This is perfect!

Gone Girl!

I went to the cinema with one of my flatmates yesterday. Woohoo girldate! We went to see Gone Girl, which I is a movie I have been looking forward to for ageeeees! I read the book last year and it was one of the best books I read in 2013. For those of you who don’t know, it is a thriller about a wife who disappears and her husband who is the main suspect. That sounds pretty straightforward and even a bit ‘’cliché’’, but let me tell you, this book is so creepy and so well-written that it will not leave your mind for days. I finished it in two days and then I just wanted to tell everybody about it. Gone Girl is amazing and you should read it.

The movie? Was equally as good! Creepy and suspenseful, with a brilliant soundtrack. Rosamund Pike was excellent as the wife Amy. I can’t say too much about her, because that would ruin the movie/book, but her performance will stay with you. Ben Affleck was…. hot as Nick, but he was not right for the part in my opinion. But what can you do?

So – Go see this movie right now! If I haven’t already convinced you to do so consider this: Neil Patrick Harris is in it and he is GREAT! :D

I'm back!

Hola guys!

So I’m thinking everybody who clicked on this link can be divided into 3 groups:

The ones who know I used to write a blog and LOVED it and are my biggest fans. Thank you very much, I love you and I will dedicate my first Nobel Prize in literature to you.

Those who know I used to write a blog, hated it and thought I was annoying.  I would now advise you to please go very very far away and never come back.

Those who’ve I’ve met these last two years and are like ‘’Wut? She’s blogging?’’ Hello, let me hug you to my (admittedly very large) bosom and welcome you to my blog! This is where I dump thoughts and experiences. I sometimes go away for a while, but I always come back. My language and punctuation tend to be atrocious but who cares? It’s MY blog! :D

But why am I blogging again? Well, readers, Marvellous Marieke (I dubbed myself that – it’s my superhero name) is going to university! Or, rather, is already AT university! :D Yes that is right, I finally made it after two gap years! I am officially an English Language and Literature Student at the University of Greenwich in London! Wooohooo!

I started two weeks ago and so far it has been…. Really fun! :D

My course is challenging and interesting, my flatmates are awesome and so far I’ve met loads of really great people. After two years of volunteering and working, my mind has gone back into English-geek mode and I even found myself buying this at the uni’s bookstore the other day

How much geekier can you get?

So, yes, that was a tiny update, just to get you up to speed with my life. I’m gonna leave now and let it sink in…..

I’m back!

Yes.

General- everyday-thoughts of an au pair:

 Folding adult-clothes sucks.

Alright, you can have my banana and I’ll take your brownish apple, even though you ate your banana, and this is my banana, but you know I’m a grown up so here you go. Bitch.

Blackmailing kids is totaaaaallly legit.

THANK GOD FOR BISCUITS!

My hands smell like baby-pee.

I need a nap.

Banana on my shirt, BANANA ON MY SHIRT.

For god sake, wash your hands, there is pee on them. I SAW you missing the bowl.

I just tidied that!

THANK GOD FOR X-BOX!

I need a second nap.

There's too many buttons on this washing machine. 

I was never this annoying. My parents are lucky.

Ow, you’re so cute, very very cute, cuddle cuddle, OW GREAT SNOT IN MY HAIR

Don’t reach down when I’m changing your diaper, don’t, nooooo, OW GREAT POO IN YOUR HAIR.

And then, one of the last au-pairy thoughts of my days, the one that makes me feel all relaxed and thankful and, I swear, almost religious:

THANK GOD FOR TV!

Exhausted

Converse in the snow back in January. I got an awful lot of crap about that from aunts and grandmas alike.

How is it that the work I take on VOLUNTARILY my GAP YEAR takes more time than any of the homework I did in my final year of high school? Am I prioritizing wrong? Is it bad luck? Or just a bit of unconscious self-punishment? I’ve been known (to myself) to take on a little more responsibility than I can handle at times, a side-effect of wanting to be perfect and the need for attention. I was swamped with work in Ghana, working hard day and night to be as much of a help as I could be, and now, taking the most demanding English course in the world, I find myself with piles and piles and piles of homework. Grammar tasks. Essays. Articles. The articles get me down the most, that’s why I’m writing this right now instead of trying to explain somethingsomthingblabla. They just remind of exactly one year ago when my Norwegian teacher was my mortal enemy and I postponed all the essays until, like, 5 minutes before the file closed on Fronter. That was hardcore but man, this is hardcore-er. (NOTE FROM AUTHOR: Intentional mistake for humorous effect. I tend to do that.)

Misunderstand me correctly, the course is going great. The teacher does his job well, the other students are, albeit being a little bit older than me, a lot of fun and the work is finally FINALLY challenging me in something that has been, let’s face it, my field of expertise for the last 5 years. The exam is on the 23 of March and I’m working my butt off to get a good grade. No way I’m becoming president of the world with a C.

Now that that’s off my chest; HELLO! How are you? I’m great! Yes, I’m still au pairing and yes, it’s still going… It’s still going. I’m enjoying myself, but man, kids are tough! I thought I’d reached the worst of the worst in Ghana, but over there they were so in awe of my skin colour alone that ‘’controlling’’ them became easier after some experience. Plus I really liked their energy. This is a different kind of work altogether. But I feel like I’ve figured it out now, and that they’ve accepted me, so that’s nice. I haven’t seen much of the country yet, but I’ve met some awesome people and as said, the course is great too. Seems like everything is going my way right?....

Think again. I still don’t know (exactly) what I want to do with my life. Well, yeah, I do know, I’m listening to Adele right now and I desperately want to become the next Adele and win an Oscar, but since I can’t sing that won’t be happening soon. I’m gonna study English, sure, nice plan, very good but what am I gonna do with that? No idea. Something useful. Something fun. Which probably means I’ll end up a secretary. :/

Wise words: LIFE IS HARD

That was an update, bye now. 

I'm writing about feelings on the internet. This might be a dumb idea.

Yeah, so I had plans once. Plans to write and blog and tell you internetpeople everything, but then I had to say goodbye in Ghana, get on a plane (on December 21. I survived.) and then I was home. Finally. With the confused feeling of being happy/sad at the same time I forgot about everything that sometimes matters in my life. Like blogging.

Today’s exactly 22 days since I got home. I’ve been sleeping, eating, doing nothing, sleeping and eating. And talking. I never stop talking.

But life moves on and I need to too so BAM on Monday I’m leaving on a jetplane and then BAM I’ll be visiting like ALL my family and then BAM going to Dublin to do some hardcore babysitting for like 5 months. But, before I leave I figured I needed to give you some closure about Ghana. Some final words. But because I can’t write about it right now (TOO MANY FEELS) here’s something that I wrote on my way home. On the 21^st of December. The day we didn’t die.

Here’s something you don’t know about me. I write. Quite a lot. Writing helps me think and process those thoughts into something substantial instead of just faint ideas and useless information. I’ve got word documents full of little stories and thoughts, of opinions and ow yeah FEELINGS. None of it is relevant, and none of it will win me a Nobel literature price but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t write it.  

So let me paint you a picture. It is 03.00-ish. I’m on an airplane from Accra to Amsterdam. I’m cold because of the air-condition and nauseous because of the too many M&M’s. I’m sitting here, sandwiched between two big guys, writing on my laptop. The lights are off. Michael Buble is singing in my ear. You’d think I’d sleep right, since I’ve been awake since like 8 o’clock this morning and today’s been a emotional day, but no. I can’t sleep. Each time I close my eyes I see someone’s face. One of ‘’my’’ kids faces. They haunt me, determined to make me burst out in tears in front of all these strangers. So even though my eyes burn from the sleep, I can’t fall asleep. In many ways I want to cry, but that won’t work either. I’m dried up for today. So instead I’ll sit here tapping away, hoping that it’ll help.

I know this feeling will pass. In a couple of weeks it won’t feel as foreign to me. My bed will be my bed again and those kids, those wonderful kids, will be a memory. An experience. A perfect experience, but long gone in the past. It is weird, loving kids you don’t really know. Loving kids that are so different from you and that live so far away. But I still do. I’ve never been in a relationship, so I don’t know what breaking up is like, but somehow this feels like the feelings they always describe in songs. It’s an ache in my heart. Right now it is overpowering every other feeling, right now it is so fresh, but I know the feeling will pass. Which is strangely comforting even though it should be a horrible thought. I know I’ll struggle to remember their names in a couple of months, that I won’t remember the way they said my name or the times they made me laugh. But there is one thing that will never go away. The memory of that time in Ghana, that time when I was happy and content, when I was emotional but also incredibly cheery, when I truly cared and worked hard and laughed till my stomach ached and cried in front of children and yelled at strangers In the street and experienced the joy, yes joy, of volunteering. And that is something that will never faint.

Here’s something you don’t know about me. I write. I write when there is stuff in my head that won’t go away. I write in a quiet airplane (except for that one SCREAMING baby) even though I’m pretty sure the guy on my right is reading everything right now. That’s nice for him, because then he’ll have met a celebrity when I win the Nobel prize for literature.