The Life Of Zandra

Hello everyone...

wow! It's been ages since my last post. I don't even know whether any of you are still reading this... I'll update you anyway ;-)

So a lot has been going on since I last wrote to this blog, including me finishing school! I am very happy with my grades, I did pretty well. About a month ago, Brian went back to Canada to start work and summer courses and I went to French Switzerland for two weeks to help a family I know with kids and household. It was great, I'm gonna miss them so much!

Yesterday, I got back from choir camp which was a lot of fun, too. And not it's only 2 weeks until my flight to Canada... eek! I'm so excited, and a little scared, too! Just nervous I guess, about meeting Brian's family and friends and seeing where he grew up and everything, cos up until now I haven't seen any of that... weird, cos he knows all my family and friends and has lived in our house for about a month or so...

I am also really excited about the little boy I'll be a nanny for. His name is Anders and he is very adorable! His parents seem to be really nice people, Brian has already met them and he said we really lucked out! So that's great. The only thing that could potentially go wrong is my work permit, I still haven't heard back from the embassy. I should work out, though. Don't wanna jinx it, haha.

I read the new Harry Potter book and thought it was a great read after all this great literature I had to read for my final exams... haha! I also passed the entry exams for interpreting school and they are valid until next year, so I can start when I get back from Canada, no worries. I'm really excited about starting studies there, should be great!

Anyway, I should unpack and then tidy up my room... We have a chinese student staying with us for a month and she'll get my room, so it has to look nicer than it does now! Hehe...

Hope you are all doing fine!!!

When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness -- and call it love -- true love.

YAY!!! Yesterday, Brian and I had our "2 months anniversary" :D

He is so awesome...! (I love you, Honey!)

I think he's the best thing that's ever happened to me... :D

Yesterday I've been to a ice hockey match (Switzerland vs Canada) with a bunch of Canadians. It was a lot of fun! There were about 5500 people watching, most of them Swiss, I guess there were about 50 or 100 Canadians. And they lost even though I cheered for them, too ;-) But we still had a great time!

:(

Goodbye Grandpa.

We will not forget you.
Even though it makes us very sad to know that we will never see you again, we're glad that you don't have to suffer anymore.
In our hearts you will live on!

:(









:)



Thanks for being there for me, Brian! <3
:)

Wow, it's been a long time since I last updated this. Most probably no one's reading this anymore, but I'll update it anyway.

Sooo... the last couple of months have been really busy, including travels to Scotland, Paris and London as well as different parts of Switzerland. I went au pairing in French Switzerland during summer and autumn break which was great.

About two weeks ago, our Taekwon-Do club's put up this great Seminar as well as a Budo-Show which was a lot of work for everyone but totally worth it! It was a great success!!



That weekend I also fell for Brian, our Canadian black belt, who really is a wonderful person! I just got back from his place, he'd cooked a nice lentil dish for us :)

But there are also sad things happening in my life... unfortunately, my Grandpa is still in hospital, and it's worse than ever. It's tough to see someone you love so weak and helpless and in pain... So visiting him in hospital is always quite hard for me and my family, but we go there because it'll do him and my Grandma some good, and that's whats important!

So... that's it for now, I think I should go to bed.

--> that's our Taekwon-Do club, the picture was taken during the Seminar.

Ok, here I am again... don't have much time, just wanted to say that I got home safe from Russia and that it was absolutely awesome :D
Love and miss you all,
Sandra (who is getting the train to Scotland tomorrow)

Hey everyone

I've been having a great day today :D The sun was shining and we got a few minutes of lovely summer rain. My drum teacher told me I could still have lessons next school year even though I'm actually not allowed to (if you pick arts instead of music in first year, you can't play an instrument in fourth year. Don't ask me why, all the teachers think it's rubbish, but the government thought it was a great way of saving money...) So I'm really happy now, cos I expected this to be my last drum lesson ever.
Oh and yesterday we had band practise, there were only three of us there, so beside playing the tin whistle I also had to play Bodhrán and sing occasionally. We had a lot of fun anyways :D
Training today was great. There weren't many of us there, and I was the only girl among all the big guys but it was still fun. For a warm up we first played football (for Americans: soccer) and then (tried to) play volley ball - hehe. First it didn't work at all, but when our instructor introduced the "press-up rule" (the person who doesn't hit the ball and is closest to it when it touches to floor has to do 10 press-ups) it suddenly worked out quite well :-P haha. We broke loads of (plastic) boards with different hand and foot techniques. I managed to do all of them: palm, fist, knife hand side strike, turning kick, side kick, elbow strike, upward elbow strike :D truly a boost for one's self confidence, I can tell you that. Everyone should break a board a day, this will result in a good mood ;) also, my instructor told me, with my Won-Hyo (it's my pattern for the next exam -> blue stripe) I could have won a medal.

Tomorrow, we're having sport's day, in the morning I'll be doing Capoeira and in the afternoon will have a tournament, I'll be playing volleyball all day :D. On Saturday, really, really early in the morning I'm getting on the plane to Moscow - I'm really excited :D

So I hope you guys are fine, and if not, you can have some of my good mood, cos I have more than plenty of it at the moment *touch wood*

Good night and enjoy your summer...

Hey everyone!

Finally I'm writing a new entry:
After I've been ill for about a week (the evil flu got me) I'm back on my feet and fitter than ever. The weather has been really nice recently and we can have lunch outside in the nice park at school :) The week's been quite busy, what with loads of tests (Math: derivatives, French: le verbe et son complément, Latin: Ovid), additional Djembé practise, training and all. But it's been an enjoyable week nevertheless :D Next week our Djembé group will perform at the beach volleyball tournament, that's gonna be fun! We're also having a concert with our recorder (flute) group.
Today we had band practise in my basement, as always. I tried to play the Bodhrán - it's not nearly as hard to play as I thought, and apart from the pain in your arm it's a lot of fun to play!!!
Training yesterday was not so hard physically (fortunately, it was my first training in a week as I had been ill) cos our Instructor wasn't feeling well. But it was really very interesting and enjoyable: we did a lot of patterns and technical stuff and more self defense than we have done in ages. Aleksej, a guy in our team is teaching the self defense part cos he's got a brown belt in Ju Jitsu and he knows a lot about this kind of stuff. We practised releases from various grabs (hand, collar etc.) and also ground techniques (which admittedly not everyone is comfortable with, but I think it's good to know how to get away if some guy is sitting on you!!)
Tomorrow I'll have my CAE (Cambridge Advanced English) Oral Exam... I'll pass anyway... Wednesday we have the written exams, we'll be writing for about 9 hours...!!!
Sooo... what else is there? Oh ya, I bought myself three new flutes - pictures will follow.

good night to yee all,
hope ye're all fine

Love
Sandra

Whew, I just noticed how long I didn't write an LJ entry...
well, this will be the first one in ages (and it will be quite short cos I'm at school and supposed to find out more about tidal power :-P)

I was really busy and stressed out recently because I had so much going on: Tae Kwon-Do demonstration, Semester project, choir concert (and, of course, a lot of rehearsals beforehand), band practise (I'm in an Irish folk band now :D) and tests at school.
The TKD demo went really well, my article about it even got in the local newspaper. And I broke my first two wooden boards with a knife hand side strike.

The semester project (we did ours on British Lifestyle, which included sending disposable cameras to people in Britain for them to take pics of what they think is typical of their daily life) was a lot of work, we had to write about 50 pages and do a presentation, but it was fun and completely worth all the effort.

So was the choir concert, it was awesome! We sang "Missa Sacra" in c-minor by R. Schumann. Just imagine about 50 people singing, plus an orchestra, an organ, the conductor, the audience, four solo singers - all taking place in a huge baroque church - I think you get the picture :-P

Band practise is a lot of fun, too, the other members are very nice people (I have only gotten to know them recently) and we're getting along really well. Erik's joining the band today, too :)

Tomorrow and Friday we don't have school as it is a bank holiday weekend :)

OK, now I think I should go back to my research about tidal power... I hope yee are all fine and wish you all a nice weekend

lots of love, miss you
Sandra

I spent the last week in Jaun, a sleepy village in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, I was a counsellor in a camp for kids aged 7-12. It was great! We were never bored with 60 kids around and had a lot of fun! The food was good, too. The weather was not what we expected it to be: on the second day it snowed and we had more than 50 cm of snow!!! We couldn't do an excursion / hiking trip because of that, but we went outside and built snowmen and iglous and had snow ball fights :D
Now I'm wrecked and my voice is almost gone, but I had a great week and I'm already looking forward to next year's camp :D The kids can give you so much just by smiling at you ;-) Even though they get on my nerves sometimes, spending time with them just makes me happy.

one of the worst days ever. totally not worth even getting up in the morning.

Today was not going to be such a nice day, but ended up being great!! I had loads of fun in TKD training and my friend brought me CHEERIOS from Scotland :D :D :D Plus my Mam bought rice milk, and I absolutely LOVE Cheerios with rice milk. Today was my lucky day *touch wood*
Goodnight...

Voilà, a picture of my hat and myself. We had a laugh!

St. Paddy's Day absolutely rocked!! It was a nice day, though it was still kinda chilly, the sky was clear and blue and the sun was shining brightly. In the afternoon me and two friends went to Zurich and visited the first Ireland Festival there. I had freshly baked scones with butter and jam and listened to Irish music and watched some Irish dancing. Awesome!
Then I went straight to Mr. Pickwick's pub in town where I met up with my friend Rachel who has been to Ireland, too. We had Irish stew and, of course, a pint of Guinness (though I must admit, I only had a half pint). Each time one purchased Guinness one got a scratch card - and you should have seen my face when it said "your are a winner" on my card :D I won this really cool Guinness hat which I will show you a picture of shortly!
To top it all Erik came, too, and this really great local band, "Red Shamrock", played Irish, Scottish and Breton Folk. It was creat craic!!

One of the best days I've had in ages! :D :D :D

current mood: leprechaun-ish

I finished the Dragon drawing :D

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b135/schoefli/Dragon.jpg

Feels great:
- Putting on the socks my Grandma knitted for me after running in the snow with bare feet.
- Going to bed and falling asleep right away
- Getting a hug

Dear Becca,

Thanks again for the book! I absolutely love it. It made me start drawing again, as you can see :D

I miss you a lot
much love,
Sandra

My cousin Enya will turn 1 tomorrow :D We celebrated her birthday today, it was very nice. I like spending time with my relatives, it's a lot of fun.
My one uncle gave me his bass guitar and my other uncle lent me the... erm... "Verstärker"... what the heck do you call the big black box that you need to get sound out of a bass guitar??? Nevermind...
School again tomorrow... double physics...art, german... afternoon double math and double biology... if it weren't for art and maybe german it would be like the worst day of the week!!

On Wednesday, I went to see Brokeback Mountain with a friend of mine. He'd always wanted to see it and I had seen the trailer about 2 weeks before. I got interested in the story so I got hold of a copy of Anne Proulx's short story and read it. I must admit I had to read it twice to understand everything, but I have to say, though quite short and, say, kind of "rough", it is a very moving story. So I decided to go and see the film. From the descriptions of the two main characters, Jake Twist and Ennis Del Mar, I had imagined them to be, well... not at all like gorgeous Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal , anyway. I was wondering whether they could still do the story justice.
I wasn't disappointed, especially Heath Ledger (in my opinion) showed a stunning performance as Ennis Del Mar, an eccentric and complex character. I can't say which I prefer, movie or book. The movie is very close to the book, what little dialogue there is in the short story you can find in the film, sometimes the words are exactly the same.
It is simply a great story about pure, true love. I liked it a lot.

I have to go to the cinema more often, I wanna go see North Country and Memoirs of a Geisha (I thought the book was brilliant), too. Did any of yee see Brokeback Mountain? What did you think of it?