To be honest, I'm quite a lazy person. If it weren't for other people, I'd completely forget to set some goals for the new year. Luckily there are always some lovely people online to remind me. This year I've teamed up with Shaima from The Mysterious Emirati: we're posting our goals and resolutions for 2017 together (but apart), so if you're done reading this post, head over to The Mysterious Emirati to check out hers as well!

I have a tiny little confession to make though: I'm a bit afraid of 2017. 2016 has been so good to me that I'm afraid I'll have to pay the price for it in 2017. Years ending in odd numbers are usually a little less good to me, but this time I'm determined not to let that happen! I've set some goals for myself that'll hopefully make 2017 at least as amazing as 2016 was for me. So without further ado, here's my gameplan for 2017!

2016 isn't entirely over yet. There are still four days left in which an awful lot could happen. I would not be surprised to hear that some people are currently hiding under their duvet, waiting for those four days to pass. Everyone around me is telling everyone who will listen that 2016 was a terrible, no-good monstrosity of a year. Yet here I am, looking back on the past year thinking: That actually went pretty damn great for me.

I don't think I ever went into a new year with as much optimism as I did in 2016. I set myself 8 goals and wanted to experience as many new things as possible. Did I reach my goals? Well, not all of them. Other goals seem insignificant now. Some goals were reached in ways I'm still proud of. So let's just see how I did, shall we?

A few weeks ago I suddenly found myself slaying the Instagram game. Now I used to think life was uninstagrammable, so I was pretty surprised when some of my less interesting pictures gathered dozens of likes within the hour. I was so happy. I thought I'd finally figured out how to do the Instagram thing. I was foolish. I did some stupid things. I was a complete Instagram idiot.

It all began when I started scrolling through the pictures I'd clicked this summer. Some were actually pretty decent, so I thought I'd give Instagram a shot again.
That was probably my first mistake, because the last time I tried my hand at Instagram I'd thrown my phone across the room in frustration. Anyway, I started posting on my page again.
The first couple of days everything went great. More than great actually, it went pretty much perfect. I got plenty likes and even gained a few followers. Finally I was playing the Instagram game again and I was playing it well. Not that I had any idea what I was doing. In fact, I didn't even know I had been creating an Instagram theme until the sixth day of posting a picture to said theme. Yes, that's the level I was playing the game on.

Despite my incompetence, things kept going great. I posted daily and enjoyed it more than I expected. The numbers kept going up and up, which meant I got more and more excited with every post, like a real Instagram idiot, unsuspecting of her looming downfall. Downfall wasn't in the near future at that moment though. No, I was going for a milestone rather than downfall: the milestone of 100 likes on one picture. I waited patiently. A pic of flowers in Lithuania inched closer and closer to 100. Then one night, I actually did hit 100. You won't believe how happy I was. All my friends needed to know about it. Screenshots were sent all over the place. I was jumping up and down with excitement and barely slept that night. Pure Instagram idiocy right there.

My high didn't last long. As it always goes with Instagram and me, I suddenly started losing followers rapidly without any apparent reason. One moment I reached an all-time high of 140 followers, the next loads of people unfollowed me. Keeping up with my posting schedule didn't work, neither did using a ridiculous amount of hashtags. I was heart-broken.

For a few days I wanted to give up on Instagram again. Then I realized I was being stupid. I'd had fun editing and sharing my pictures. Giving that up just because of some stats? That would make me a real idiot. So I continued posting. I'll never make it big on Instagram, but then again, who does? Almost everyone I know struggle with Instagram except for a lucky few. I try to ignore the numbers as much as possible now. A lot of liked on my post can still make me happy, but a new follower or two doesn't excite me anymore. That way I'll stay an Instagram idiot, but at least I'll be a happy Instagram idiot.

Stay Awesome!

I believe in a thing called balance. If I blog about things I'm good at, I also blog about things I'm bad at. And so balance remains. Now a couple of weeks ago I posted about my favorite superheroes. To keep balance, today I'll tell you about, you guessed it, my least favorite superheroes. Let's get started, shall we?

Yeah, this'll probably come as a nasty surprise to some of you. I liked the new Spider-Man in Civil War a lot, but my dislike comes from a childhood trauma. Okay, trauma is probably too big of a word, but it was trauma-like.
When I was six I had this friends who could watch anything she wanted without her parenst protesting. Back then I had a whole list of cartoons and movies I couldn't watch, I also had nightmares as soon as something remotely scary happened. Naturally I wasn't allowed to watch Spider-Man at six years old, but my friend was. One days her younger brothers (one and three years old at the time) were watching the movie. Dr Octopus terrified me and Spider-Man was completely useless in teh scenes I saw. Of course my feelings for Spider-Man have changed over the years. Toby McGuire stepping down already helped a lot, since his Spider-Man couldn't protect me. But deep down inside, six-year-old Envy still gets uncomfortable when Spider-Man comes along.

Maybe it's because I was brought up by a man who took Nordic myhtology very serious. Maybe it's because I don't like Chris Hemsworth. Either way, I don't like Thor.
I like my Norse gods the way they are in their myths, not running around with a big green guy, a dude in an iron suit and an ancient WWII veteran. That's just not right. I don't like it. I like it even less when Marvel suddenly decides that Thor can be turned into a woman. No. Just no.

My least favorite superhero of all times is the one and only Superman. Why, you ask me? Because he's too good. Most superheroes get their ass kicked from time to time. Superman only loses when there's kryptonite around. Apart from that he's pretty much invincible and has just about every power. This makes him the ultimate superhero to some, but incredibly boring to me. If he's in a fight you can be almost 100% sure he'll win. There's never much of that doubt about the fate of a main character that makes stories so appealing to me. No, Superman can do just about anything. Wake me up when the boring is over.

Now I'm still a newbie to the superhero world, so these may change over time. I'll probably get over my issues with Spider-Man soon enough, while there are some other heroes I'm starting to dislike... It's not a bad dislike though. When I don't like a superhero, I love to hate them if you know what I mean. So tell me, who are your least favorite superheroes?

Stay Awesome!

Over the past few weeks I haven't been myself. Actually, that's not true. I've been a watered-down version of myself. I lost myself in my work. I started working at 8am and didn't stop until 9pm. The scary part is that I didn't even notice I was losing myself, not until I finally had time to sit down and write a blog post. Then I realized that Envy was... pretty much gone.

I'm in my junior year of college now. Three months in I can tell it's going to be a very difficult year. No matter how hard I work and how carefully I plan everything in my life, there are never enough hours in my days. So I started dropping parts of myself that I didn't need. The parts that took up too much of my time, but that didn't benefit my future.
Daydreaming had to go first. I needed those precious minutes to write reports, not to come up with blog post ideas or a chapter for a novel. So with daydreaming, writing also left my life, which was quickly followed by blogging of course. For a week my life felt very dull and empty, but then my workload was doubled and I had to make another sacrifice in order to have enough time for college.
I stopped reading. Not just blogs, but also books and magazines. Some nights I read five pages, then fell asleep. It made me sad that the days of 150+ pages were now over, but I didn't have much time to be sad: more work came my way...

For a few days I didn't know what to do. I tried to think, but didn't have time for that. I had to keep working. I tutor a kid from the other side of the street and also took on a translation job in August. My plan was to save up for a trip to India and Thailand, but those plans and the financial problems that came with them took up quite some time. So I stopped dreaming about travelling. I stopped making plans. I stopped doing everything that made me Envy.

I've lived like this for about eight weeks now. I wake up, go to college or internship, come home to do homework, tutor or translate, then sleep. Most days I'm so busy I skip meals. I lost quite some weight in the first month of junior year. I feel like I'm nothing more than a shadow of my former self. It scares me how I don't do anything anymore, yet I'm exhausted every night. I don't have time for my hobbies anymore. I don't have time for anything...

I never expected junior year to suck the life out of me, but it's doing just that. I feel like there's not much left of me and I'm very afraid to lose myself completely. I was planning on blogging regularly, but I can't. I can't promise when I'll write again, when I'll comment on other blogs again, when I'll be a part of the community again... But if I seem to disappear completely, if you see me lose that last little part of myself, please help me find my way back to who I used to be. Tweet me, mail me, smack me in the face. But please help me not to lose myself tonight, tomorrow night and all the nights after that...

Stay Awesome

Do you know that scene from The Big Bang Theory in which Raj tries to convince Sheldon not to come with him by very unconvincingly saying: 'I hate trains'?

Well, that's me right now. I'd like to say that I'm one of the cool kids and don't care much for trains, but in fact I really really really like trains. Especially night trains. I think that's because I have this heavily romanticized idea of a nocturnal Hogwarts Express. I knew my night train from St. Petersburg to Moscow wouldn't be that awesome, but the experience was just screaming to be blogged!

I travelled through the Baltics and Russia with a group of Dutch people, accompanied by a tour guide. A tour guide who didn't speak and couldn't read Russian. Because of this, everyone was panicking at the train station while I wandered off. St. Petersburg train station has a wonderful great hall, which is also a waiting room. It's the kind of Soviet impressive I expected to see in Russia.

When I came back to the still panicking group, I looke at the sign with departure times on it and reported when and from which platform our train would leave. I'd learned Cyrillic and that came in very handy. Sadly, no one listened to me because I'd been vlogging. Half an hour and a lot of panic later we went to the platform I'd named. Of course someone else took credit for it, but there our train was.
Our carriage was the very last on of the reddish train. I say reddish because it was pitchblack out when we boarded, so it might as well have been pink. Okay, not pink, it's still Putin's country, but you know what I mean.
I was boucning up and down the platform with excitement. I couldn't wait to see what the inside of the train would look like, so I peeked through a window - straight into the face of a shirtless guy, which is actually quite normal in Russia.. The guy didn't seem to mind. I did, so I jumped away from the train and waited with checking the compartments out until I'd boarded the train.

Boarding took ages. Mostly because people in general have the annoying habit of blocking hallways instead of entering once they've found their compartment.
My compartment was almost at the end of the carriage, near the toilets. That was actually a big plus, because I could quickly run up to the toilet before a bathroom line could form. The compartment itself was basic: four beds and a tiny table. The beds were bunk beads. Sleeping in the top bunk, I had about half a meter left between bed and ceiling. Yes, that resulted in multiple head butts, but I didn't care. I was excited. I had a real bed in a train, it was freaking awesome.

As the train left the station, I noticed there wouldn't be much to look at during the ride, not just because the Russian night is pure darkness, but also because the Russian landscape is very empty. No specks of light from villages. Nothing. I went to bed early, and that's when the ordeal began. As I said, there were four beds in the compartment. One for me, one for my mom, one for my dad... and one for another woman from our group. Not this woman snored. At first I was okay with this; I had my ear plugs, no problem. Then the woman started to snore louders. By some kind of miracle I managed to fall asleep. Not for long though. The decibel level in our compartment kept rising, making it impossible to even go through the six stages of sleeping near a snorer, heck, even thinking was impossible.
My mom would like to tell you this: 'She snored louder than a boar. At some point I even thought a boar was coming at me from her side of the compartment. After a while I found the courage to wake her up, but she turned around and snored even louder! Around 4am I fled the compartment. I waited on the stairs near the toilet until we arrived in Moscow. You could hear her snore through the walls."
Yes, my poor mom spent most of the train ride on a staircase... She didn't exaggerate. If I hadn't been stuck on the top bunk, I would have fled too.

Either way, I enjoyed my train ride. I looked at the outskirts of Moscow while eating my breakfast that came "ticket included lunchbox" as the Russian paper with bad English translation said. I enjoyed those moments. Night trains are awesome, but next time I'll only board one with people I know and who don't snore.

Stay Awesome!

PS. If you wanna see the train for yourself, you can watch my vlog on the Russia trip right here!

So right now I'm extremely busy. And what do I do when I'm extremely busy? I indulge in some escapism. Okay, actually I freak out, stress, work my ass off, cry because I'm exhausted, THEN go for the escapism. Now I'm currently right in the middle of one of the most busiest periods of my college life, so I'm doing the escapism thing. Usually I'd read a book, but my brain can't handle that many letters on a page anymore, so I go for something just as great: comic books.
My dad has always had a thing for comic books, but it wasn't until he gave me all his old comics. Then I realized that I freaking loved the combination of art and storytelling. Okay, the rise of superhero movies had something to do with it as well, but now I'm in a situation where I can't shut up about my favorite heroes anymore. And what do I do when I can't shut up about something? Right, I tell about it on my blog. So please let me introduce you to my five favorite superheroes!

The only DC hero on this list is my first superhero love: Batman. I started obsessing over him when I was fourteen. I didn't have any real reason to like Batman at the time. It was more of an inside joke with the guy who liked me. Later on I discovered that my love for Batman is pure genetics: my dad used to collect Batman comics when he was a kid. He gave them all to me when I was 18. Within a few days I'd read them all.
I still can't explain why I like Batman so much. I guess I like how he doesn't have any superpowers and still kicks ass. He's awesome. I shouldn't have to explain why. He's Batman, that's reason enough.

Iron Man turned me into a Marvel fan. He was my favorite Avenger for a while, but I'll get back to that later on. For now it's just important that Iron Man opened the door to the Marvel fandom for me.

Then Deadpool came along. I'd been kind of living under a rock when he became popular in the mainstream, because everyone knew about the movie except me. I decided to fix that problem by reading up on the character. When one of my classes was unexpectedly cancelled, I went to the local comic book store and even though I was looking for something slightly different, I left the place with a Deadpool comic book. It was the first comic book I bought without being ashamed of my geekiness. I read it in one go and when I finished reading I'd decided I liked this guy. He's random and a bit of an ass - just how I like it.

If you know me, it won't be a surprise to you that Captain America is my absolute favorite superhero. I even did a Cap cosplay for Dutch Comic Con. I know that a lot of people think he's my favorite because of Chris Evans' abs (though those did help Cap's case), but there's much more to it. You see, when I was 15 years old my dad wanted to watch a series of documentaries with me. One of them was all about Captain America. At that time I thought he must be the lamest superhero ever, but then I learnt about his origins. I got to know the character. I fell in love. I love the idea behind this character and the values he stands for. Cap is that guy you can trust completely, who will always do what's best not just for him, but also for everyone around him. Maybe I like that because I want a guy like that in my life. Maybe it's actually Chris Evans' abs after all. I guess you'll never know for sure ;)

So these are my four favorites and as you can probably tell by the pictures in this post, I'm obsessed with their merchandise. I'm pretty proud of being a fan of these superheroes actually. Which ones are your favorites?

Stay Awesome!

When I was a bratty little 9th grader I thought I didn't have to pay attention to anything that was said in English class. I'd just returned from five weeks in the US, I spoke English with a perfect Californian accent, I knew all the words in our book, why did I even have to be there?
This was probably the only time in my life when I was arrogant, but I passed every test with flying colors without ever paying attention. In fact I don't remember anything I learned in 9th grade, except for one thing: "to be at a crossroads". That's where my ego took a beating, because I thought it was meant to be literal. When I learned its actual meaning, I fell in love with the expression. I couldn't wait till I arrived at a big crossroads in life, just so I could the only thing I learned in 9th grade English class.

I waited for a while. I thought there'd be a crossroads ahead. Especially as graduation came closer and closer. Yet nothing happened. Yes, everything changed, but in a way it all stayed the same: I had some close friends spread around the world, I was in school/college and was a mediocre athlete. I didn't arrive at any crossroads. My road just went straight ahead and even though it was different from the roads of the people around me, mine seemed to take me straight to wherever I was supposed to be. No surprises, no diversions, no crossroads. Until now. Now my world is spinning out of control. That crossroads I'd been looking forward to for years? It's right behind me. And I didn't even get the chance to decide which road to take.

If I'd know I'd finally arrive at a crossroads this year, I would have bought a map. Asked directions. Find a travel companion. Now I'm on an unknown road, with opportunity everywhere. I don't mind being on this road. It has it advantages. But there's one thing it lacks: time for me to blog...
When I came close to my big crossroads, I also started my junior year of college. I was swept onto this road by a tsunami of homework and sweet messages. I work my ass of seven days a week and still don't have enough time to finish all my work. I use all my free time (which is a minute here and half an hour there) to keep in touch with my friends and see my family, but it's not enough. Still I wouldn't want it any other way. I finally get paid for my work at internship. My parents and I are very close now. My friends and I really make time for each other. On top of all that, I met the best guy ever. Maybe I didn't get to choose this path when I arrived at my crossroads, but I can't complain about where it's taking me. I'm the happiest I've been in years. I'm the busiest I've been in years. I'm also the worst blogger I've been in years, but I promise I won't disappear for weeks again. I'm here to stay, on this path and in the blogosphere :)

Stay Awesome!

A few weeks ago I wrote this post about the struggles of sending snail mail. I wrote about not knowing what to write and where to get stamps. After the post had gone up I thought I´d covered the most difficult aspects of snail mail adventures. Then I found out there´s something even more difficult: Receiving snail mail. Story time!

When I cam home from Russia, there was a note on my doormat with the Dutch mail service's logo on it. "We missed you on July 26th!" it said. "Your letter, which requires your signature, is waiting for you at the local post office!"
My parents and I had no idea what this was about. I thought maybe Kanra from The Lunar Descent had sent me something that needed to be checked and signed for. My parents were completely clueless and let me listen to my gut, that said the letter was for me.
At the bottom of the note there was a code. I could go online and use it to check details, like sender and weight of the letter. So I did just that at 1.15am on August 1st, only to find out that my letter was supposedly 1 gram. An envelope alone already weighs more than that, but I shrugged it off and moved on to the other information - except there was none. All fields on my screen were empty. Sender: unknown. I moved the cursor over the word 'unknown'. A message popped up: "The sender of this letter is unknown. This could be because they are not registered in our archives or because your letter cam from abroad."
I sighed. Great, very helpful. There was only one field left that wasn't empty. It was another code. I didn't recognize anything in the code, which wasn't even clickable. I stared at it for a while, trying to make sense of it. The last two letters were IN. India? But no one in India had my address, at least not as far as I knew. Besides, even if it came from India, why did I have to sign for it? I never had to sign for anything I got from Pakistan. What was this all about?

After a short night full of questions about the mysterious letter, I grabbed my stuff to go to the post office. The note I'd gotten had come with a checklist of things I needed to bring in order to be allowed to sign for my letter: an ID card and the note itself at least. Money was a good idea too, just in case.
I threw everything I needed in a tote bag and cycled to the other end of town, where the lady at the counter of the post office awarded me to some suspicious looks as I handed her the note and explained why I was there.
'Were you expecting any mail?' she asked.
'No.'
'A parcel? A letter maybe?'
'No, I wasn't expecting anything!' I blurted. 'All I know is that I came home from vacation to find this weird note!'
The lady didn't raise an eyebrow in surprised annoyance, but she did come very close to doing so. 'Okay then, we'll take a look. Do you have any ID on you now?'
I handed her my driver's license. She checked the picture to see if it was really me. What did she expect? Why would anyone pretend to be someone else for a letter?
She walked away. Stuck my driver's license in a machine. Scanned it. Scanned it once more. Then she put it aside and walked back over to me. 'You'll get that back in a minute. What's your name again?'
I was baffled. Was she really checking if what I'd say wouldn't contradict my ID? This woman was more serious about checking my identity than the people at the Russian border!
'Envy Fisher.'
'Okay, and your address?' she asked, friendlier now she knew I was the real Envy Fisher.
I told her as she pulled a box out from under the counter. It was bursting with letters and I had to tell her my address once more before she found my letter. She put it on a ledge on her side of the counter, where I could see the mangled envelope but not reach it.
'Now if you'd sign please?'
I looked around in confusion. Sign what? Where? 'Excuse me?'
'Right here.'
I had to scribble my name on a teeny tiny touch pad, then finally got my driver's license and my letter.
'Thank you. We hope to see you again.'
'Yeah, bye,' I mumbled as I walked out, still overwhelmed by it all. What was so special about this letter that it needed a full identity check?

I didn't look at the envelope until I was almost home. I recognized the handwriting. The envelope was covered in stickers, two Dutch, three Indian. I didn't open it. That's too difficult when you're cycling anyway. Back home I threw the letter on the dinner table.
'And, did it come from Pakistan? What did Kanra send you?' my parents asked.
'It's from India!' I shouted as I stormed off. I didn't feel like reading the letter at all. I was too annoyed by all the things that happened at the post office. It took me an hour to get over it, then I finally opened the envelope and read my letter.
As it turned out, Kanra had given my address to my friend in India so he could send me a surprise letter for my birthday. That's the sweetest thing people have ever done behind my back, but the stress! I wish everyone awesome surprises for their birthday, but the post office experience? I do not recommend it!

Stay Awesome!

Not too long ago I visited Russia. I thought I was going to have the time of my life, but when I arrived reality kicked me in the face. Hard.
Russia itself is nice.  Moscow is great. I'll write later on about its beauty and the things I did and learned there, but now I need to vent. You see, I didn't like most of Russia and most of Russia didn't like me. I quickly learned that friendliness wasn't invented there. Bureaucracy and bad moods probably were. Most Russians I interacted with had this mindset of: We do things my way, or not at all.
I didn't feel very welcome when I arrived in St. Petersburg. Since I'd been looking forward to this trip for months, I didn't want to let this get me down. That's why I started am 'Only in Russia' list in my Travel Journal. Because some things are things you'll only see in crazy Russia.

Estonia, where do I start? It's the place where I ran head-first into a Medieval stone wall, where I slept in a hotel that had an athletics track in it's yard, where I saw two completely different sides of one and the same country. But now I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just start at the beginning, shall we?

I arrived in Estonia by bus. That's the great thing about the Baltics, it's easy to take a bus from one place to the next. And buses are great if you want to catch up on some sleep. At least that's what I like to do on buses, which is why I completely missed the moment of crossing the border.
'Are we in Estonia?' were my first words after waking up completely disoriented. Soon enough I'd see it with my own eyes. Estonia is not like Lithuania and Latvia. It feels like part of Scandinavia and you can see that in the architecture and language.

I slept until it was time to board a boat that would take us to the isle of Muhu in about half an hour. The island is connected by road to the biggest island of Estonia: Saaremaa. After a smelly boat trip, I continued sleeping until we reached our destination, Kuressaare. To be honest, I slept a lot in Estonia. At least until I found out what our hotel had to offer.
Most of you probably won't care about what I'm about to say, but my athletes' heart skipped a beat when I arrived at Hotel Stadioni, located on the premises of a beautiful 400 meter track. The track was open for everyone, the materials outside, ready to be used. This showed more about the place than you'd suspect. A place where the track is so welcoming is usually home to friendly and trusting people. I was not surprised when the people on the island turned out to be just that.
Kuressaare and Saaremaa are great if you love nature, mills and castles (of course there's a castle, it's the Baltics, remember?). The pizzas are great. But the main attraction for me was the track. I wish I could've stayed longer, but we had plans for Estonia's capital Tallinn.

What's Tallinn famous for? Its Medieval city walls, which I met from a little too close up. The walls were fun, because you get to walk on them for a small fee. I vlogged on them - until disaster struck. My parents, who didn't want to wait for me while I vlogged, had entered one of the towers. As I ran to catch up with them, I didn't notice how small the door was and hit my head against the massive stone wall. Tallinn tip: always keep an eye on the size of the doors in the Medieval places. Keep an eye on everything else too. Tallinn is the busiest place I've seen in the Baltics. Tourists everywhere.

Now there's one thing the tourists haven't really discovered yet, or at least not in the morning, when I went: Balloon Tallinn. Tallinn tip #2: go 120 meters up in the air in a gigantic helium balloon. I'm afraid of heights and still loved it. You get to see all Tallinn has to offer in terms of architecture, without getting trampled by ancient tourists who have only two hours before they have to return to their cruise ship. Okay, the balloon isn't cheap, but absolutely worth it!


If you're in Tallinn and get bored with Estonia, you can take a ferry to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. Or if you have a visa, you can go to Russia. That's what I did, but that's another story for another time. Stay tuned for my Russian adventures and stay awesome!

By the way, don't forget to check my Estonia vlog out and subscribe :)

I never put pictures of my face on the blog anymore. Even on my Instagram my face is almost painfully absent. It's not that I don't like my face. Wait, no. That's a complete lie. My face has given me too much grief since the start of my teenage years. So I neglected my face. Avoided looking at it, Pretended it wasn't there. I'm not like Areeba from Not Your Type Blog, I can't use pictures of myself to make my blog post look even better. I can barely bring myself to look at my face, how could I ever expect someone else to look at it out of free will?

It's mostly a self esteem issue. I don't know how someone with self esteem issues as big as mine can possibly think that starting a YouTube channel is a good idea. Yet I did it. Suddenly I found myself editing footage of my own face. I didn't like it. Not at all. But then I paused the project at exactly the right moment.


I can't describe the feeling of surprise when this still took over my screen. It was a pleasant surprise. I'd never seen my face like that. I'd never seen myself... happy. In school pictures I always looked miserable. In high school I was always the one behind the camera. In college I'd been in pictures with my best fake smile. Now, out of nowhere, I'd found myself an image of my happiness. I still can't keep my eyes off it. Not because I think I look great, or that my hair looks good. No, I look as average as always, with the one exception that I look happy. You can see it in the picture. It's almost tangible. Just looking at it makes me happy again.

We're all looking for some happinessin life. For a long time I thought I'd never find it. I was wrong. I found it on the morning of my 20th birthday, on a nameless beach in Lithuania. The wind was howling, the seawater was cold. The beach was almost deserted, the sky was grey with clouds. Nothing of that all mattered. I was happy. I knew there were people who love and support me. I was making a vlog, something they encouraged me to do. In that moment I was sure I could make it in life by doing what I love: blogging, vlogging and writing. It made me happy, which in turn made me beautifuk in my own eyes. For the first time ever.

Stay Awesome.

'Dad, we've got the Stitch room!' I said as I looked at the number on the keychain from the TIA Hotel in Riga, Latvia.
'The what?'
'The Stitch room, room 626.'
My dad gave me a confused look.
'Experiment 626?'
'Oh. I get it.' My dad laughed, a little too late. The joke wasn't funny anymore. In fact, mentioning room 626 would never be funny to me again.

Room 626 was, what a surprise, on the sixth floor and had a view of a parking lot and another building. It actually consisted of two rooms: the actual bedroom, where my parents slept, and the living room, where I slept on one of those couches you can turn into a bed.
I was very happy with this set-up, since not sharing a room with my parents also meant not having to go through the six stages of sleeping near a snorer, That night I made myself comfortable on the couch/bed and fell asleep in no time.

*PANG*
*PANG*
I woke up in the middle of the night. Two loud pangs had echoed through my room. I had no idea where they'd come from, but I wasn't worried. Room 626 was one of those rooms that made unexplainable sounds from time to time. The door rattled almost all the time and if the neighbours moved their feet an inch I could hear it. So two loud pangs? Probably a noise I'd identify in the morning.
I rolled over. That's when I saw it. Bright red light. I initially dismissed it as the tv's stand-by light, maybe reflected in the shiny wood of the cabinet it stood on. But something wasn't quite right about that. If it was just a reflection, there wouldn't be some fog-like substance floating through it. And that fog-like substance certainly wouldn't be floating around a tiny figurine.
Alarm bells went off inside my head. The figurine was about seven centimeters tall and yellowish. It kind of looked like the tiny stuffed elephant my mom had made me as a 'reminder of home', but that elephant could not be there. I'd held it in my hand when I fell asleep. Besides, it couldn't stand on its own.
In a moment of clarity I put on my glasses. The figurine was probably only there because my eyesight sucks and probably plays tricks on me. The thing will be gone as soon as I put my glasses on, I thought.
It was still there, only more visible for my bad eyes. Arms spread, legs next to each other, it almost looked like Jesus on the cross. Except Jesus wasn't maniacally grinning like this thing was. Its eyes were on me, as if to say: 'I'm watching you.'
That's when I panicked. I'd been on the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania earlier that day. Maybe I'd accidentally taken something from there? Maybe I'd done something bad in a sacred place without knowing it? Oh no, was I cursed?
Nope, I decided. That could not be it. At the very worst I had some sand from the Hill in my shoes. I'd been nothing but respectful. If I turned the light on now, there would be nothing there. Nothing.
The light switch was on the other side of the room, next to the door. To get there I'd have to turn my back on the nasty little figurine, which was about the last thing I wanted to do. No problem though. I picked my phone up, made the screen as bright as possible and pointed it at the figurine.
Still there. Grinning, staring. I could almost hear my own heartbeat and my hands started shaking. More light. I needed more light. The small lamp on the desk was closer than the lightswitch and if I went for that option I'd spend less time with my back turned to the figurine. I was afraid it would make the small thing jump onto the bed if I stopped looking at it for too long, so I turned around quickly and searcged the desk for the tiny lightswitch of the desk lamp. I knew where it was. I knew exactly where it was. Yet I couldn't find it. I felt my glass of water, my camera, the lamp itself and the cord that disappeared behind the desk to an invisible socket. But no light switch.
My heart was racing at full speed as I turned back around. The figurine was still standing there, in the same place, but for how long? I picked my phone up again. Shone light towards the thing. It did not disappear or move, it just grinned at me. I wanted to cry. Instead I backed away from the figurine in the red light. I didn't even blink while I backed up until I felt the wall against my outstretched right arm. Almost there. I felt for the lightswitch, found it, flicked it on.
Gone.

Of course, of course the thing was gone when I turned the lights on. Of course my parents didn't believe me. Of course my best friend said it was just a reflection. But I don't think so. This all happened within five minutes, starting at exactly 1am. The next morning I checked all the angles and lights in the room. It didn't add up. Of course everyone wanted me to stay calm and think it was a dream. But I don't think it was. Something about that room felt wrong. Very, very wrong. Let me know what you think happened in that room. Or don't if it freaks you out like it freaked me out. Either way... Stay Awesome!

Dear Riga,

I was born in a small town, eigh kilometers from Rotterdam. Under the smoke of Rotterdam, as we say here. As I grew up, people expected me to see Rotterdam as my city. Especially during the eternal "Rotterdam vs. Amsterdam" discussions, I was supposed to be all for that city. I guess I did start to like that concrete jungle after I went to college there. It's got a certain something, with all its arrogance and modern architecture. But let me tell you one thing, Riga: Rotterdam's got nothing on you.

I first noticed you were similar to Rotterdam when I was on the riverbanks. That bridge you've got there looks a lot like our Erasmusbrug. But it's not just the bridge, it's the vibe. You've got that bog-city-in-a-small-European-country thing going. It suits you.
The similarities don't end there. You know the Markthal, that market in a hall in Rotterdam that we;re so proud of? You've got that too! Multiple! And yours are even better! Your markets are authentic, the way markets are meant to be. They sell almost everything I could imagine. And those halls they're in used to be zeppelin hangars, how awesome is that? I could've stayed there for hours - except for the hangar in which they sell fish. My nose did not like that one.
Up until there I thought you were Rotterdam in disguise. River, bridge, market in hall, canals... But then I found out you have something Rotterdam doesn't have: you have an old town. My god, did I fall in love with your old town.
I loved the old city walls, the churches, the tiny streets. I got lost, as I always do, but I didn't mind getting lost in your old town. Who can get frustrated in a city that had little cat statues on a house as one of the major sights to see? I could've spent hours in the old town. Actually, I did. But there was still so much more to see. I found a clothes store I liked, which hasn't happened since 2010. And to be honest, the minute I noticed you had a Pakistani kebab place, I couldn't stop thinking of you in any other words than 'awesome' and its synonyms.

Riga, I'm sorry I only spent two days exploring your streets. But in those two days, I started to love you more than I've loved Rotterdam in all 20 years of my life. One day I hope to return to you. You were great. Really, Rotterdam has nothing on you.

Yes, I've been travelling. Yes, I'm going to post about it - a lot. You can't go to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia without writing tons of posts about it. First up: Lithuania. But will this post be like any of my other travel posts? No. Here's why: Lithuania is a funny place. It doesn't fit the mold. So let's shake it up, shall we?

I'm going to start this post where I started my trip: in Vilnius, Lithuania's capital. I arrived by plane and didn't even realize I was nearing a city until the plane touched the ground. The area surrounding the city is one big forest, the airport itself small. When I left it, I could barely beleive it was an airport. The building is amazing, classic, more like an opera house than an airport, an antique train station at the very least.

Now on to Vilnius itself. Here I noticed that Lithuania is a funny place. Even though the Lithuania we know has only been a country since the early 90s, or maybe because of it, the Lithuanians are extremely proud of their country and its heritage. In some places this makes the people arrogant (*cough* Russia *cough*), but the Lithuanians are friendly, helpful and they speak English very well. Their capital hasn't been flooded by tourists yet, so take your time admiring the cathedral (which looks more like a Greek temple, but okay), the castle and the streets of the old town. A sense of direction is more than convenient in this city, by the way. Yes I wrote that because I got lost every day.




Vilnius isn't the only city in Lithuania of course. I quickly visited Klaipeda and Kaunas, spent a few hours in Trakai. Klaipeda is a bit of a blur because of the Germans who visited it during their cruise and obscured the view of everything. In Kaunas and Trakai I visited castles. If I learned one thing about Lithuania it's that it loves castles.


I took a bus to Nida, a small town on the Curonian Spit (which is an island, by the way). I fell asleep on that bus, mainly because the Lithuanian landscape is so similar to that of the Netherlands. The boat to the island reminded me of the boat to Kinderdijk and even Nida reminded me of the isle of Texel back home, in the best way possible. On my birthday my parents and I rented bikes and discovered the forests and beaches. Nida is one of those relaxed places I want to return to some day.


There's only one more place I visited in Lithuania. Some call it one of the creepiest places on earth. It's the legendary Hill of Crosses.


When Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union, religion was sort of prohibited. Now that's one rule you shouldn't want to enforce in catholic Lithuania. The Soviets took the crosses on the Hill down more than once, but the Lithuanians replaced them every single time. The origins of the Hill of Crosses are shrouded in mystery. Maybe that's why some call it one of the creepiest places on earth...


Right now I'm home, far away from Lithuania and all the places I visited there. I still think it's a funny place. It's like home, yet different. Not everything is what it seems there. I might be wrong though. Why not take a look at my travel vlog and see for yourself?


Stay Awesome!

I've been busy lately. First I went on vacation, then I started my job babysitting cats and then, finally, the Plympic Games started in Rio de Janeiro.
I can barely describe how much I've been looking forward to these Olympics. I missed the 2012 Olympics in London because I was in Australia. I missed the 2008 Olympics in Beijing because I was in Costa Rica. Twice in a row I was literally on the other side of the world when the Olympics were on. I do remember that I was home for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, but I was eight at the time and didn't really understand the awesomeness of the Olympic Games.
So Rio is going to be my Games, I decided. But as soon as the opening ceremony started, I noticed I looked at the Olympics in a way my friends didn't look at them. I looked at them from a blogger's perspective. In case you're wondering what that's like, here's a step-by-step guide to watching the Olympics like a blogger!

Usually this is easy: you support your own country. Done. For a blogger, things might be a little different. Of course I want to see Team NL do amazing at all events they're competing in. After all I'm as Dutch as it gets. But I have some blog buddies from other countries and it would be wrong not to cheer for the countries of my favorite people. So these Olympics I cheer for the Netherlands, Pakistan, India, Slovenia, Great Britain and Australia. Because their people are awesome.

My team's logo is better than yours! :P

Now I'm usually not much of a tweeter. But the olympics have hashtags with awesome emojis and come on, your country's first gold has to be celebrated! An amazing race should be shared! Dramatic falls have to be tweeted if the emotions can't be contained!

No. NO. NOOOO. No one deserves to fall like that when they're so close to Olympic gold! #CyclingRoad

— Envy Fisher (@Envy_Fisher) August 7, 2016

You're already tweeting, why not blog about it too? No 140 character limit, more space for enthusiasm and excitement! Besides, Olympic tags are popping up, why not do one, like Vivian's?

When does it happen that you and your blog buddy from the other side of the world can watch the same thing on tv at the same time? During the Olympics! So grab that remote or live stream and text with your blog buddy all through the game. I tried it last week with my friend from India, when his team was playing hockey against Germany, and it was awesome. It'll only get better today when my Team NL will play against India.

Admit it, us bloggers are already glued to screens most of the time anyway, we might as well open an extra tab on our laptop to see the world's best athletes compete. After all, we have to wait another four years for the next Olympics. Better make the best of it now and enjoy as much as possible. Who knows, you might even discover your new favorite sport!

Okay, I could go on and write a cool last paragraph, but I think we all now I have some Olympic events to get back to. Which ones are you looking forward too?

Stay Awesome!

This summer I travelled with my parents. Last summer I said I'd never do that again, but I'd forgotten the reasons why. So I joined my parents once again and went to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia. I shared a room with my parents in all those countries. But two hours into the first night of our trip, I remembered why I didn't want to travel with my parents anymore: they snore so loud it makes my eardrums want to commit suicide.
I thought I'd get through the night in a state of minimal annoyance, sleeping most of the time. Turns out I was wrong. There are stages you go through when you 'sleep' near a snorer. These are the stages I went through every night - until I bough ear plugs, that is.

What's that sound? Snoring? No, that can't be. You'd never taken [insert name of person sleeping close to you] for a snorer. Maybe it's something else? Nope, that's definitely snoring. They're absolutely a snorer.

Let them snore, it doesn't matter. Their snoring isn't even all that loud. You'll fall asleep soon enough, right? Right?

Okay, apparently you're not falling asleep because of the snoring. That's inconvenient, but what are you going to do about it? You can't just wake them up every single time they start to snore. Just try to ignore it. We all know that's impossible, but try.

Hours, I mean, hours have passed and you still can't sleep because someone won't stop snoring. What did you do to deserve this? Why do you have to suffer?!

It's clear you won't get those hours of amazing sleep you were hoping for, but how about a few minutes? Half an hour? If they'd only stop snoring for fifteen minutes you'd be able to fall asleep... Please... Just fifteen minutes of silence... That's all you need...

Fine. No sleep then. Who needs sleep anyway? Tomorrow you'll buy earplugs though. Now you'll just read a book and wait for morning to come. Stupid snoring.

Remember: it's completely possible go back to stage 4 and 5 after completing the entire cycle. In that case you might be stuck in an infinite loop. Sleeping near a snorer: great way to get through the vacation. Have you ever done it, or successfully fallen asleep in this situation?

Stay Awesome!

When I was a kid I was obsessed with capturing memories from my travels. I'd write every little detail down, Nothing was too insignificant for my travel journals. At the same time I was also obsessed with making memories. Everything had to be looked at, tasted or experienced. Every second I spent writing felt like a wasted chance at adventure. On top of that I collected receipts and business cards of hotels we stayed in, brochures of places we visited and lots of boarding passes and train tickets. My travel journals became chaotic and too time-consuming. I stopped writing them, but soon discovered that my trips weren't the same without a travel journal. Shortly before I went to Berlin, I decided to start a new journal. It became a mix of a bullet journal, art journal and travel journal. A Travel Journal 2.0 you could say. Let me show you.


My travel journal actually has the word travel on the front. It's a hard-cover journal so it won't die when it's on a bumpy plane/train/car ride. It was far from cheap, but my internship gave me giftcards for Christmas, so I used those to buy it. It's got a lot of information about the world's countries, their languages and currencies, but my favorite pages are the ones on which you can mark which countries you 've visited.

 Now on to the pages I've filled on my recent trips to Berlin and Ljubljana. At first I wanted to do this on a day-to-day basis, but I quickly realized that wasn't going to work. My travel journal now gives an overview of my time in those cities.

I usually start out with one big page to show where I went. I try to make it as original as possible with as many elements from that country as well. This is not the best example, but the other pages are still works in progress.
On the next pages I usually write some important information: where am I going, where will I be staying, how will I get there. Then I start writing about the things I've done and the places I've visited. The next part is my favorite: I always illustrate these pages.

Finally I use all the stuff I hoard on my trip and turn them into collages. They're usually about food. They're messy and uncoordinated and I'm not really sure what I actually want them to look like, but they're fun to experiment with. Sometimes I also write some things about what I liked best. Most of the time I draw something too. Like a penguin, cause penguins are awesome.

I like to put pen to paper. Not metaphorically speaking. I like to feel my pen slid across the paper. I like how my hands form squiggly lines into letter. I like how those letter form words, those words sentences. But I love how those sentences can build stories that make your blood chill.

Horror has always fasciniated me. It's not easy to write. What's scary to me might not be scary to you. So usually I write happy endings and positive characters. But sometimes I feel the need to write something else. Sometimes I write horror. Most people are shocked to hear that. When they find out that I like to write, they think that a sweet little girl like me would only write innocent chicklit.
One of my teachers found out this is not the case the hard way. The look on her face after she read one of my stories was undescribable. She was shocked. It brought a smile to my face. That's what horror stories are supposed to do: scare others shitless.
For the past couple of weeks I've been writing. Bits and pieces. It hadn't come together yet, but the outline for four short stories is there. Turning it into an anthology is my goal. Because I'm tired of writing sappy heroes and happy endings. I need to see something raw come out of my pen now.

We all have a little bit of darkness inside of us. Call it evilness if you want. Some people keep it quiet and small by watching horror movies or reading creepypasta's. They keep it inside and hide it. I let my darkness out through my words, I show it to the whole world by turning the nasty thoughts into gruesome stories.
The question is: would you like to read them?

While you're reading this I'm somewhere in Russia, dragging my loyal camera companion Plum to all the pretty places, happily snapping away from what I hope is an original point of view. Photography is a new hobby of mine. My mom always wanted me to give it a shot, which I did... but then I thought everything I did was bad and ugly and uninstagrammable. A look at my old photo albums tells something different. Some of the pictures I took years ago will always be among my favorites. There's a story behind all of them. I want to share those here today.

This was the first picture people ever complimented me on. Yes, those people were all related to me, but when jaws drop you may expect the compliments to be genuine.
I was fourteen years old when I took this picture. It was a lucky shot, a quick snap made while hiking in Mount Shasta National Park in California. I had no idea it had turned out like this until I saw it on my laptop screen back home. It was just one lucky shot, but it was the lucky shot I needed to get interested in photography (even though I never would have admitted that back then).

In 2012 I'd decided photography wasn't for me. After that one lucky shot in California in 2010 I hadn't taken a single pretty picture. Then I went to Australia, which was great and beautiful. But I didn't want to come home with the cliche clicks that everyone has.
One day we went out to see Uluru at sunrise. Everyone stood in exactly the same spot to take the exact same picture of Uluru. I turned away from the masses and chose something else as the center of attention for my picture: the rising sun. It was too bright for a direct click, so I used a nearby shrub as a filter. The result was red as the desert around me, pretty in an unconventional way. I was so proud of finding a new point of view in an overly photographed place. I ran to my mom to show her the picture. When I returned, people were standing in line for my spot to take the exact same picture of the rising sun that I was so proud of, To this day the memory still makes me laugh.

Photography was my thing when I came home from Australia. I still had a lot to learn about it back then. This picture is the perfect example: it was the first time I managed to capture a building in a more or less interesting way, with almost no people in the picture. I say 'almost', because there's exactly one head visible in the lower left corner. That day I learnt the importance of timing and yelling at your friends who are standing in your shot. The picture will always be close to my heart though: every morning when I woke up in Rome, this building was the first thing I saw from my window.
The summer of 2014 was the summer I took pictures of everything that moved, everything that didn't move and everything inbetween while I was at it. I'd never expected to take this shot though. You need luck for it. Not luck to click at this exact moment, but luck to find yourself in such a situation. High up in the Andes in Peru, in the middle of nowhere, it sometimes happens that your bus has to stop at random for a heard of llamas, vicuñas and sheep. It doesn't happen often, but the photographer in me cried with excitement when it happened.

I don't know where to start with this one. I stumbled across a perfect composition (quite literally, because I was trying to run to the other side of the road with crutches). It was one of my first pictures taken with Plum. He captured the colorful, creative and also historical Berlin that I wanted to show the world.

There are a few more of these, pictures that I love but for the way they look and the story they tell. Make sure to follow me on Instagram to see them all. I promise to share all my Russian pictures soon.

Stay Awesome!

On normal days my bag is full of books and notebooks for college. The books barely fit in there, but without them something just feels a little off. When I travel there is no need to take those books with me. I'm weird, but not that weird. When I travel the contents of my bag are completely different.

I use a blue backpack when I travel. It's been to Peru, Austria, Germany, Belgium, France, Luxemburg and the UK. I bought it eight years ago and it's been my loyal companion ever since. During my trip it's home to these things.

The most important thing in my bag is my camera. I call him Plum. I could've called him Carl, but Kanra's camera is called Carl already so it would only lead to confusion.
Plum is a Sony Cybershot Something Something and has a lot of megapixels. I'm terrible at remembering technical facts, but I know the most important thing: Plum takes amazing pictures - if I don't forget to take the lense cap off...


Also important: snacks. Liquorice, peppermint and Mentos are musts on my trips. These all last about five days, but that's not really a problem. After five days I just switch to whatever kind of local sweets I can get my hands on. In fact, I enjoy those even more.

I'm candy Wolverine

 Then there's some important stuff: way too many tissues (my mom is a firm believer that one can never have too many tissues) and my sunglasses. Sunglasses probably don't sound very essential to everyone out there, but I wear glasses and without them I am half-blind. Because of this I also have perscription sunglasses, which are not exactly cheap. I need to keep them close at all times.

On to the fun stuff: my travel journal! Something cool happened? Time to write it down! Something weird happened? Draw it! Boring day? Look back on the illustrations I made and stories I wrote on earlier trips!
I mostly use pencils and fineliners to write in my travel journal. The fineliners also have to be here to color some countries on a certain tote bag.

After Plum, these things are the most important ones in my backpack. The thing on the left is a gigantic plastic envelope. I'm a hoarder: receipts, brochures, business cards, everything I can get my hands on during my travels has to come home with me for art or travel journal pages.
The big notebook is for stories that could maybe turn into novels if I had more time to write. The little one if my new blogging notebook. I write all my blogposts by hand first, so I'm using about four blogging notebooks a year. This is my latest asset. I like it because it has ice cream on the cover and come on, who doesn't like ice cream?

That's what's in my travel bag. What's in yours?

Stay Awesome!