Showing posts with label pictures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pictures. Show all posts

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Year of the Horse at last!

Happy New Year everyone!

You'll be excited to know that I brought in the New Years with a classic Doctor Who Marathon and a skype date with my wonderful boyfriend, Mike. I also had a fantastic view from my window of fireworks being let off not far from my apartment :D

Here's a peek of my 2014 so far~



Natasha (blonde) and Ludmyla. They invited me over for a New Years celebration
New Years present I got from Natasha and Ludmyla. Closest I'll ever get to the real thing haha


I found some buddies in the park 

He's like Yogi
The obligatory Lenin statue in the center of town with the obligatory playground around it
(Kozelets had a set up similar to this therefore i'm assuming all town do)

A memorial of some sort

A cute little neighborhood I stumbled upon

These guys! They live right outside my apartment and pull my little heart strings
I love them 

The river splitting town



Turtle dude hanging out

#Ukraine

I broke down and got myself a new coat. Natasha and Ludmyla helped me pick it out :D
This jacket had me at thumb holes

Funny story about my new jacket. I walked around and around the bazaar looking at different jackets trying to get a handle on the prices people were asking. For a good, warm winter coat it seemed like 600 was the cheapest (around $70). I tried some on, I didn't like the fit of most of them (the style here is having your coat hang down to your knees) and my football shoulders were limiting my selection considerably. For some reason pastel is in this season and thus, it just seemed like I wasn't going to go home with a new jacket. Until we (myself, Natasha, and Ludmyla) stopped at a shop that was manned by one of Ludmyla's former students (this lady practically knows everyone in town either because they were a former student/are a current student or they are parents of former students/current students--one time I was walking with Ludmyla and this man jumped out from behind his stall and gave Ludmyla 200 UAH. Why? For some reason or another but it was totally random to witness haha). I tried on two of her coats (the only two that didn't hang down past my knees and were a reasonable color) and I actually liked both of them but ended up getting the one pictured. She was asking 400 for it (around $50), which seemed completely reasonable to me as all the other stalls were asking for more for the same product. I handed her a 500 bill and to my utter confusion she first handed me a 20, and then a 100. Noticing everyone was laughing except me, Ludmyla told me the clerk said the extra 20 was because I convinced her to make it cheaper for myself (which I totally didn't because I'm terrible at haggling and try to avoid it as much as possible). So I ended up getting the jacket for 380 ($45) and I now know that if I ever want to buy something that I need to bring Ludmyla with me to get discounts.  

Topic change!

As I'm sure everyone else does, I have all my pictures organized into files on my computer. However, I have mine all organized by the years I took them in (and then from there they are broken down into subcategories of where they were taken). As I was adding a new file for 2014, I noticed that I have exactly 1 decade worth of pictures on my computer! Starting in 2004 when I got my first digital camera to now! I'm putting together a little collage to sort of celebrate these 10 years of picture taking (however, I'm more than certain most the pictures from the years 2004-2007 are Myspace selfies).

Oh! Oh! I also found someone to fix my hipster glasses for cheap! I can come out of hiding as Jamie and finally reveal myself as Hipster Jamie, the most un-hipster-y person except for her glasses cuz she's a poser, in town! Exciting!

-Jamie

Thursday, December 30, 2010

OSAKA PICTURES!!

I'm going to break my pictures up into two posts because there are so many pictures to look at and I want you to be able to enjoy them fully.

First i'll start with the Osaka pictures! 

Look at his little thing just sticking out there!
XD 

If you remember from the first post I went to Himeji with some lovely ladies I met the first day I was there. There were naked statues all over the place (and I guess there are a lot of naked statues all over Japan according to one of the girls but I haven't notice any in Tokyo...) 

At the end of this road is Himeji Castle. 











It read "Shiro Maru Hime" Which means white ball princess  
 This guy is like the mascot of  Himeji. I think it's a mochi ball (rice cake ball) with Himeji castle on it's head.













The part that's all in scaffolding is the main part of the Castle. Doesn't it look like their just building a hotel or something right on top of it though?



           

In spring the cherry blossoms make this place look even
more amazing. There were winter cherry blossoms
though so we didn't miss out completely.
This building is the part we got to walk through. It's a long corridor that surrounds part of the castle grounds and was originally were the princess' maids lived. During the Meji era (1860's-1900's) the castle was turned into a fortress and this part was turned into a sort of barracks for soldiers.
It's supposed to be a butterfly but it looks like a mosquito
to me. 
All the lords and rulers and whatnot choose flowers o,r in this case, butterflies for their emblems because beauty was what displayed power unlike in Europe where the castles look like fortresses and everyone had something fierce like a lion for the coat of arms.  









mmmm, so good!!
Then the next day we went to a local shrine and made mochi!! 













From L-R: Me, Santa, Lauren, Melanie, Teresa, Rudolph.
These are the three lovely ladies that let me join them on their escapades. Plus Santa and his reindeer. 












That little boy was so cute!!! XD
Let the mochi making commence! 

























I wasn't able to make mine into a nice round ball
like everyone else...I think it's cuz i'm too white XD 















Nick the Aussie (in the bright jacket), and Ed
English 


Xmas dinner


I didn't get a good group photo but the guy in the yellow is
the other Aussie (the one who ended up in the wrong bed)
And the guy in the background is the American Navy
guy
















































She had a cold but I was just trying to keep warm. 










Me and Yukie on our way to Universal Studios Japan!














Even though it was the day after Xmas they still had Xmas everywhere. 
















I had to fight little kids to get this picture!



















We tried jumping but we couldn't time it right...


I fail at being a Vegetarian... 
Okonomiyaki time!!













This one was called the "Early American"
...it didn't taste as good as it looks though. I preferred the
Kimchee one. XD 





















Okay, later i'll post the Kyoto pictures. Now, I'm going to go finish Biohazard! XD