Twelve years ago I came to Finland for the first time and I had my first cabin experience. On R2's birthday this year, we went to the cabin to celebrate it. Thankful that we're still given time together on earth. The temperature was a bit colder than usual, but the sun was shining so brightly. I brought my snow shoes with me so that my legs wouldn't be stuck deep on some parts of the thicker snow while walking towards the cabin he he...The temperature dropped down to around -14'C during the night, but we had a gorgeous sunset and a full moon to enjoy.
I've made a short video clip. I deliberately didn't erase the actual sound of the video despite the fact that I did add the music so that you can all hear the crunch crunch of the snow below my snow shoes he he...We walked across the frozen lake and at the end of the clip, I was trying to make a hole on the frozen lake. Thankfully it wasn't that hard to do since the weather had been kinda warm. I remember one time we went to the cabin and it took R2 at least half an hour to dig into the ice and it was around 15 cm thick. We had to make the hole big enough to get some water for the sauna. FYI, at the end of the clip, I threw away my gloves since they got wet when I tried to get rid of some icy bits to make the hole bigger ha ha...
What else has been going on in my life? Well, the recovery process is still continuing. I've been exercising more regularly than normal, doing more stretches as well at work during recess or behind the till. A funny thing happened the other day. I had some brown kinesio tape on my wrists and both arms and a customer said, "Do you have problem with your skin or something? Why do you have so much band-aid?" LOL!!!
Oh yeah, I've also bought a foam rollersince I thought it'd help. The last time I met one physiotherapist, I got to try her foam roller on my back and it felt good. I've been using it a few times now. The only thing that my body doesn't like is the fact that in many poses, I have to hold my body weight using my arms and my wrists don't necessarily like it, but at least now I know how to do a self-massage for my lower arms that are pretty effective. Lesson in healing: better collect as many "weapons" as possible so that you can combine them all as you move forward in your healing process. This also means you've got to learn from different people and do lots of trials and errors since what works for you may not exactly work for someone else.
Was bored since I couldn't do anything much, so went for a walk along the river bank and took some photos and one video. I combined the video with the one from last Christmas and added a song and some quotes.
Each year usually by the time November rolls around, I take out my SAD light box and sit in front of it regularly each morning. Otherwise I'll feel lethargic and uninspired and my brain goes foggy. If October is grey and rainy, though, I usually start using my SAD light box that month. This year was crazy in the way that I had to use this lamp already in July as this year's summer was so grey and rainy. We're now down to 6 hours of daylight and it's getting rapidly less and less as we're approaching Christmas. I noticed that a few people have already turned on their Christmas lamps when we drove around the other week LOL!!!
Ever since we got back from Malta, I had been dealing with sinus problems. The nurse prescribed me a stronger type of antihistamine and the doc prescribed me four bottles of nose spray that I could use long-term (though I prefer not to!). I only bought one bottle first and I'm now down to 4/5th of it and I had been trying to figure out a way to stop using it. You see, when I had my days off, I could get by without using it, but for work, I needed an optimal mental capacity so I could focus on work and communicating in Finnish, so I had been using the spray for work. I had also tried other means: Neti Pot, nose oil, steaming my face. The pressure between my eyebrows and along my upper teeth kept coming back. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...
In the end I tried something else: oiling my ears. I took a Q-tip and oiled each end with baby oil and then just shoved it into my ears. The weird thing is that it has worked pretty well so far! I've been doing it for a week and I haven't had to resort to using the nose spray at all and the pressure is 90% gone. Strange but true, eh? :-D
It's been snowing again for the past few days. Yesterday was the first time I had to shovel the yard and today I'll have to do it again. It's good to be forced to get out and do something physical in winter. It was kinda heavy to shovel the snow as the temperature was 0'C and the snow was very wet. A thick pile of dry snow will be less heavy than a thin pile of wet snow.
Here are some Winter Wonderland photos I took when I walked back from work:
Here's also a video clip of downtown Sodankylä taken by Samuli Korvanen:
OK, let's continue with the trip, shall we? On Monday we went to Sintra by train (I thought Monday would be good because most museums in Lisbon are closed on Mondays). We bought the train tickets the day before so that we didn't have to queue at the ticket office. The tickets had no date on them (could be used like using metro tickets, no conductor on the train) and could be used any day. We arrived at the platform 10 minutes before the next train was leaving, so we didn't have to wait too long. I think on workdays there's a train to Sintra every 30 minutes. The round-trip ticket cost €4,30/person and the journey lasts 40 minutes. Here's a pic of R2 on the train on the way back to Sintra.
When we left Lisbon that morning, it was sunny and gorgeous. But alas, it got cloudy as we got closer to Sintra. Here's what I saw right when we went out of the train station:
When we arrived at Sintra, the cold wind was blowing and I chose the wrong bus for us to board. I had read online that we could take the 434 (or was it 343?) bus to go to the tourist attractions because it was a hilly area. Instead we found a hop on and hop off tour bus, so we boarded that one. I was thinking of visiting two places at the very least, but I wanted to wait until the weather got better, so I took the hop on and hop off bus that went around the coast (it meant it would take us at least 1 hour before getting to one of the two places I'd like us to visit). Nobody actually stopped anywhere on any of the stops on the tour bus, though the driver did let us out for a little while on two stops to take photos. Here is one of the stops where the bus driver let us get off for a few minutes to take some photos. It was crazy crazy cold wind!
We actually decided to only stop at Pena Palace (there was a stop before Pena where we were supposed to drop off, but due to my hunger and my need of toilet, we figured it'd be best to go straight to Pena instead). It was all in all a nice bus trip as we got to see many different areas of Sintra. It's definitely a beautiful place that's worth visiting on its own. Lots of lovely little houses here and there and palaces. The ticket to visit Pena Palace and park (yes, there's a HUGE park around Pena Palace) was €11,50/person, but we also bought a bus ticket that cost €3/person to go from the entrance of the park to the Palace (it was an uphill walk - normally we don't mind walking, but it was SOOOOO cold that we'd rather take the bus instead). The bus dropped us off right in front of the palace area. Here's a view of the crowd going inside the palace (yes, it was still cloudy at that time as the sun only came up later):
As I needed to go to the toilet and I was hungry, instead of going into the palace, we went to the restaurant right away HA HA HA HA HA HA...I had a duck quiche whereas hubby had a ham and cheese quiche with salad and I ordered a chocolate cake as well. I had hot tea, whereas hubby had coffee. They were very delicious and not too expensive, either. And boy, did it feel good to hold a hot cup of tea to warm up my hands! Here's what it looks like inside the restaurant:
The gift store is located below the restaurant, so we decided to buy some hoodie (the only thing available) there to keep us warm before roaming the palace. Here are some views of the palace and yes, thankfully the sun started to shine, though the wind was still VERY VERY cold and it could be VERY strong at times (it's very rare for the wind to be that strong in Sodankylä, so it took me off guard!). Here are some photos of the Pena Palace (some photos were taken by mobile):
And here's a video clip I made of Pena Palace (the view of the palace from two different angles).
Here are some photos taken from inside the palace as we got to see different rooms in there. Plus I took some photos of the history, as well.
The last photo above is actually the King's bed if I remember correctly. I find this bed weird because even for a short person like me it feels so short (the length, I mean). Anyway, after roaming the palace, we decided to skip going to the other place and wait for the bus back to the train station instead. We had to wait for about half an hour. Maybe next time we can visit Sintra again to check out the other places of interest there, but that day we were so cold and tired already, so we decided to go back to Lisbon instead.
OK, let's continue the tour then. After finding out where the train station was, we had no specific idea on where to go next, so we just went downtown to a place where there were lots of places to visit on the map ha ha...Our first stop was Arco da Rua Augusta. Rua Augusta is a place where there are lots of stores and cafes and restaurants and at the end of it, you can see a huge square. We paid €2,50/person to go up the arch to have a 360 degree view of Lisbon. This is the arch:
There are lots of buses passing by this square. It's funny because when the sun is shining on one side of the square, people would flock towards that side to eat/drink outside, whereas the other side would be empty LOL!!!! There's also a metro station at one end of this square (that we only noticed later LOL!!!) And here are some views from up there:
Here are the photo of the stairs. It felt kinda claustrophobic because it was a small one (only fit one person at a time). The great thing was that there was a button at the bottom and the top of the stairs that you had to push to find out whether or not it was clear to either go up or down. If there was somebody coming up or down, the lamp would be red, but if the coast was clear, then the lamp would turn green. Very practical!
From there, we decided to go visit the nearest church, the Lisbon Cathedral. When we arrived there, we were lucky enough to be able to hear some people rehearsing a song. The acoustic was amazing! Mind you, I had never heard anyone sing in a church like this (only in normal churches), so I had no clue how wonderful it was. I managed to take a short video clip of it. Here goes:
Here are some photos of the church:
After that we went to have lunch in a nearby restaurant as we were so hungry. We'll continue the tour in another post because I have a lot more photos from the next place we visited that I'm going to share.
1. Be kind to your body. 2. Learn to accept your limitations and then slowly begin to work beyond them (through regular practice). 3. Listen to your body. If you can't go/bend that far yet, don't push it. You don't need to prove anything to anybody. 4. If you need to some help by using a prop (a pillow/blanket/towel/yoga block), feel free to do so. We all need help from time to time. 5. Deep, mindful breathing can help you relieve some tension and they're especially important when doing twists. 6.
Be patient. When one part of your body is tight, take deeper breaths to
relieve the tension and then allow the muscles to soften at their own
pace. 7. We are rarely symmetrical. We carry tension in different parts of our body. 8. Simple movements (no jumping around) can really target your muscles and make them ache. 9. A good muscle ache is OK, but you shouldn't feel any pain at all. 10. Yoga can be so addictive! :-D Here's the latest one I tried yesterday and my goodness did I feel a lot of muscle ache afterwards! I like doing different ones to spice things up, but I'm a total beginner.
One of the things I love about the internet is that every now and then I find something cute and interesting and then it makes me want to learn more about it. The other day I was browsing through youtube videos of cute animals and found a clip where an otter was juggling a rock and through that video I found other videos of otters juggling rocks. So I started searching for more information. But before I continue, check out this cute video of an otter juggling two small rocks.
Anyway, here are some of the things I found through this Wikipedia link: 1. Sea otters are one of the few mammals that use tools. They use rocks to break open preys that have hard shells. They eat while floating on their backs. 2. Otters are the only marine animals capable of lifting and turning over rocks. 3. In another link I also read that they juggle rocks because they have to handle slippery food, so they have to hone their skills.
4. Sea otters eat approximately 25% of their weight in food each day to support their high metabolism. (Source: Sea Otter) ---> I'm ENVIOUSof their high metabolism! At this age it's getting harder and harder to lose weight compared to when I was still in my twenties. In the Wikipedia page, I also found out that during mating, the male bites the nose of the female. Ewwwwww...that doesn't sound like a nice mating ritual at all, especially considering the fact that oftentimes the nose becomes bloody and scarred. Are they masochistic or something? LOL!!! Anyway, I won't share too many facts here because you can read them in the links that I've shared.
Last but not least, here's a video of an otter actually using a rock to break open some clams:
On May Day holiday, we went to visit MIL and I decided to bring my camera along just in case, because the last time we went there, I didn't have my camera and I saw a squirrel outside her yard. We got lucky again because indeed the squirrel came over ha ha ha ha ha...it's still partly in its winter coat (greyish), which will turn reddish in summer. Here are some photos that I took. It let me stand about a few metres away while it was busy munching food. As long as I stayed still in my spot near the door, it wouldn't run away he he he...
Now it's on alert mode...
Back to eating...
I just LOVE taking pics of it from different angles ha ha ha ha...Here are two pics of it on a swing. LOVE LOVE LOVE those cute paws!
Last photo...
And here's the video clip. I was going to publish this post last night, but the editing process for the video took SO long (had to stabilize it and make it brighter), so enjoy! If you hear a tingaling-aling sound in the video clip, it's the sound of particles of icy snow falling to the ground blown by the strong wind, making the squirrel alert and in the end it ran away.
