Xmas
I'm a lot less stressed by the dreaded Xmas than usual. Partly because no one is coming to visit, no grandfather, partly because we are very poor again this year and we're keeping it simple. So less food, less decoration, less anticipation, very little presents if any. Its just going to be a slightly more fancy dinner.

New Years:
No plans. certain friends are annoying me endlessly about going away for a few days. except both locations the chose are uninhabitable in the winter and the owners don't want us there. still they whine.

Birthday:
It's on the 10th of January.
Thus is often overlooked. i don't think i will celebrate at all this time. last year i invited everyone to a bar to sit and talk and be merry, alas everyone acted as though the only reason they had come was out of obligation and i heard 10 "sorry i haven't got / didn't have time to get/ you anything". Everyone drank the beer i bought them then made their excuses and left. It was one of the most depressing and disheartening things i had ever experienced.

furthermore i can't shake the feeling that turning 24 and having achieved so little and enjoyed my life so minimally up to this point is anything to celebrate

the train ride to Krakow was 4 hours of standing face to face in a super fucking crowded train

followed by more travelly stuff with all its own special setbacks and fun.
i was delighted by how Brussels looks,



how friendly people are, that they have BEN & JERRY'S in every shop and that beer can be bought in normal softdrink size cans. and is served in little glasses.
delightful.
More fantastic things: John and his immense kindness and the fact that he's just a really cool guy. Chat the cat. fresh seafood available everywhere!

delicious food in general.

randomly and spontaneously getting to see Makoto Kawabata, Tatsuya Yoshida, and Atsushi Tsuyama in concert, EPIC.





and seeing Nikhita, Denie, Clio, Sinnah, Tie, Gizela, and all the other girls at the convention. and the convention itself. it was a weird experience. but good. oh and P-Mod!

i'm super happy that so many of you responded to my question. whether this is because you guys love answering questions or because you love talking about food, remains to be seen.
Also, i do kinda apologize that it took forever for me to respond.
Some people asked me some stuff which mostly all came down to:
@what do YOU usually have for breakfast?
Nothing, eating too soon after i wake up makes me want to throw up and die. i know it is very bad not to eat breakfast, but im usually rushing to get to classes in time but reading all your answers actually got me to try and iv discovered that, since i stopped hating, bananas actually work quite well and can get me through most of my first 1.5 hour class! yay! also nutella in the morning is good! i love sweets as much as the next bloke, but when im hungry i prefer savory or "real" food. But i think sweet, bready stuff is perfect for breakfast. Hats off to the French, Italian and all other countries who have been doing this since forever.

@What is the perfect weather for you right now? i like weather in general. its a cool thing. Right now, obviously, since it's -8°C, my perfect weather is around 24, sunny, mild, a good day for riding bikes, drinking beer and wearing only one layer of clothing.

@why did it take you so long to do a second set? Ah. some of you know the answer to this. and it is a simple one, tho a complex problem in itself; i am currently and for the most part the only Polish SG. There is also Gizela who is awesome, but she lives in Germany. I don't know any photographers. thats it. in the whole country on Poland-land i don't know anyone who could shoot a decent SG set and would want to do so.

It's Christmas. Xmas. whatever. The Holidays. Do you care? is it about family for you, or is that relation more on paper/ non-existent? If you don't get a single present will you be sad? What would your ideal Christmas/xmas/Holiday be like?

This is a serious question. i really do want to know. in highschool i made a list of what all my friends had for breakfast. i kept it up for over a year.

the house! its really awesome, a lovely fireplace, huge kitchen with and aga, big gardeny-outsideness. even a sauna upstairs!
[drinking vodka in a sauna is not a good idea, no matter what movies with Russian gangsters try to tell you]



Chris and i traveled there 6 hours by bus the day after everyone else because we had a thing to do for studies. We arrived in a small town at 20:30 Rudy, Jula and Adam came to fetch us in the car and it took another 30 or so minutes to get to the house. remote countryside

in that dark photo we are grilling [or barbecuing] sausages. best sausages, best bread, best beer in forever.
(that's me, Norbar and Kacy)



i look sick! my Kylesa t-shirt was a hit!



Jula was fascinated by the pumpkins and marrows that were growing in the garden. She is amazingly cute! she has socks with little red riding hood. that's how cute she is ^_^



We went for a walk! we saw wild pumpkins! we got chased by a whole herd of young bulls led by a very angry full grown one. Still Adam wouldn't stop moo-ing it was very frightening though because they seemed ready to break down the fence to come after us, and the fence was just a wire attached to poles 0_0
We got to a lake! it was beautiful. everywhere was beautiful. rolling hills, meadows, fields and forest, little valleys and lakes, moss covered stones. i love that kind of landscape, seems magical.



Jula again just because she is so photogenic



They look like characters from a movie or maybe a comic. a cartoon. i don't know! they look funny



after walking for about 1.5h Rudy got pissed and said that following the path is for pussies. so we all followed him into the forest. which was fantastic. some fairytale forest, some LotR forest, some sinister, swampy baba-jaga forest.



we emerged into this, with ruined and over-grown buildings on the other side. i can't get over how awesome this all was.
but we were all starting to tire, we'd been walking for around 2 hours it was getting late-ish and we could only guess at the direction of home.



interesting fact: Norbar, the one in the hood in this photo, is our Mongolian prince. he's not actually Mongolian as you can guess but he does look it close enough, his nickname at school was Mongol (like the movie that came out recently). We're sure one day he will gather a great army and conquer everything. He also kinda reminds us of Charles Bronson. ^_^



We eventually found the road home, and PONIES! so small and fat! everyone petted the ponies but it was Chris' first time discovering just how soft their muzzles are. It was cute how happy he was about it for long after we had left the ponies behind. (that's his happy face even if it does make him look like Skeletor)



We made sushi!



We ate sushi!



we watched many movies and had an on-going game of Heroes V

Adam, Jula and Rudy left the day before the rest of us.
after we cleaned and tidied everything we started the walk back to the town our bus had left us at. walking along a country road like that at sunset was special. everyone carrying all their stuff was tiring.
we saw many tiny black frogs that were very cute.
we started imagining raptors in the long grass, and the trees became solid black lumps around us. The moon was behind us and i have never seen such a huge, shiny, low full moon in my life. as it got darker we noticed we were casting shadows from the moon's glow.
of course no one had a camera handy.
when it was almost completely dark and we had been walking for close to an hour a car suddenly pulled up as from nowhere and the driver said he'd take us to the town.
which was good cause it turned out we were FAR from the bus stop to town.

Our bus to Warsaw was leaving at 23.30 til then we had to fill our time. We found a tiny pizza place where we spent most of it, but first we had to wait for a table to clear. so for the next 1/2 hour we sat in the park across the road in the bitter cold, blowing our noses and drinking the last of our beer.

That's pretty much the end, we were all very tired, the bus looked all fancy but turned out to be exceptionally uncomfortable. everyone felt sick. we got to Warsaw at 5.10am and no one really slept that day.
It was a wonderful and unusual experience.

Yay.

i've been sick since sunday and i'm just sitting around staring at the rain all day trying not to cough up my lungs onto the monitor. and this
all this
...
i feel really special and mushy and tingly in my tummy and i want to hug you all, OK?!