Halfway to fufil my dream...

Today my savings account can proudly show a total amount which is approximatly half of the recommended amount one need to bring for a year of travel, and a bit over a third of the money I am trying to save before leaving (my budget is about 30% over the recommended budget to allow me a bit more flexibility and to have a safety buffer for when I come back and have to try to find a job).

As a posimist one can say that I am now halway to my dream! :D

So exciting! But good that I have saved this much money already as there is now only about 8 months left before I set out. Hence only another 8 months to save the rest of the money. Luckily we get a 13th salary in Switzerland...

yeah! the world I'm soon coming :)

dreaming....

Dreaming about travelling. Doing something different. Getting away from the daily repetitions of life. Dreaming about a sort of escape perhaps.

I will travel in 10 days to Macedonia for work which will be interesting. I will then travel to Sweden and Portugal over the holidays which will be wonderful!

But when I'm dreaming about travelling, about getting away, this is not the kind of travel I'm dreaming about. I want to leave for a longer period to experience the world, to live something different, to feel more alive... Luckily my plan is to leave in less than a year :)

Today I'm dreaming...

Different cultures, different lives - ohhh so exciting

I didn't write that much about my trip to Beijing last year at the time. Funnily enough, although the reason I set up this blog originally was as a travel blog, I have ended up writing perhaps the least when travelling. There are so many things to see, to experience, to enjoy that the time feels too short often to find an internet access and submit an entry. And once back from the travels, often it feels a bit too late. So the blog has ended up less as a travel blog and more just a personal blog for my life in Geneva. Hopefully this will change the day I set out for my one-year long travel...

All this to lead into an entry about Beijing and Chinese people with more than a years delay. These thoughts are brought on by my dear boyfriend currently being in China for 2 weeks and hence writing and telling me about what he is experiencing on a daily basis. He loves it! Like I did! It is also brought on by the experience of some friends who happen to be travelling in China at the same time although they have been there a lot longer. They do not seem that happy. Actually in one of the last entries one of them, E, wrote that she hates it and that she cannot wait to leave. It seems that we experience things differently. What my lovely N and I seem to take as an interesting cultural difference, such as the constant attention one gets, E and M are taking differently. Perhaps it's because they have been there for more than a month now and it has worn them weary, perhaps it is just different ways of perceiving life.

For me Beijing was a great experience. I loved it so much that I wished someone would offer me a job there for a year or so to allow me to live there and really explore everything!

And I did not find the Chinese rude. When my mother and I walked down one of the main streets in Beijing, but one a little bit off the tourist paths where you hardly see any foreigners, people would stare and smile, children point and laugh. I took this as a positive thing. I understand them completely; we must have looked like aliens to them - both of us taller than many of the men, me very blond, my mum with white hair, fair skin, foreign - we look so different.

However, to tell a short story, not so many years ago, approx. 30, when my cousin then aged 5 moved to Paris with her family, she soon decided to wear a bonnet the whole year around as people wouldn't stop touching her very blond hair. This was hence the way Parisians behaved seeing a Swedish very blond child 30 years ago! For me therefore, it seems very logical that the Chinese stare when seeing European people 30 years later. And at least they are well behaved enough not to come up and touch our hair :D

As for the friendliness, we encountered it almost everywhere! From the taxi driver who couldn't understand our map (tip: get a map with Chinese characters on it as many people do not seem to be able to read a map but the taxi drives know what different streets are called) but tried his best to help us, even getting a police man to come with his map so that I could point out the right street there, to the hole in the wall restaurant in on of the Hutongs where the staff only spoke Chinese and the menu was in Chinese, but where they found someone they knew to come and help us order and we ended up having on of the best meals for hardly any money.

Sure there were some rude people around. And yes, we did walk out of one restaurant where we didn't really feel welcome. But people being rude to us happened perhaps twice in 8 days, while when in Paris in August this happened at least twice in 2 days! (Yes, Paris as the example again - it seems that I cannot get away from it ;)

I loved Beijing, and I am longing for the day I can go back and visit Beijing again and discovering some of the rest of the country! If you do go, try to enjoy the cultural differences as much as you can! That's the fun part of travelling to places far away from yours - people act differently than to home, life is different than to home and that's what's soooo amazing!

Autumn

Today was a lazy day of staying inside, making scones for breakfast (super yummy with goat cheese and honey miam), a sticky chocolate cake and pumpkin soup for a lovely dinner with a friend (with candles lit for the first time after the summer), and unpacking 2 boxes of winter clothes to repack them with summer clothes. Autumn is really here now, although it feels as cold as January outside with a maximum temperature of 10 degrees and la bise blowing freezing cold winds. The summer has packed up and left abruptly after a slightly prolonged stay. To be missed dearly and longed for, although days of beautiful snow and great skiing will lessen the memory slightly.

Today was a lazy day indeed. A day when I felt very happy not to be a swan ;)

Children? Yes, but not right now please

I want children one day, this is clear. But this day is not now, nor for the next couple of years actually. A pregnancy right now would completely alter my plans. And yes, I have heard how pregnancies have a tendency to happen when it's not the perfect time, while when it is the perfect time, people tend to wait for months or years without any results.

But still, this would so not be the right time as I am finally, after more than 7 years of talking, dreaming, planning, hoping and wishing for it, getting close to my dream of taking a year off and travel around the world! Less than a year left now until I set sail, a third of the money saved up (well half of the minimum recommended, but I want a safety buffer) and the dream is now approaching reality!

So although I one day really want children and cannot imagine a life without, right now would soooo not be the time. And hence I have the feeling every month that perhaps, just because now is not the time, now will be the time. Perhaps one has to have gone through some of the things I have to understand the fear when the period is a few days delayed, or as today, even a few hours delayed. And no, it should not be possible. But yet, I have heard stories of others who should not have been possible, have a couple of mini cousins running around proving that what should and should not be possible is a fluid concept.

Call me paranoid and I will answer your call, for this I am paranoid, but luckily my fear was once again proven wrong and my travel plans and dreams can continue, at least for another month :)

Financial reporting...

Working late after another day of difficulties concentrating at work. One reason, my tiredness. Antoher, the boring task ahead as I have to prepare the mid-term report for my biggest project and on today's agenda is the financial report. Urgh. Usually it's boring but quite a fast task. But with 8 organisations involved plus workshops and other costs, this one is a bit of a mess...

And somehow I wonder if this is the reason why I did 6 years of international studies? Do I really need a Masters degree to put together a financial report? Well, perhaps. But rather in finance than in history and politics surely... Do I need to speak 3 languages fluently for this? Especially since none of them is Mathematics ;)

Ahhh the joys of life and of my wonderfully boring job. Another year only, another year!!

In the meantime, and as an advantage of working late and being able to play music at work, at least I am now working while jazzing to some Erykah Baduizm! Yeah :D

New lunch company

Since my lunch buddy is out of the city for a week, I decided to get a new lunch friend:

This one wanted my food though, and finally managed to chase me away by almost coming up in my face even after the sandwich was finished and the bag thrown away. Luckily neither my cousin nor my friend A were there as they are both scared of birds!