Happy New Year… and my resolutions

Happy New Year to everyone!!!

I don’t do this every year, but this time I feel motivated. Here are my resolutions 

• Get an IT certification.- possible options are Java, Linux and SAP. 
  
• Study German and get A1.- For me, it’s a challenge and a way to communicate better.
  
• Get my driving license.- Yes! More procrastination
  
• Learn to swim.- Well, I’m one of those adults who didn’t learn when being a kid. I'm still scared.
  
• Make Advent calendars to my nephews.- I’m a Christmas person and I want to transmit this to my little nephews.
  
• Buy a new printer.- I think this is the first one I’m going to complete. My current one is almost 10 years old. Still analysing my dilemma: buy new ink or buy a new printer.
  
• Make at least 10 language charts.- I like my charts, my next idea is organize them better.
  

2009 is going to be a really busy year.

Why I should get fun on holidays?

Every holiday is the same. Everybody asks me the same question: What are you going to do in your holidays? And New Year’s Eve is worse! If I say “Nothing”, the people start to say “poor you, you don’t have plans” Grrr. 

Why do I have to get fun? Why!!!! It’s like I have the duty of getting fun. That’s not spontaneous and sometimes it’s not according to my mood. Why is it mandatory to do the same as all the people do?. For years I argued with a lot of people about it. One of the most recurrent topics is alcohol. I’m not totally teetotal, but I don’t put alcohol and fun in the same sentence.

My idea of getting fun in holidays is spend my time with the people I love, no matter if they drink or not. Those people respect my choices and I respect theirs. I’m blessed to have good friends. For me, a nice holiday is a peaceful day doing things I can’t do regularly, like have a nice conversation with friends or reading a book.

I don’t have plans for this New Year’s Eve yet, let’s see how it goes.

Coin album

Collecting things is a good hobby. I tried first with stamps, but as I don’t have too much friends by mail and the rise of e-mails, my hobby didn’t prosper. Then I got another one: collecting coins. 

My first ones I got by chance, but then I got into it more seriously. At the moment my only source of coins are travels, for that reason I have coins from the countries I visited or some close friends gave me.

One big issue was finding a coin album. Finally I bought this one in Heidelberg, it’s for collecting Euros but works perfectly with other countries. For each country has 8 pockets for coins and one for a little label with country flag. I already designed some labels for the non-Euro countries that I have and I’ll ask some friends to help me to complete the countries. Maybe some day I will start to collect notes too.

Merry Xmas

This is not my happiest Christmas, because I can’t have everything I want. But this is not a reason to don’t wish Merry Xmas to everybody! And I wish your dreams, as mine, become true. 

Free photos for websites - FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Countries

I really love my Germany adventure. I made this map that shows in green the countries I visited or lived in and the yellow ones are my future destinations to holidays (or to live in). I hope to start a new adventure soon.

Germany – Last day: SAP Headquarters and Hockenheim

My last day in Germany was a bit busy but nice. Our first destination was SAP Headquarters, and my first surprise was there were 2 SAP buildings: headquarters and Germany, as indicated in the road signs:

SAP Headquarters is a complex of buildings, some of them exclusively for parking purposes and other under construction.

This is the front of one of the main buildings:

After that, we made a technical stop in IKEA to eat hotdogs. My first (and last) hotdog in Germany, because the rest were German sausages of course!

Then we headed to Hockenheim, to visit the Hockenheimring (I'm a F1 fan). I took this picture from one of the intersections:

The bad news: Hockenheimring was closed! We forgot to check the dates and they already started holidays. But at least I took a picture outside:

I'll visit this ring in my next trip.

Germany - ‘Ausfahrt’ city and ‘Einbahnstrasse’ street

In my first days in Germany, as a non-German-speaker, I was very excited and interested in every sign that I could read, especially while travelling through the autobahn. One road sign caught my eye:

And my thought was "that’s the exit to Ausfahrt". Some kilometres later, another sign:

I thought “uhm, maybe it’s a large city”:

How large can be “Ausfahrt” city?

I started to think that “Ausfahrt” city was really huge and we were driving encircling it. maybe all roads lead to Ausfahrt. But as I was reading the signs every time I found them, my dear kiwi said “Exit”. “What?” I said. “Yes, ‘Ausfahrt’ means ‘Exit’ in German”. I still feel stupid for that. 

But as I can improve, during our city adventures we almost get lost among the streets. Again I was reading the road signs, this time trying to be helpful. To figure out where were we, I read every sign whose looks like street name and I proudly read ‘Einbahnstrasse’, believing that name means something. And again a simple answer “yes, I know that’s a one way street.” 

German language is funnier that people think. Could you find the exit?