Holiday

Of course, I love holidays! So, I'm taking a Christmas break until the New Year to do this.

Ice skating before Christmas

Ice skating in London just before Christmas is becoming a tradition of ours. We went to the Kew Gardens ice rink yesterday and had a fantastic time! We had been to the ice rink in Windsor in the past and want to try every Christmas ice rink in London. We plan to go to a different one every year, so it'll take us a while to finish!
I like ice skating because it celebrates winter, and because everyone can do it and have fun; in the rink yesterday, there were families, groups of teenagers and many, many couples. Of course, it's a romantic thing for couples to do, but most importantly, it's fun and not too cheessy; if you are anything like us, one or both of you will fall at some point, and will have to get up, laugh and continue the fun!

Photo competitions

My boyfriend and I do this sometimes. We get two disposable cameras and choose a location. Snap, snap, snap. We discover new things and get closer to details. We think before we push the button because we only have one chance to capture what we see. The result is always a surprise and inevitably appears different from what we remember seeing as we took the photo, sometimes better and sometimes worse.
See photos from our last competition in our travel blog, www.oursouthamerica.wordpress.com.

Drawing

I thought I couldn’t draw. I wasn’t very good at it in school. Perhaps I’m not much better now, and the difference is that I love myself more. I’m not so hard on myself. I allow myself not to be perfect. My drawings aren’t perfect. They are very simple and I guess a bit childish. I draw every day objects: a pink mug, a pretty skirt in a magazine, an orange table. Some of those things that I see and like.

Old Hollywood Musicals

I have my parents to blame for this. I remember cozy evenings, the whole family watching a movie, and my father, annoyingly explaining the meaning of every scene and the biographies of a director or an actor. Old Hollywood musicals were the family’s favorites. The ones we all loved, without exception. My personal favourites were (and are) Singing in the Rain and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which we watched again, and again. I LOVE the later and it always reminds me of Christmas (wait, there is an explanation), as for years, they would show this movie late on New Year’s Eve in the Spanish Public TV channel. They don’t do it anymore, but every time I watch it, it takes me back to old New Year’s Eves.

To connect with nature

I dream of spending some time to connect with nature and re-discover it. Really connecting. Getting up with sunrise and going to bed at sunset. Enjoying the long days of the summer. Resting and reflecting on the long winter nights. See the leaves fall. Really see them. Pause and look at the new flowers every spring morning. And then do it all again. Like Nature intended.

Finding books

For me, finding a book is one of the greatest pleasures in live. Of course, reading something from your favourite author is great. You know what you are getting and you know you like it. But there is something magical about discovering new authors, new themes, new worlds. I recently found The unknown errors of our lives in a exchange book in a hostel in Ecuador. I have never heard of the author and I have never heard of the book. I normally prefer novels to short stories. But I picked it up (I think it was the title what drew me to it), I opened it on a random page and that was it. I read it in a day, and I loved every story. The characters, and their errors, will stay with me for a long time.

What blogging means to me

I have seen several posts on what blogging means lately. You can read what blogging means to Secrets of a butterfly and follow the links that her post inspired. Reading them, I realized that blogging was also part of ‘Some of those things’ I really enjoy. And I discovered it very recently!
I thought about starting a blog at the end of my year off work. Almost a year ago, I took a year off to travel around South America with my boyfriend. South America had always been my dreamland. Getting to know, for real, the cities and places I have dreamed so much about has been an incredible experience. Everything I hoped for, new experiences I had never imagined, and much more.
Towards the end of the year, though, we started thinking a lot about coming back. About what we wanted to do next and what we had learned. I have changed this year. I have new plans and new ideas on how to shape my life. I want a simpler life with fewer commitments and more time to do what I really want. More time for creativity. More time to pursue my real passion, writing. And that’s where blogging came in. I started blogging as a commitment to keep writing. Not trying to write the perfect novel, the perfect story, just writing … for now.
As always, I’ve probably ended up doing too much. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to have a blog in English or Spanish. Sometimes I write in one, sometimes in the other. So I now have Some of those things in English and Blanca en la la luna in Spanish. The style is completely different and it has been amazing to see how using a different language changes my writing.
There were other things I wanted to do. I want to be more ecological, I want to help others. Volunteering in Ecuador has really inspired me to do more things for others, and has also taught me that good intentions are not enough, you need to be organized and think carefully about why and how you are going to help. But the main thing I have learnt is that small things make a big difference. And so I started a blog called Together we’ll save the world. It’s an optimistic blog, about all those small things that we are all already doing to help, be it volunteering, or recycling.
Finally, I wanted to explore my creative side, not only in my writing, but in small craft projects, in my collages and cuttings collections. So I created Cuttings on a blog, where I list things I like, things that inspire me, and where, in the future, I’ll post my drawings and collages.
It may seem like a lot, but so far, I’m loving it. I have discovered a whole new world in blogs. Creative people with interesting ideas and beautiful images. A community based on sharing ideas, projects, and experiences. A world of learning and discovering. New things. Old ideas that you have forgotten. A whole new world of possibilities.
That’s what blogging means to me. A commitment to my new life.

Belly dancing

I haven’t done it in a while and I miss it. I must find the time. Because I LOVE belly dancing! It’s hard, and at times frustrating, but it’s beautiful and so, so worth it when your body finally gets that move (like the camel, difficult one!). Or when a song really inspires you and you find yourself just dancing to the rhythm, improvising without thinking, just dancing. Belly dancing.
I love telling people that I do it, as well, because most of the time I have to explain that belly dancing was traditionally a dance by women for women and men were not allowed to watch, despite what most believe in the Western world. So belly dancing has also been the door to learning and understanding about other cultures. But it’s mainly a way to make me happy.

Learning things

I always say that if I were rich, so rich that I didn’t have to work, I’d be a perennial student. Not one of those that enjoys student life so much, they keep on failing every subject just so they can enjoy University life a bit longer. No. But there are so many things I am interested in and want to learn about that I could spend my whole life doing different Masters, or Postgraduate courses, or even a couple of other degrees. I love being in a class environment as well, getting new information, taking notes, having philosophical discussions with others. In a way, it’s easier than real life, despite the homework.

At the moment, I’d like to take some kind of postgraduate course on:

Creative Writing

Photography

Fine Arts

Translation

Multiculturality and Development

International Rights

Promoting Literacy

Women’s Studies

South American Studies

Since I am not that rich, I settled long ago for evening classes. In the last couple of years, I have taken lots of classes, some of them are:

South America Today

From words to images (about books being made into films)

English Language Teaching for beginners

Jewellery making

Styling for fashion magazines

It’s crazy, it’s stressful…but I love it!

Big breakfast, LOTS of coffee, the paper, my notebook. My boyfriend and me. Lazy mornings!

New beginnings

I love those times of the year when we are given a chance to start again. And again.
January, a new year. A whole 12 months to make yourself better now that you are going to start cycling to work, or running in the morning. And, of course, only eating organic food from now on.
March, spring, spring, spring! We have more time for long drinks with friends, organize BBQs and go for long walks on the weekend.
June, summer is here! You can go anywhere you choose and be someone else for a couple of weeks! Or just be a more relaxed you at home!
September, the end of the summer... but the beginning of a new life, where we promise to spend more time outside, cook for those we love, enjoy the evening with a good book... and call mum and sister at least once a week.
We may not actually do all these things, but we do some of them, if only for a while. And most importantly, we dream of who we can be. And that´s the first step.

Some journeys

I love traveling, but, most of the time, for me it´s about the destination (getting to know a different place, its people its culture...). The journey is just the way to get there. But sometimes, only sometimes, the journey becomes more important than the destination:
A Navimag trip from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales, Chile, around the fjords, the islands, and the glaciers of North Patagonia.
Riding in the roof of a train through amazing landscape from Riobamba to the Devil´s nose in Ecuador.
An impromptu road trip with good friends, from Oxford to Edinburgh, with time to barely see the Scottish capital but plenty of time to chat, to laugh, to listen to music...

Some of those things... that are important to us.
Those things, big or small, that make us smile.
Or, those, they always seem big... that make us angry!
Those things that make life what it is!
Just some of those things.