Finally here! :)

Hi from the other side of the Atlantic! For almost 24 hours we've been in the USA now - still trying to adjust to life over here and getting rid of our jetlag!
To put it short, the journey was terrible long and rather uncomfortable (extremely old airplane and a lot of turbulences...)! At first I found it great to be flying again, I love those magical moments lost in time and space where nothing really matters, you're neither at home nor where you are heading for, you pass time zones and somehow, life stands still for a moment... But without individual screens to watch movies and play games (only one screen over the middle row of seats -not even big!) and nothing to see out of the window (for hours we were trapped in clouds so that all we saw was white; kinda scary to be honest because you lose all orientation, you have no idea where you're going, how far above ground you are, whether there's land or water underneath you - after all, it was even hard to tell what was up and down!), travelling becomes quite a drag...
When the plane finally touched ground, it had to roll to its final stop for about 25 minutes and of course we had to land in the one terminal that is being renovated at the moment, so we had to walk (as it seemed) miles before we even reached the passport control. It was all stinky from the construction work, there were no restrooms anywhere near us and all the security checks took so long - do we look like terrorists??? Next up was a seemingly never ending wait for our luggage - you can imagine how glad we were when we finally saw Fenton waiting for us!!! After finally going to the restroom, we needed a coffee and a lot of water - believe it or not, we didn't get enough to drink on the plane! They even admitted that they were running out of drinks, so we had to share a little can (3dl) of Sprite between the two before waiting for another two hours for a next sip of water...

Well, I don't want to complain, now everything is great! It is just amazing to be back here, I was so not aware of how much I'd missed them all and seeing them again after one year was just great, I really can't think of a word to express how I felt... So now we're playing with the kids, Corinna loves the dogs and it's just cosy lazy family life - but we have a lot of plans for the next two weeks, I'll keep you updated!
Colin has grown up sooo much, I could hardly believe my eyes! He's a real big boy now, running round the house, eating his lunch with a fork (well, theoretically...) and almost too heavy to be carried around all the time! ;) But definitely still as cute as ever! Not to mention his two brothers who are both soooo sweet! :) I wanna know what Trevor and Maya will be going through in about 10 years time - I bet there will be loads of girls queueing up their driveway... come on, with three boys like these????? ;)

Well, we've gotta go now, I'll talk (write) to you soon...
Love, Sabin

America, we're coming!!!

Wow, I'm so excited, in less than 24 hours my best friend Corinna and I will be in New York!!! :) My relatives in Connecticut have invited us to stay with them for 2 weeks and of course, this offer was more than tempting... so from tomorrow on, we will be running around a big house together with two little boys and two dogs or else carrying around a one-year-old boy: my favourite baby cousin Colin!!! I visited them last October when Colin was just about 4 months old and I fell in love with him right away, he definitely is the cutest baby boy I've ever seen - you can imagine how much I'm looking forward to seeing him (and of course his entire family!!) again tomorrow! I'm sure he has "grown up" a lot in the meantime... and I wonder how well the "big boys" remember me - they were all sooo nice with me last year! No doubt they still are... ;)
Maya and Trev, if you read this now, thank you again soo much for this invitation, these are the greatest holidays we could imagine!!

I'll keep you all updated about what we're doing over there - it's strange to leave home again! In a way, two weeks seem like nothing after 3 months in Cambridge but on the other hand, hey, its AMERICA we're talking about! ;) Keep your fingers crossed that we don't get arrested at the airport because of all the chocolate we are carrying with us... :)

Life of Pi

At the moment, I'm reading a great book. It's called "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. Although I find it hard to even give a short summary of what it's about, it really fascinates me... it is very philosophical and between the different stages of the story (it's about an Indian boy whose father owns a zoo until they have to move to Canada and on the Pacific ocean, their ship sinks and only the boy survives together with a tiger...), the author often brings in some general thoughts - those of you who have already had some or another discussion about books with me know that I always define the books I like as "books that make me think" - this is the perfect example of this definition! :)

Need an example? Here's a passage I read today:
„I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary […] It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. […]
You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, […] seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”

I don't know why, but this really touched me - I mean, it's true, isn't it?

Music

Don't ask me why but I just feel like writing about music... just as many other people do, I'm going to post a list of songs that are special to me in one way or another - feel free to comment on any of them! ;)

1. My absolute Nr.1 at the moment is "Labios compartidos" by Maná. There are several reasons for me to choose that, most obviously of course because they're my favourite band and it is their latest single! I've known their music for about 3 years now (thanks to the one person who has given me a CD with a selection of their songs...) and all this time they were neither on tour nor did they release any new songs - I was almost afraid that they had split up or something! But then one day while I was in Cambridge, I checked back on their website and it was totally new and they announced a new album - of course I almost freaked out! :) So now, here it is, the first song of their forthcoming album and suddenly I can hear Maná on the radio - completely new experience for me!!! :)

2. Another song that means a lot to me for different reasons is "The closest thing to crazy" by Katie Melua. It was one of the songs Olga and I kept singing in Cambridge because it sometimes expressed how we felt ("this is the closest thing to crazy I have ever been, feeling 22, acting seventeen") - not that I am already 22 but we sometimes said that we were doing all the stuff in Cambridge that we had missed during our teenage-years... ;) And now this song - or generally music by Katie Melua - has another meaning to me...

3. "Breakaway" by Kelly Clarkson - it's just an amazing song and it reminds me a lot of Olga! She once said that this was her song before she left for Cambridge and more and more I understand what she meant by that: "So I pray that I could breakaway - I'll spread my wings and I'll learn how to fly, I'll do what it takes till I touch the sky - I'll take a risk, take a chance, make a change - and breakaway...." Basically, that really is what she did - and it also describes how I feel about myself: Without truly realizing it, I have taken several risks and chances, have broken away from what I was trapped in - and life is sooo much better now than just a few months ago... :)

4. The new Lovebugs-Single, together with Lene Marlin, "Avalon" - they sing about finding this magic mysterious place, kind of phantasy world, and that one can find this with another person...

5. "your song" by Elton John. Thousands of memories connected to that one... for one, they sang it in the musical I saw with Olga and we both got quite emotional... the next day we sat in our classroom, listening to it on my iPod and sang along until Jelmer came in and asked us to stop immediately as our singing was terrible... ;) and then there's another great evening this song reminds me of - back in Zürich, one of those great warm summer evenings and there was this guy who sat near the lake and played this song...

6. Gnarles Barkley, "Crazy". Actually, this song is getting on my nerves. And I guess, if it weren't for all the memories, I'd hate it. But now, it's THE Cambridge song... I mean, how many times have we heard that, be it in the school canteen or in a bar (most likely the Filling Station) or in a shop - basically, it was everywhere! And now, my mum loves this song and everytime she hears it on the radio, she turns the volume up - especially this part where he goes like "come on now-who do you, who do you, who do you think you are..." looool :)

7. "Hips don't lie" by Shakira and Wyclef - although I didn't like it particularly when I first heard it (Olg, do you remember? we sat in the Embassy canteen and you showed me the song on your MP3 player and a few days later the clip on the internet!), this has become one of the songs where I have to turn up the volume! ;) I can't sit still when I hear it! My personal Summer Hit 2006!

8. "Mas que nada", Black Eyed Peas and Sergio Mendes - just a bit behind Shakira, but similar feelings...

That's it for now although there would be sooo much more...

Yes, got it!!

Sorry for not updating for such a long time - if there's anyone who keeps checking back on this page at all... no, seriously, I don't know what to do with this blog: I mean, while I was away, it was my way of telling everybody at home what I'm doing and they (or at least some of them) read it regularly; but now, the ones who are interested in what's going on around me see me all the time so they don't need to read about my life and I don't know if there's anybody else who wants to know what I go through... at the same time, I have gotten used to writing something in here and I don't really want to quit - so if there's someone who wants me to keep this up, let me know! ;)

But now, here are some REAL GOOD NEWS: Last Friday, the CPE results were published on the Cambridge website, so it was a big day for all of us- after such a long time, we could finally check our results and see if we have passed the exam or not... Before that I was totally cool, had almost forgotten about it, but the moment I typed in my secret number and waited for the site to update, I was so nervous! But then, this tiny little box in the right hand corner on the website said that I have passed the CPE - and not only that, I got my grade A!!! You won't believe how happy I was when I saw that! Really, I know everybody almost expected me to reach that and of course I was hoping for it as well, but after all, you never know... and to see that all the hard work (well, how hard did we actually work? ;)) has led to a satisfying result is such a great feeling! :) And in case I or anyone else had still questioned my choice of university subject, this is the best confirmation I could ever get that English is my thing and that I can actually reach something here...