First time in Brazil

Nowadays travelling is an widespread obsession which sooner or later affects everyone, who can afford it. Luckily it's becoming more and more available, cheaper, faster and more comfortable. One moment you're boarding on a plane in your hometown, another - getting off in some far and exotic destination. Though transcontinental flights are available since many years (Air France, for example, is celebrating their 80 years anniversary as a commercial airline), it's still amazing how common they've became. If you open some aircraft tracking site, you'll see thousands of planes plowing the skies at the very moment, and many of them are on long-haul flights. 

My very first transcontinental flight was by Boeing 777-300ER, taking off from Amsterdam and landing in Sao Paolo 12 hours later, operated by KLM, a dutch airline, which cooperates with Air France. It went fast thanks to small TV's for each passenger and many snacks and drinks, helping to pass the time. I was pretty excited to see the interior of such a huge plane, after mostly flying by Ryanair's tiny Boeing 737-800. 

When I landed in Sao Paolo and went through the customs, it was already dark. Running like crazy, I barely made it to a bus to Campinas, where my final destination was. 

The first thing I learned about Brazilians was that they are slow (the pass control took much longer than it would, if there were more people working) and can confuse you with their answers sometimes. Until the very last moment I wasn't sure where I should get off and almost picked the wrong station.

I was carrying my autumn coat, which I put on in the bus (air conditioning can get you quite chilly!), I imagine how weird it must have looked when I got off and went to the waiting hall wearing it. I still didn't realize that I was in a warm country. :) 

My boyfriend picked me up in the main bus station of Campinas and my little adventure began. I can't describe how unusual and exotic everything looked to me. The flora, the buildings, some weird systems (people leave their trash on some metal holders and trash picking men quickly jump off the truck to collect it, throw into the truck and jump back on to ride forward). People are friendly and relaxed, everything's a little bit greener, wilder and messier, but it had it's undeniable charm for me, used to seeing clean streets of Stockholm. Things that won my admiration immediately were fresh exotic fruits, tasty food, hot sun and... coconut water! A bit skeptical in the beginning, I totally fell in love with this drink later! Like my boyfriend said: drinking coconut water in summer is equivalently cozy to drinking hot tea during cold winter. :) 

We didn't get to visit much, because of the tight schedule my boyfriend had, but it was very fun to stay in Campinas. We also went to Jundiai, a city nearby and walked in some beautiful parks there. 

Time to share some pictures!

Me, drinking the delicious coconut water, straight from a coconut. There are many places you can buy such a drink, but it's also possible to get a coconut in a local store or... straight from a tree. My boyfriend found a coconut palm and is successfully filling in his supplies without any cost. Except hurting muscles. :)
Coconut water should be drank chilled, so we usually put them into the freezer, before drinking from them. Once we took our frozen coconuts to the shopping mall, intending to drink the water before we enter. It was still too icy, so we decided to leave the coconuts under the tree to defrost. When we came back, they were gone (of course) and we decided to come up a funny story about how we got robbed of our coconuts... :)  

Shells of cicada's. You can find hundreds of them on trees. These bugs get out from the underground all together and leave their old "clothes", to get a new shiny outfit. Then they live high up in the trees, making creepy noises. 

     
                                                                                A regular sight in Campinas, the district close to Unicamp (one of the biggest universities in Brazil), where houses are usually rented to students. What amazed me was that students don't clean their houses at all - instead, they have a cleaner coming to them twice a week. Do I even have to mention how messy it gets in between the cleaning days? And I was complaining about the common kitchen in my dorm in Stockholm :)  

A salad from fresh fruits (passion fruit, strawberries, mango, melon, small bananas etc) and a drink/infusion called Tereré. It's similar to mate and can be found in Paraguay, northeastern Argentina and southern and western Brazil. You mix the herbs with cold water, rather than hot and it has a very interesting refreshing taste. It's drank with a special straw which prevents you from sucking in the herbs.      

Picture from a park in Jundiai, a city nearby. The population of Campinas - 3 mln, Jundiai - only 300 000. It's a beautiful city with many public parks to take a stroll.

A view from a very unstable bridge in Campinas, which many students have to cross everyday, to get to Unicamp. You can see a little Brazilian stork, which name I couldn't find. At first I thought it's Jabiru, but they should have a black head, which this one doesn't have, obviously. :)

An amazingly thick tree, which's name I couldn't find either. It's actually hard to tell, if it's a collection of many trees, or if it's only one. How many people would it take to hug it? :)

A very tasty snackie, common in Brazil. It's called Coxinha and is usually made with chicken and cheese, so the inside of it is quite creamy.

Brazilians are crazy about rice and beans and they eat it everyday for lunch and dinner. At first I couldn't stand this combination, but I have to admit, that I was starting to get addicted to it at the end!










Can't wait to go back to Brazil in December. There is so much to see, taste, experience. This time I will stay there for a month a will travel around more.

That's all for now!
/J

Million Shades of the Fall

It's not a secret, that October is the last month to gladden our eyes with sunshine and bright colors of the nature. Before all that is washed down by the rains of gloomy November, I took a chance to perpetuate the beauty of this in a photograph.

The pictures were taken in Västra Skogen, around my dormitory on 12th of October.

The road through the "Western Forest", perfect for a cozy promenade, with smell of wet leaves and moss

I had to be really quiet... My camera lens had no zoom, so I actually had to come close
















Maybe a  little brother to a famous Lithuanian giant rock Puntukas?

This bunny was trying hard to pretend he's a rock...  

The backyard of my dormitory

How I conquered my fear of flight

I used to be calm flyer. Neither movies nor disaster documentaries used to make me feel anxious about getting into a plane. My first time on board was such a happy event and I felt excited like a little girl, even though I knew nothing about how planes work - for it me it was like taking a bus, but up in the air, loads of fun! Until that one flight.
Nothing terrible happened, it was a regular flight from Stockholm to Kaunas, no engine failure, no bad weather conditions, no emergency landing like some "lucky" passengers get to experience every now and then. Just some severe turbulence. I was 22 at that time, but I still thought that planes can simple "fall" from the sky, so this turbulence scared the shit out of me. I have never felt so scared in my life. Hearing the pilots say "Levels, levels!" didn't help either - how the hell would they allow such clueless people like me hear a phrase like that, it was equal to "Mayday!" in my head! Also, my boyfriend talked about plane crashes all the way pulling my leg and the turbulence coincidental happened after he said "Landing is the most crucial moment of the flight". Good timing. Needless to say I was pretty shaken after the flight and the moment I put my foot on the ground, was a moment of an euphoric relief. Somehow I felt like I escaped something terrible, though it was nowhere near that. But tell it to my weird ass brain.

Me and my boyfriend were on vacations with an awesome travel plan to visit Spain and Portugal. It included us taking 4 more flights and I almost felt like I'm ready to say no to our travels and stay on the ground. A flight to Barcelona was terrible, I was tensed and cried a lot, until my boyfriend gave me his mp3 player to listen to some music and it helped a bit. I started obsessively reading about how planes are made, how they work, why the previous accidents happened. Unfortunately it didn't help much, especially reading about the crashes and their victims and watching the videos. It only got me more fearful, even though I knew much more about the technical side of it. The last flight out of those 4 I mentioned, was a pure torture, 4 hours of terror, and tension, listening and overanalysing every sound, steward's faces... I had no mp3 player to comfort myself and couldn't fall asleep after a long sleepless night at the Faro airport, waiting for the early morning flight back to Stockholm.
In August I had two tickets to Lithuania, which I bought few months before I got fearful. I couldn't imagine myself getting on the plane again, so I got ferry tickets instead. Instead of getting to Lithuania in 1h10min, I spent 19h on the boat + 4h in the bus (not counting the hours I had to wait for it). I was struggling with a thought that even though I'm passionate about seeing the world, I will never be able to travel so far. And it was pretty devastating.
Eight months later I had to choose between visiting my family in Lithuania, which would mean taking the plane (ferry would take way too much time, and I only had a week) and staying in my comfort zone, but not getting a chance to see them and celebrate Easter together. So I chose to fly, no matter how terrible it felt. But I came up with some strategy, built from all the articles I read and what I myself suspected could help me. And it worked. I didn't feel as anxious during the flight. I was quite calm taking the flight back. IT TOTALLY WORKED!

What I did was:

1) Having my iPod with me. I listened to my favorite music quite loudly during the flight, to isolate myself from the other sounds on the plane. Not hearing anything = not overanalysing.
2) Playing an involving game during the flight. The combination of music and solving puzzles totally occupied my mind.
3) Relaxing my muscles. Tensed body automatically send a signal to the brain, that something is wrong, there's some threat - run for your life! Fear is brain's response to life threatening event, that's what kept our ancestors alive in wild, dangerous times and still serves us in many situation. By relaxing my muscles, I'm sending a message to my brain - everything's ok, I'm relaxed here. And fear subsides. It works magic.

My last two flights made me proud of myself. We were landing through a rain cloud which felt endless and were shaking the plane and I just sat there, feeling ok, while some guy beside me was sweating.
I haven't got rid of my fear 100 %, because I still have dreams where I'm sitting in a plane and suddenly the lights go off and my guts jump from a sudden dive down. And everything we take off I tell myself  "Ok, bring it on!!". But it's pretty much under control. Last time I was even able to turn the music off and talk to someone.
A good thing is to look at flightradar24.com and see how many flights there are at the current time in the world. A looooot, it's ridiculous. Now how many end up crashing?

And, by the way - planes are awesome.






Take care and keep your fears on a leash,
Justina

RAW chocolate!

An obvious choice for anyone who wants to improve their acne and health generally is to cut off sugars and sweets from their diets. Sugar gets digested quickly, gives us an energy kick but it also raises your insulin level when broken down. Increased levels of insulin makes the androgen level raise as well, and we don't want that for our acne! But what to do with the tremendous cravings..?
I had it hard to pass by chocolate section in the store lately so I decided that something must be done to quench my craving for sweets. I went on http://www.rawfoodshop.se/ a great online store for raw and low carb foods where I bought these gorgeous raw chocolates - Ombar probiotic green tea and lemon + Ombar acai and blueberry with coconut blossom sugar as a sweetener and The Raw Chocolate Co orange and mint with xylitol instead of sugar. They were delicious and... it's nice to not feel guilty after eating them... ^^
The name xylitol didn't so healthy to me at first, but it's actually found in fibers of certain fruits and vegetables, but for commercial purposes it's usually extracted from the bark of birch trees (oh I remember the sweet taste of fresh birch sap! My granny still gathers it in early spring). Xylitol doesn't have an impact on your blood sugars which makes it a great replacement for anyone even those who suffer from diabetes.

My favorite out of those four was The Raw Chocolate Co orange, it just melts in your mouth! :)

Be active,
Healthy and
Shine!

Battling Acne - Good Advices

What could be more frustrating and demotivating than a skin condition that affects your overall looks and self-esteem? Especially something so hard to understand and get under control like acne. Many of us struggle to get to the core of it and fail - various products, diets, pills, holistic approach only gives temporary alleviation but it always strikes back. For the unfortunate ones - even more severe than it ever has been. The depression that often comes along with this disease (or maybe a symptom of an inner turmoil?) is due to the inability to cooperate with your own body, helplessness and the obvious angry signs on our faces - such an important body part which people recognize us by. It inflicts self-hatred and destructive thoughts as we start perceiving our body as an enemy, without realizing that it doesn't try to corrupt our lives - it just asks for help. An obvious sign to change our lives... But how? And why doesn't it help even if we do start living healthier, is it simply too late?
These are the questions I often ask myself. I don't think I have done everything to find out my own reasons for having acne, but I have a very good routine and avoid junk food as much as possible. Pimples do make me feel bad a great deal, but I have found a way to handle it emotionally and got less obsessed about my looks over the years, maybe that's why I'm not wasting so much time going to dermatologists and taking drugs. I somehow feel I can heal myself by living a more active, happier lifestyle.
However, I read a lot about it and try to apply some things to my daily life. At the moment my acne is under control, it doesn't break out as much as it usually does in the period of January-March and I can thank few good advises I got from other people and the almighty Internet.

Things that helped me to battle acne:

- Probiotics (more "good guys" in my gut, better flora)
- Lemon water together with my meals (helps to increase stomach acid and break down foods)
- Gym + sauna. (working out up to 5 times a week have significantly improved my body acne too!)
- Cutting out milk (cow's milk is for the calf. You don't need the hormones and white blood cells)
- Less carbs! (less sugar, rice, pasta and junk food! Empty calories, high blood sugar and insulin spikes might be the major cause of acne)

     

Things that helped me a bit:

- Cell Fusion C B-glucan cellular repair cream ( I have noticed some change in my skin texture, especially on my forehead, but otherwise it's quite insignificant)
- Duac (stopped working, guess my skin adapted to it)
- Exuviance products line (Gentle cleanser and a very good skin serum/moisturizer gives the comfort, but has no effect on acne)

Things that didn't help at all:

- Gluten free diet
- Exuviance blemish control
- Red light laser treatment (for such a huge price I spent on the procedures, I would expect much more significant change in my skin. Totally not worth the money, probably more suitable for mild acne)


Battling acne is a lot about keeping your mind positive. I found that tears and anger makes the inflammation even bigger, so I try to avoid watching myself in the mirror and nourishing the anxiety. Besides I haven't applied any makeup on my skin for a month already (which both benefits my skin and my feeling of self-control. Despite the break outs on my face, I'm gonna go out looking the way I look and not hide my face under a thick layer of foundation).

So keep strong
keep fighting
be active.
   

Impressions of "The Hobbit"

Just came from the cinema, where we watched "The Hobbit: Unexpected Journey". My expectations which were high from the very beginning, were greatly exceeded by this movie! I loved every minute of this movie and wanted it to last much longer than it did. First of all, what a nice adaptation of the story, it really stays through to it. In the beginning I could recall every single word of the book, so precise the scenes were. The song "Over The Misty Mountains Cold" gave me shivers. Even remembering the sound of it, does.

Perfect choice of actors - Martin Freeman (a big discovery for me) was funny and pompous as Bilbo; Thorin Oakenshield, played by Richard Ermitage, was simply epic. Good to see old'n'witty Gandalf, played by Ian McKellen, though time is not going to this actor's advantage. Hope they will make it to shoot all the scenes with him, until he feels like retiring! I would not imagine anyone else take his role as Gandalf. Smeagol looks creepily realistic, and... almost cute at times.

 The scenery and narrative is breath taking. I wasn't even able to absorb all the beauty. Talking about the visuals, it might be hard to get used to 48 per second frame rate - felt too sharp in the beginning, but later I didn't feel any discomfort as I got used to it. The pace of the movie is also very satisfying, despite the criticism, for me nothing felt too rushy.      
Glad they decided to brake the story down to a trilogy. It's impossible to put all the majesty of the story into a movie, but this was a great job.

    

The Weirdo's Dossier?

Want to get to know something new about yourself?
Or maybe find out things you always knew, but never thought about? Try this dossier, or - how I like to call it - the Weirdo's Dossier.
You thought you're a normal person? Nope! You're a weirdo. And that's how I like you! :P


The most soothing sound (non musical): The sound grasshoppers make in the night
The most irritating sound:  Snoring
Favorite smell (non perfume): Smell of air after raining in summer
Worst smell: Rotting things
Most delicious flavor(not a dish): Melon
Most insipid flavor: Licorice
Your peculiar habit: Walking back and forward in a room, while thinking
Your favorite body part: Eyes
Cozy moment (describe): Sitting under the blanket with a cup of tea, while there's a snow storm outside
Embarrassing moment: Lying about something, then the truth coming out for everyone to know
Awkward moment: Being involved in other people's argument while having nothing with them to do
Unachievable dream: Making a discovery that would be a turning point in human history
Favorite historical period: Industrial Revolution, Renaissance 
Historical figure you would like to become for 1 day: Marie Curie
Thing you wouldn't like to exist: Cruelty
Thing you can't wait for in the future: Organ cloning
What new things did you learn/got to know recently?: Learned some object oriented programming in Java
Things you don't dare to do: Be myself with someone I just met
Something you consider yourself to be too old for: Hoping that someone else will solve my problems
Something you consider yourself to be too young for: Whining about how everything was better "back then"
Most beautiful landscape: Mountains and lakes
Most beautiful place you've seen with your own eyes: Meteora Monasteries, Greece
Childhood memory: Dancing and singing "Erasure" songs
You, in 20 years(how you imagine yourself): Humorous snob who appreciates everything of high quality
If you wrote a book, what would it be about?: Fantasy saga
If you had a band, how would it sound/look?: The most awesome symphonic metal band
If you could solve one of the world's problem, what would it be?: Find cure for incurable and deadly diseases, stop animal cruelty
Thing you should do instead of answering these questions: Damn, I should be programming instead of this...

Stay cool everybody!