final week at reuters

So today is August 27 and I m going into my final week at Reuters. Its been up very confusing two months with lots of ups and downs. Once I stop work its almost like going back already, because a week after Amy and then my family will come and after that its going back, so its time to say goodbye or maybe to say hallo to my normal life. Well I ve talked about that enough during my last entry.

So whats new? Not much actually. We went to Circle again. Its like an in club and although its very nice club, I kind of don’t like it, because of the people. Most of them are very arrogant and cocky and you only get in through connections. So I got in through a friend and even got into the VIP area. Well the people there were even more arrogant as you can imagine. Its almost like my work at home, where I have to serve the people that think they are something better. I really wish I could make a fortune and then get back to them and show them what they really are, but then again I wouldn’t do it anyways, because then I would be on the same level with them. Sometimes I just wonder if they have always been like that or if they were modest when they were younger. You never know. Everyone has a past where they come from.

Anyways, most of the German-Koreans have already left Korea, so there is only 3 left and one is a model here, so he is always having shootings. So I see the other guy on most of the weekends and we hang out. Maybe next weekend will be the last though. All of them are from Bonn though, so I think I ll make a trip up there sometime. After all its just an hour away.

I ve caught up with some people over the last couple of days and its been good getting to know what they are up to. I still feel strange having friends in all different areas of the world. Sometimes scares me. I don’t even know why, but it does. So anyways. I guess that’s it for today. I should finally start working.

So hope all of you out there have a good week ahead of you! Take care and enjoy!

365 days, oh what a year

So its been 365 days since I started my trip around the world. I ve been on 15 planes since then. I ve lived in 4 countries, been to at least 3 others. Have made lots of friends from all over the world. Still gives me chills when I think about all the different areas they are in and different things they are going through. Looking at my messenger, probably 24 hours of the day, there are at least 20 people online I could talk to.
Well just to give an example right now I have a friend in Mexiko, where a hurricane hit and I hope she is alright. I have a friend in Indonesia who is working too much and she had typhus a month ago and she is still not taking a break, haven’t heard from her in a while so I m worried. Another friend in Germany has some issues with work and I wish it was going better. Another girl has a sickness, nothing serious but anyways.
Well this list could go on forever, but lets leave it at that.
Its just crazy how within the last year I ve met so many people that now are probably studying at around 40 different universities around the world. If I count my friends from school and the ones I met before, its probably even 100 universities.

I always thought I already had a crazy lifestyle, well the ones reading my blog probably know how I live, but then there is people out there, that are even more insane than me… working and traveling to even more countries in even shorter time….but I ll leave that for another day.

Todays blog should be about the experience of a year. So yes exactly today, 365 days ago I boarded a plane in Frankfurt leaving for Halifax, Canada. I arrived the same day. And that’s when my crazy journey really began. I had been on hundreds of flights before, had visited schools and universities in other countries before, but this time seemed to be like it is a start to something new, or maybe the end to something old. Whatever it might have been, during this year, I ve learned a lot about the meaning of friendship and love. But also disappointment and fear. Living in Canada, Indonesia, Kora and Germany has thought me a lot about people, how to react to them and how to handle them. To be open, but also be careful. There are plenty of people who will brighten your day and show you what its worth living for and then there is many who seem to know its all, but then they don’t really pay attention. Who don’t open their hearts and souls and don’t actually live a life.
My life has been full of excitement, but on the other hand also crazy boring. You might wonder, how can it be boring, never staying at the same place for long. Well you get used to things faster than you think.

In about 5 weeks this long journey around the northern hemisphere will have an end when I board the plane in Seoul and then when I exit the plane set foot on german soil again. The timezones I traveled through have ranged over 15hours. So then finally I will be able to focus on time again, although yet again my friends are in all those different times zones and I will miss so many people at the same time being in so many different places. I ve talked to many people who are jealous of me being able to have this experience.
And yes most of it has been good, but like I said some pain was involved as well. Just to give you an example, what a lot of people don’t understand, my heart now is torn apart into 4 different countries, in 3 different continents around 13000km apart from each other. I have really close friends in Canada, Germany, Indonesia and Korea and even though its been a great time I miss many of them and I know kind of have four lives. And it seems like its been hard for many people to understand that for me its not easy to write everyone an email everyday. I have still been working in all the places I was and I had friends there and most of you will know how difficult it is too accompany all your friends in one country, now imagine you have friends in 4 countries and all of them want a piece of you. I ve always tried to keep in touch, but sometimes I just tore me apart and wore me out, so unfortunately I ve lost some friends.
What really hurts though is that even though I know I want to see all of my friends again and even though I m only 26, probably I wont even see half of them ever again, which makes it really hard to say goodbye.


Ok I guess this blog again went a different direction then I expected, how come this always happens lately? I guess there is so much emotion involved these days. Especially with me going back to Germany and having to pick up the pieces I left behind. To rebuild what I once had, what once used to be mine. I guess Germany was where I lost most of my friends, where most things seem like a Warfield to me and where I have to get back to my responsibilities and stop living the one year holiday life, but finally graduate, and look for a job. Where everything seems to be changed and where everything might seem like a dream.
Even nowadays, there are days, when I wake up and I don’t even know where I am or what I am doing, whats my name, whats the time of day. It’s a really strange feeling, you have dizziness in your head, you can barely sleep, you re sick in your stomach, but the adrenaline keeps you going and life has to go on.

Anyways…with this blog I want to say thank you to everyone that has shared the path with me during the last year and that has supported me, adviced me or influenced me in another way. Its been an up and down year, but its been worth it. Yes I missed out on some things traveling and going away, but I ve also gained a lot. I ve lost many friends and I ve made lots of new. Most of all I ve come a lot closer to my goal of leaving an impression. I just hope in the end it will be good and wherever I left my footsteps, I didn’t just leave tears, but joy as well.

I just figured, this must sound very pessimistic. Don’t worry its not at all. The year has been great and like I said I ve met a lot of new special interesting people, made lots of unforgettable memories and I ve really enjoyed it. I guess its just the uncertainty that awaits with growing up and knowing that this was probably the last chapter of “my childhood” as from now on the real world awaits me.

Ok I should go to bed now, its getting late again ;)
I ll say good night to Asia/Australia , Good afternoon to Europe and Africa and Good morning to North and South America. May you all have a very nice end to the year and may all of you have special day=)

Disappointment

Sometimes there is a time when you think you know a person and then in the end it turns out you didnt. When you had all your hopes up and you open up and then you re being betrayed and stabbed in the back...

People are playing games like we re still in Kindergarden, like they wanna be part of one of these soap operas. They tell you you re not honest and then try to play all those mind games?

Have you ever experienced something like that?

Well I have and I m sick and tired of it.

I know I do wrong at times as well, sometimes I really regret things, but I try to be as honest as possible. Sometimes it takes me some time to spill things out, so i get to tell people, but its because things are not always easy.

anyways.. most of you will be confused, but I think maybe one or two people will know what i mean..

to leave those post on a positive note...

Remember this...

Life is good, life is great, life is unbelievable ;P
haha its a song quote.. but we should all life after it, because there is millions of possibilities for all of us out there and we just need to grasp them.

Mixed feelings

Ok first of all... congratulations to the baseball guys... They just won the league title and will go up one league. Yes I m really happy and really excited about it, yet at the same time I feel sad and empty. For the last couple of years I was like a cornerstone of the team and now they dont need me anymore, they might even be better without me. I guess I knew that would happen as I left the town. Its been almost 1 1/2 seasons that I havent played, except for one game, which we won 11-0...haha.

I know the guys still respect me and all, but I might not be the vocal point anymore. On the one hand its good, because someone stepped up, on the other hand it leaves an empty space inside of me. I think it will be really hard for me to actually go back to Germany and stay there, as the last couple of times it was kind of vacation, so i didnt really have any responsibilities. This time I will need to get my life back and build everything I had there up again. Not just baseball, but friends, family, a job and all those things... Wont be easy, but its a challenge and I guess my time traveling around was worth it.

ok enough about this.

what else is new. i met the Global and Asian Boss today. They were kind of different then I expected, yet it seemed to be they were very different in personality, yet I only met them for lunch so I cant really tell so much yet. Will meet them again tomorrow, so we ll see about that.

Alper finally left. He got back to Germany, so now the apartment is empty again. haha, well on one hand its good, because I really need some time for myself and I get to sleep and do what I want and I got my bed back...LOL...
on the other hand, at least i was going out a lot and took advantage of the time i had. but then i guess i did that for a month, so now its time to relax and hopefully study more korean.. i wanna be better than my sis, but i m afraid thats not going to happen, oh well..its all good. can you tell im competitive .. LOL

to finish this post off i wanna tell you whats going on in my head.

When I look at my watch it says 2:37pm, when I look at my laptop it says 7:37 am, when I look at my other cell phone it says 2:37am. The person I m talking to online right now it says 12:37pm. The person I m gonna email now it says 1:37pm. Then I just got a message from a person on facebook where the time says 10:37. Anyway my point being is....just this week (starting monday) I ve talked to people living in the us, canada, thailand, uganda, germany, hongkong,philippines,korea,indonesia. I think thats all i remember....anyways my point being. This world has become so small that there is no boundaries anymore. Everyone is just a phonecall away and can be so close to you. Imagine 200 years ago, even the person in the next town was far away. Seeing the earth as such a small thing, makes me wonder, how big are we in this universe, how important are we as a person. Yet if you look at what you do in your life, how many people you ve met, it doesnt mean you re a minor factor. you re probably changing the world just a little bit, not just in your area, but around the world. You influence all those people that you meet and they will influence others....

Be the change ;)

ok i kind of got off topic.. i m half falling asleep, i hope you got the point of my message!

i better head off now...take care out there

Arranging the words

I recently had to think about a lot of things, finally got the time again to think about stuff. Especially two emails from a friend yesterday and a chat with another friend made me kind of get back to myself. So reflecting on life and things going on around me. I guess you hear a lot of news and see a lot of pictures if you work in a news agency. So I will try to rearrange my words again.
And put some meaning behind my posts as I think I didnt during my last couple of posts as i just started writing without no meaning.

thinking about this, its funny how a few letters put together into words and into a certain kind of order can make such a different in the world, how contracts, letters, books, lyrics change emotions, feelings, life situations. They make all the difference and yet often we dont use them carefully enough. What a difference a single word can make and how it can change the life of a person forever, sometimes kind of scares me and yet I often catch myself not thinking enough about it.
And yes thats also a reason why I often am so quite. I dont want to just say anything. If I m saying something then I hope it will have a meaning, well except for these silly talks of course, but I guess all of us have them.

anyways so a topic i want to talk about is Death and its importance.

Right now as some of you might know 23 korean volunteers have been kept hostage in afghanistan, 2 have been killed already and there is a deadline today, that even more might be killed. they have also killed a german last week and one more german and 4 afghanis are kept hostage as well. so this is what most of you probably know, now a fact that most of you probably dont know. during the last 18 months 6500 people have been killed in that specific area, probably something no one really cared about. It doesnt bother us until it affects us, right?
Well it seems like for most people it is like that.
If you compare that number to the casualties that have been suffered in iraq on the us/uk side and what kind of uproar it has there. During 5.5 years, meaning 66 months there have been 4000 casualties. Thats still more than any one would need. and even about the American deaths, how much do you really hear.

Also even though it was linked to korea, because iraq had won the semifinal against korea, no one here really cared about it. During the celebrations in iraq there were several suicide bombs killing more than 50 and wounding hundreds.
How can people do all these things, letting the hopeful festivities be struck down like that.

What meaning the Asian Cup for the Iraqis had can be compared to the Germans World Cup victory in 54, not as meaningful, but similar. for those that might not know. the 54 victory gave Germans hope, it made it seem like they are on the right track to normality after years of war and destruction. Which again makes me think about the world wars. Everytime I look back at the numbers being from 39-45.. i think... wow how can countries have been in war for so long, well if you look at iraq it has been 5.5 years as well. crazy.... imagine how those people must feel, while we are doing whatever we wanna do. some people are mad because they cant go out, because they dont have enough money or they are bothered by injuries or a bad mark in school.
dont get me wrong. I have to admit i m one of them. sometimes i get carried away and then I feel really guilty after. As a matter of fact I dont have any right to be whinning about anything I have a really good life I should cherish. And I m really thankful for that. I guess I ve just realized that during the past couple of years and even people telling me, I ve gone through a lot, now I come to say I m thankful for it. I m not bothered by it. It has made me the person I am today and life has been good to me.

Coming back to the korean hostages and what they are going through...

"It feels like my heart is being scorched. It's unbelievable how sinful I feel for just eating and sleeping," Ryu said in an interview with Reuters.

"I feel like I'm in hell. I just wish it would all end," he said at the church which sent the group to Afghanistan.

Thinkin about how often they were warned not to go, because the situation was unstable and now a lot of people saying, they deserve it, they knew what was going on. I think back on what people told me when I decided for Indonesia, everyone warned me not to go, because it wasnt save and then thinking about how close I actually was to death while I was there. I was in the basement of a 2 storey stone house during a 6.3 earthquake which killed 80 people. I was 2km from the beach when storm waves hit the beach and then flooded the beach area.

How close are we to death everyday. I would still go back to Indonesia to help out. I guess we have to make those choices in life.

Ok I guess this is it from me for today, I have to get back to work... just on a last note.... capturing the sadness that is covering the world these days.

A NY baseball fan killed his mother, when she intervened him fighting with his dad, after his favourite baseball team had lost. What is wrong with the world?