Guardian of the mountain nature

One day in winter I found a call for applications for the guardians of the mountain nature. I have no idea why I found this good, but I applied for it. So I spent three weekends with 20 other pupils, each time in another mountain hut. It is true that I had known more than half of what I heard but it was good to hear other perspectives, too. Most of my schoolfriends were rather boring, maybe because all of them (except Ž who was my schoolfriend, too) were sent to the course by their mountaineering society.

I have no idea how I will be able to help to protect the mountain nature but I am sure that this chance will eventually come. If nothing else I can warn people not to bath in the Alpine lakes or pick the plants in the national park. It is tempting, I know, but it is forbidden. Do we really have to destroy everything just for our pleasure?

I still have an essay to write, and for this reason I will have to go to the mountains quite often. Which is, of course, a pleasure even when I think of it now.

A guitarist

When life is good then we have to make the best of the time we have. One of the things I am busy with at the moment is also learning how to play a guitar. I attended a guitar course a couple of years ago but then we only learnt how to play the chords. This time we are learning how to read the tabs and try to play the guitar this way, which is quite more complicated but far more fun.

I have to say that our young teacher Nina is very patient with us. My fingers are sore from an everday playing but it is well worth it. If I tell you that I spend at least one hour a day playing guitar then you know everything. It feels like magic!

German language

I learnt German in the secondary school. It was a pity that I didn’t like the language because we had quite many hours of German then. Although I had the highest grades I never really learnt it properly. I understand most of it in an everyday conversation but I’ve never tried to speak or write it. Most people can speak English, so I usually help myself with it. They speak German and I speak English. It works alright.

But when I am trying to apply for different kinds of jobs, fluently speaking German is very often a demand (probably also to make a selection, not because it would be actually indispensable for the job itself). That’s why I applied for a German course. I am glad that I am not the only one there who stutters and seeks the correct words to form a sentence (besides, we are all unemployed in our group). But I am not very sure that I will be able to speak German fluently after this course. In any case I will try to do the best I can.

Spanish language

Autumn was a bit desperate season in my life when I also tried to apply for a Spanish course in one of the libraries. It was already full on the first day when the invitation was published. I tried again a couple of months later. The same story again – full. Then I received an invitation in the middle of March. This time I was lucky. We started with the course two weeks ago, again from the beginning, and it is much easier as it was last year. We practice a lot and we learn slowly.

It is weird how attracted I am by the foreign languages lately; I also flipped through the pages of “Step by step - Russian” which still patiently waits for Ž to open it.

Russian is at the moment one of the most popular languages in Slovenia because so many (usually rich and arrogant) tourists from Russia visit this country. It is probably not that difficult to learn it because many words are similar in Slovenian, but in spite of this I am more attracted to Italian or French than to any Slavic languages.
(The photo was taken during the Carnival in Ljubljana when also the Russians were presenting us their culture in the Week of Russian culture.)

December days

A few days ago I heard from someone that I was a loser; and indeed I can’t claim that past year was a successful one, especially not those months after my birthday. I tried to do many things but too many of them were a failure. It seems that things are slowly improving and I hope that the next year will be a better one.

Compared to the rest of the year I was very creative during the past two months. In December I was mostly making presents for friends and neighbors, running around the shops and trying to wrap all presents already a few days before Christmas. I also took part in a calligraphy workshop at the School museum.

There were five of us, pupils, at the workshop, and I used the knowledge I gained there when writing Christmas cards for friends and family. I found the verse in one of the books about medieval Ljubljana, and it was written by Valentin Vodnik, a famous Slovenian most deserving that Slovenian language was spoken and taught in our schools about 200 years ago, in time when Napoleon Bonaparte was trying to conquer Europe. I liked the verse immediately.

I will show you in one of my future posts what kind of things I was making lately; actually I was mostly sewing. And I found out that I am not comfortable with my sewing machine; I prefer sewing by hand.

I wish you all a good year; and for me a year that won’t be one of those Midas touch years again when I turn everything into gold but what I actually want are just hugs and food.

Surprises

Everything has a purpose. This is what I heard from Ž the other day when I was in tears, crying over my own destiny. Though I think that sometimes we suffer too much, and sometimes we never get to know what this purpose is. Sometimes we wait hours, days, weeks, months or even years that something happens, sometimes we wait in vain.

From time to time we are pleasantly surprised when we get something unexpectedly. I got a surprise yesterday, from out of the blue. I will be an editor of a magazine for one year. This is something I look forward to, but also something that will bring lots of work into my everyday life. Anyway, I wish to do a good job.

Verse

B brought Waldorf pedagogics and Anthroposophy into my life. Then I started to eat such food that I had always longed for. At home we had lots of potatoes and pork meat, while living with B changed that completely. I have been eating potatoes since then about three times a year, we ate only poultry, maybe once a month. We had all sorts of wheats and vegetables on our menu and soups as well. Sure we were eating too many sweets... It is interesting, that we both liked the same food. We both didn't like paprika and pears, our favorite juice was banana juice.Each day we lit a candle when having a meal, held our hands and said a verse to thank Earth and Sun for the food. We didn't read newspaper or books while eating. We were really enjoying each meal.

Today my life is quite different from that one with B. Usually I eat my meals alone and I've completely forgotten about such peaceful time. But I did remember and said that verse again last week, although I was eating from my lap, my house being in such a mess. So it goes:

Pozimi živijo semena v zemlji.

Spomladi in poleti rastejo listi in cvetovi.

Potem dozorijo plodovi.

Hvala Zemlji, ki nas hrani, hvala Soncu, ki življenje v zemlji drami.

This verse is in Slovenian and I will not translate it. English ones can be found on Waldorf mama blog. However, having my meal, made of vegetables from my own garden, looking at the flowers blooming in the backyard and enjoying warmth of the sun makes me feel content and at ease. No doubt that the Universe is unfolding as it should.

P.s.: That paper object on a photo is Flexagon (Kaleidocycle).

X

When I was a teenager I bought myself a huge English-English dictionary. I used to use it a lot, before the Internet era. And for school assignments in English which were for me a kind of challenge. As I don't have an Internet connection at home, I take this dictionary from my book shelf from time to time. Interesting, but never before I noticed how little words in English started with the letter X, only five are stated in my dictionary. Also the words starting with X, Y and Z are written together in one 'chapter'.

Slovenian alphabet doesn't have the letter X, although we use it quite a lot. Especially in mathematics. Using words like generation X (which I obviously but not on purpose belong to) and X-mas, when I write quick notes to my friends. English words are quite often used in our everyday communication, mixed with Slovenian of course. I use them too, I admit. And if I spoke Italian, Spanish and French (oh, yes, I wish!), I would probably use some words from those languages, too.

P.s.: I made myself a promise not to eat sweets for 40 days until Easter. So, x is the number of days I will keep this promise to myself. I doubt that the end result will be x=40. :)

Eyes on the skies

I borrowed today's title from a movie about 400 years of telescopic discovery. Yesterday I was writing about the letter B, today I will go back, to the letter A.

One of my interests is watching the sky, either it is blue, covered with clouds or full of stars. When I was 12 years old I discovered astronomy but as I had always been bad in physics, there was no chance to study astronomy or weather science which are both part of the physics study. I had never had a teacher and all my knowledge, which is very, very small, comes only from my own interest. Each year I buy myself a Sternkalender which is great help when a bright star appears on the sky.

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. Information about it can be found on international or national web sites. Don't miss a chance to see the galaxies, planets and stars from very close (alright, only through a telescope, not flying by or into them), don't miss a chance to see our sky in total darkness. Earth is very beautiful from the space but so can be the night sky watched from the Earth if we switch off the lights. Enjoy!

More lights

The lecture yesterday was very interesting, it wasn't so much about the birds than about other living creatures. I have learned that I should sleep in full dark otherwise I have a good chance to get cancer. It is best to have no lights on between 2am and morning. Now it is really time to pull out that IKEA thick fabric and put it on a window in my bedroom. Probably once in the next few months all windows will get some kind of blinds. This is so when you don't build your own house but buy it half finished. I am learning through the years, slowly writing in my memory those things that should not be missing in the house.I am so glad that it is Friday already. In the evening we will have a small celebration with my closest family. It is Saint Nicholas day tomorrow and on the eve of that day we give small presents to each other. Mostly sweets. The big presents are given for Christmas, so I still have some time to do the shopping. Happy weekend!

Macro: 3

Usually when I bake cookies, bread or something similar, I use my scales. When I moved into this house where I live now, I didn't have one. On one occasion my mum brought me a measuring cup by Dr. Oetker (words are written on it in German) which made the baking much easier. I like it a lot because it is simple to use. Although, when I came over a recipe in ounces, I still had to use my calculator to transform grams into this non-European measure. When traveling in the USA, I'd got used to transforming the temperatures in Fahrenheit into the ones in Celsius and miles into kilometers but not having all the recipes in ounces back at home, I had to calculate the numbers over and over again by use of my tiny calculator.Yesterday I baked Scottish baps again, simple and very delicious buns. I was taking my macro photos while preparing the dough and I have found out that my scales measures in ounces, too! What a discovery after such a long time.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes we don't see the things although they are right in front of us? Or as the saying goes: we cannot see the wood for the trees.

Earth

The world has become really small these days. I have always liked all kinds of maps. And the traveling, of course. And since I can't afford to travel a lot, I have been googling around the world. Check it: Google Earth. You can find your very own house (or place where you live) on a map. I did find mine. And some cars in front of it. Of course, you will have to download it first. Our beautiful blue planet on your screen.

Learning & making

Last week I received a twig of a plant I had never seen before. I knew the name but could not link it to any of the shrubs I know. Or at least I have never paid any attention to it. I couldn’t find a book in Slovenian at home (I really wonder where it is), so I had to look into Flora Helvetica, a beautiful book about the plants in Switzerland. Butcher's broom is its English name. A funny name, indeed.

For Friday’s lunch I made these, inspired by Coconut&Lime:

I made them with another filling, though. I used some chopped tomatoes and onion. Light, oh light, I miss you a lot! In the weather we have it is so difficult to take some good photos with my camera.

A few weeks ago we were making these cute birdies at the workshop we organize at work. They are meant to be for the children but usually older people come.

This is what I was also doing during the weekend:

Paper stars for my windows. On the photo they are not finished yet. When we get some proper light and sunshine, I will take a photo of them and post it.