Amazing weekend in Derby!!☺

Headed to Derby for the weekend for Chitwan's 21st birthday! 

We took an overnight bus that left Edinburgh at 9:30pm and reached Derby the next morning at 9:45am and the bus journey was surprisingly alright

After settling down in the house, we cooked up brunch for 8! There was a spread of eggs, beans, toast, coco pops, peanut butter, bananas, oranges, orange juice and coffee - basically a feast. It was so fun setting the table, cooking up huge portions of food, ensuring a steady supply of toast throughout the meal, passing plates of food around the table and boy was it a simple yet delicious breakfast :) and of course what made it even more enjoyable was the team effort!!

After brunch, we headed out into the field and played games & soccer all afternoon! It was an incredible amount of fun playing all these running childhood games and also barefoot!! Just thinking back about how giddy with happiness we were then makes me so happy :')

We were blessed with fantastic weather and here's Topo just soaking it allllll in

Beautiful cherry blossoms!! Can't wait to see the whole of the meadows in Edinburgh lined up with these beauties 

After a good amount of running under the sun, we headed back in to have a shower and snack just as the sun was setting. It was more of a meal rather than a snack because there was pizza and an endless flow of crisps and I had hummus and cucumber sticks :) also thank goodness Topo and I were quick to use the bathroom early when no one else had gotten their shower stuff ready hehe

After the heavy snack, we headed into the sitting area to relax - some were just chatting, some were fixing a ridiculous 1000 piece puzzle and Topo and I fell asleep on the sofas

Despite the heavy snack we had previously, we were all hungry again??? And so we had the healthiest dinner of regular fries, curly fries, crisps, nuggets, more pizza and cheese croquets! Chitwan's mum cooked me a huge pot of vegan biryani rice which incredibly sweet of her :')

Following dinner, we all just chatted round the dining table and then decided to play sardines and hide&seek in the dark! IT WAS SO MUCH FUN HOLY MOLY. I find it incredible how such simple games can give us university students such happiness?! It was truly an amazing night just being kids again, finding the perfect hiding spot and trying to suppress our giggles to make sure the seeker didn't find us!! To end the night, we watched Mulan! Topo and I didn't make it far into the movie before we called it a night hehe

The next morning, Topo and I were the earliest to rise and we decided to make breakfast for everyone! So here's a pic of the spread of food, identical to the one we had the previous morning for brunch! It made me happy knowing that people would be glad to see food the minute they came downstairs for breakfast :) 

We spent the rest of Saturday prepping the house for the party that night - putting up lights everywhere (I spent 1.5 hours untangling one set of christmas lights. My patience was tested too many times), blowing up balloons, setting the table etc. At 6:30pm, everyone started to get ready for the party and we all had a crazy wonderful evening of drinks, dancing & eating! 

Kristiina and Isabel

The guys!

Chitwan and Edward taking over the Dj station as he left for a bit

Here's Us :) 

Surprisingly, we all woke up in time for the bus at 11:10am the next morning (mostly hungover hahah not me though WOOHOO) and we embarked on our journey back to Edinburgh! 

We had a 30 mins stop at a bus station in the Lake District to grab late lunch and just look at this view!! Also it was like a cafeteria styled restaurant where they serve you food that's already spread out in a buffet style and I just asked for a serving of roasted veggies and it cost me just £1.50!! Kristiina got a sandwhich at the deli section which cost her £3.20 and she was furious when she found out ooopppss 

Wind mills are so majestic!! (told Topo I could be a wind farmer one day)

Also witnessed a beautiful sunset on the way back. Well, the whole journey back after the Lake District stop was incredibly scenic :') 

We arrived back in Edinburgh at 9:30pm and then hopped into a taxi to get home 

☺☺This is definitely a trip to remember ☺☺

Improvements

- Guilt - 

The fact or state of having committed an offense, crime, violation or wrong especially against moral or penal law ; A feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, whether real or imagined. 

I have to stop feeling guilty for things that are out of my control. Like for example, the fact that I have such few contact hours in university makes me feel guilty that I am not making the full use of my time and not studying as hard as other people are. But why feel guilty when this is not something I can control? I was only given these few contact hours and even more so, why make the comparison to other people? What good is it to compare how much one is studying to another when it literally makes no difference in terms of how much I actually have to study? I feel like guilty is definitely the wrong word to use in this context because no I have not committed a crime or a wrong. So note to self: Stop feeling guilty.

- Grateful - 

Feeling or showing an appreciation for something done or received. 

I've definitely been feeling more grateful for my life thus far after I coming to university but I must admit that the feeling and the reminder that I am grateful for my life comes in waves and it's something I want to be able to remember to feel all the time. I have mentioned in a previous post that Veganism and University were somehow the perfect combination in opening my eyes to all the injustice and inequality in this world and reminding me that where I am today is a privilege not to be taken for granted. However, the kind of gratefulness I have been feeling or rather reminding myself to feel lately, is merely about the existence of my physical body. I have a body that allows me to move, to breathe, to survive. To run, to climb, to go to any place in the world not being restricted by any physical disabilities. I think the reason why I have been feeling this way is because I have been going to the gym more lately and as I'm running, a way to keep me going sometimes is just a timely reminder that I am able to run and my heart is pumping oxygen through my whole system to allow me to test my limits; my knees and my legs are strong to keep me going to run faster and longer - and this is not something everyone is capable of doing. It is my life's goal to have optimum health and fitness even when I'm 80 so that I can still experience life to its fullest then. 

- Confidence - 

Belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities; assurance 

I think it's safe to say that too many people, including myself, lack confidence in the way they look. Even though I tell myself not to compare myself to others (which I have improved on because I have finally accepted that you will really never be able to look exactly like someone else because we are all made up differently and our bodies work in entirely different ways), I still can compare myself to how I looked before, or how much thinner I was when I was younger or just have physical expectations to have slimmer this and more toned that. Sometimes I feel like it will never it. This lack of body confidence will never end because it's a never ending goal isn't it? You can always get fitter, you can always be more toned etc. I may have found a solution to this - To strive for a feeling rather than for something physical. I want to feel healthy, I want to feel strong, I want to feel good on the inside. Perhaps that would help. Besides body confidence, I want to also feel confident about my decisions and opinions. On numerous occasions, in an attempt to please the people around me, or think that I am actually trying to please people around me, I shut down my own opinions just to make sure that I don't offend anyone; I don't challenge what they say so that we don't have to disagree; or I just chose to keep quiet because I don't want to situation to become unhappy (even though it really wouldn't have if I'd just said what I wanted to say). I worry too much for my own good and it's definitely something I am going to work on. 

I hope looking back at this one day, I can say that I have fulfilled my ambition to want to improve on these 3 things. Life is really too short to be spent worrying about the what ifs and the I should haves and to be full of regret about the things we could have done to improve the time we have on this beautiful planet Earth.

Uneventful Day 3 & our last day here

We had planned to go to Montrago Natural Park the next morning but when we arrived at the bus interchange, we realised that we had missed the 8:30am bus and the next one left at 12:50pm. So to kill time before the bus, we walked around the city centre, stumbled into a really nice art gallery, got fruits and dates at a fruit market, shared a take-away of udon stir-fried with vegetables and headed back to the interchange in time for the bus

The fruit market!

Look how lovely and fresh the strawberries were! 

We passed this man making named signs in the most unique technique. He was using a tiny piece of an angled blade dipped it into bright colours to create this amazing, creative and very quick piece of artwork 

He made my name by chance and just look how beautiful the animations are! 

We also passed a group of street musicians and I very luckily got a shot of this man giving the guys a thumbs up! Their music truly livened up the atmosphere on that street :) 

So anyway, we got on the bus and paid €17 each (we were quite shocked by the price but paid anyway), and embarked on our 2 hours ride to Cala D'or where we would walk another 35 mins to the natural park. When it came to the last 30 minutes of our journey, Topo and I realised that we were the only people left on the bus and it had started to pour heavily. We then had a conversation with the bus driver on when the last bus would come to pick us up. It didn't help that he could not speak English that well and so we were really unsure of what his instructions were and it entailed us having to call the driver - impossible because we didn't get a local SIM card, and entailed us having to wait at any bend of a random round about which had no signage to wait for the next driver. Topo and I then discussed for 2 mins and decided that we'd just turn back to Palma. and so without even getting off the bus, we embarked on another 2 hour journey back to Palma. I was quite bummed at this point, well I think it's safe to say that we both were because the cove at Montrago looked amazing from pictures and we both craved to see clear blue waters and the beach! However, Topo was so positive in his mindset and kept reassuring me that we literally would not have known and hence there was no use feeling sad about it. We then played games like hangman, tic-tac-toe and categories on the way back which made the journey so much fun :) 

I didn't manage to take many pictures that day because we really didn't do much. But of course we had to get Amorina gelato again before heading back, and had the same lentil curry for dinner (yes, we had a massive batch to last us till the last day) ! 

On our last day here, we managed to satisfy our beach craving and headed to Cala Major beach in the morning. We took about an hour to find the correct bus stop due to poor signage of Mallorca's public transport but managed to get on bus no. 3 to the beach 

Love Palma's architecture 

We made it!!!! 

and as I take my phone out of my pocket to take a snap chat, I drop my phone on a bed of rocks and tada!!! 

☹☹☹☹☹

As you can see, the beach was completely empty which I found really surprising, but I was thankful for the fact that it was ☺

hmmmmmm just love the turquoise blue :') 

Beautiful, grand, majestic building!! 

After we got back from the beach, we started to pack up, made sure we didn't leave anything in the air bnb, got some gelato (OF COURSE) and then soon realised that with one hand occupied with our luggages, we couldn't eat our ice cream ...... 

After 2 mins of licking my ice cream from my cup, I put my ice cream on Topo's 'plate' of his ice cream and crepe, took his luggage, and let him eat his desert as I wheeled both of our suitcases to the bus stop. It was lucky that we missed our bus as you aren't allowed to eat on the buses, and so we took our time to enjoy our ice cream whilst waiting for the bus at this beautiful part of town that we didn't realise was just round the corner from our air bnb!!! 

We played categories the whole plane journey back to Edinburgh and were probably being quite loud but oh wellllssss hehe. Had Japanese for dinner (was going to be a long time before we next ate out again - need to save money!!!) and then returned safely back home. I did miss my room quite a bit but didn't realise it till I felt a wave of happiness when I entered it :') 

Definitely coming back to Mallorca in the future to snorkel but till next time, Thank you Mallorca for a wonderful trip!! ☺

Mallorca Day 2: A day trip to Port de Sóller

This was my favourite day of the trip! 

We had a really rushed morning trying to find the train station and thankfully managed to get on the train to Sóller just 2 mins before it left the station. I even asked permission to quickly head to the toilet before embarking on our 1 hour train ride and the second I step foot on the train, the conductor pressed on the horn and the train started moving! Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get a seat next to each other as the train was full but what we also then realised was that we were the only young people on the train - It was full of adults and the majority aged people!! Also, the train was so cute and old fashioned and had wooden carriages :) 

The train ride was really scenic but unfortunately most of the pictures were back lit but this one wasn't too bad. After getting off at Sóller, we then got on the tram to Port de Sóller 

This was the tram - how adorable right! 

Port de Sóller was beautiful!!!

We had fresh orange juice, vegetable gazpacho and paella for lunch! Finally, some paella! It was really oily though but delicious still :) 

After lunch, we trekked back to Sóller instead of taking the tram and it was incredibly scenic!!

There were citrus fruit trees everywhere and we (well not me, Topo) even sneakily plucked an orange off a tree hehe

We passed by quite a number of people who were trekking down from Sóller and almost everyone we passed greeted us with "Hola!". It's such a simple gesture yet can make one feel so good and happy on the inside. Singaporeans can definitely improve on their friendliness!! 

Cheeky "this is a nice wall let's take a picture here"

These were fresh strawberries that we bought the previous day and I brought them as a snack which came in handy! 

The trek took us about 2 hours despite false signage telling us that we would have reached our destination much sooner. On the last 30 mins of our trek, we played categories (basically pick a category and take turns to say as many things as you can within that category until one person can't come up with anything e.g. citrus fruits, dog breeds, capital cities etc.) and it's such a simple game yet I find so much joy in playing it! and we both get quite competitive hahah 

We managed to get the last train back to Palma at 5pm, bought gelato from Amorino again and then headed back for our lentil curry for dinner!