfect waves but no   place to rent a surfboard, only straw beachbars and palmtrees. I also saw for the first time the volcanoes of Nicaragua as I turned my head towards the land. Pretty impressive view I must say.

Last year I already learned that the lonely planet can sometimes also be the "lying planet", I read it was only 5 minutes walking fromt that beach to the nearest town but hell no. It was like a two hour walk and in 32°C even if it's cloudy that's just suicidal. But I met some funny people along my walk: an old man collecting crabs in the mangrove beside the road and trying to convince me to let him drive me on his bike to town, some woman telling me I should wait for a bus to go to Corinto,...

Finally when another person told me it was still an hour walking ( I already walked an hour in that blistering heat) I grabbed a taxibike. Cool way to talk to locals.
Nice, peacefull coast village. And again staring all the time. Around noon I headed back on a microbus to Chinandega and had lunch in a bakery (some local pastry filled with ham, fresh cheese and veggies, yummie). After some wandering around on the market and surviving another raindrash  I headed back to the hotel to see if my luggage got back...
There Arelys called me to say that they still hadn't brought it, probably it will arrive monday. Let's hope so cause I start feeling like a hobo...

Today just prepared some powerpoint presentations to explain my goals during my stay here. I'm actually really looking forward to the shrimpcollaborations... Tomorrow I'll be present at  8 AM at the office, si senor!

The journey continues...

It's 2.14 AM and in one hour Severine comes to pick me up to drive me to Brussels.  She's that crazy (and kind) that she wants to drive me at this mortal hour of the night to the airport. I admit I've got good friends :-)
Normal people would be asleep right now but I'm just to excited of travelling to a new country and I can sleep as much as I want when I'm dead.

It's been two weeks since I got home from Erasmus in France and I barely had the time to see everyone properly and take care of all the things I had to arrange for this trip.

But I'm ready, bags are packed, mind is in travelmodus...
Nicaragua here I come. 

-I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list-

Susan Sontag

Life's good

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