HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!

Wishing all the readers of 'Another Day - Another Destiny' a

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!!

Some people close to me have had a rough year and my thoughts are with you especially hoping and praying for a better year to come!

I hope you are all enjoying the holidays and I wish you all the best during 2009!

/Jessica

2008 Summary!

New Year's Eve is here, so it is time to summarize the year of 2008 now!
While some people close to me has been going through a rough time this year - and my thoughts are with you, believe me! - 2008 has for me personally quite possibly been the best year ever! I have experienced a lot of things I earlier never ever thought possible and I am genuinly grateful for this year!

January 2008 started off with heavy studies and I went through a big oral exam in a course in Systematic Theology in mid-January! It was my second oral exam, for a 'difficult' teacher and the grade covered half a semester! I went through it and am personally very happy with how I performed. I was one single question away from getting the high grade VG, and I have to admit that still bothers me some, but I'm still very happy with getting through it the way I did!

Right after that I celebrated my 30th birthday, and that day was made unforgettable by Johanna and Sara - thank you SO much again!!

During the spring semester I studied full-time, added one 'reading-course' and followed the Hebrew course (also full time) unofficially - and did great!! I took in total 5 exams (official and unofficial) and had G on the smallest one and VG on all the rest! :) Something I never ever thought I would be able to do!!

Summer was pretty regular to tell the truth! Some things really good, some things not so great!

This fall I have taken full-time Greek, and managed to ace both written exams (technically I had 71 of 72 on the last one, but in all honestly, that was a typing error!)!! Besides that I have also gotten started on my essay, and even though I really wanted to finish it now, I am still very happy with my accomplishments this semester.

I was also asked to be mentor for next semester, in Hebrew, and even though I'm very anxious about that, I feel so extremely honored to have been asked - I just hope I will be able to do a good job of it!

So once again, for me personally I have greatly enjoyed 2008 and I am amazed to have been able to experience such a year! There's no way I dare hope for 2009 to be as good as that, but I will definitely do whatever I can to be able to develop and grow as a person and do the best I can to get yet another wonderful year!

General Update!

Wow, long time since I've made an entry here now! My reason and maybe excuse for this blog neglect is the fact that I have more or less been out of internet access since I got here.
So, what has been going on?

My Dad and his family came back safe and sound - though a bit tired - from their trip to Florida and the kids had certainly grown a lot.
Christmas was for once TERRIFIC!! I don't like the Christmas holidays and I stand by that, but Christmas this year has been the best one in a long, long time. I don't want to go into details here, but I think I will always look back at this Christmas with a smile on my face for a long time. I spent almost all of Christmas Eve with my Mum, and we had a wonderful day!! Christmas Day was spent with my Dad although we 'pretended' it to be Christmas Eve for the children's sake. (In Sweden we celebrate on December 24th with Santa and presents)

Since then I have spent most of the time with my Dad and his family although I have had some quality time with my Mum as well. Mostly things have been really good, kids at their age (4½ and almost 2) are fantastic to be around, although I am not at all used to living with so many people, so the intensity sometimes gets to me. I don't have that much time for myself, and I am a person who requires a lot of alone-time. Still, so far the holidays have been really good! :)

I'm now celebrating New Year's Eve with my Mum and after that we don't know for sure. I will probably go back home on January 5th, but we also want to celebrate my Dad's birthday which is a few days later, and we still haven't decided on how to manage that ...

A few more entries will come tonight, when I'm finally in front of the computer... Please excuse me for not sharing any pictures with you, I won't be able to upload photos from my camera onto a computer until I get home, so I'll post a picture-spree then! :)

Happy Holidays!

Stressing as usual, having a lot to do right before I'm leaving! This year, it's not just about me postponing everything, I think, because I really am VERY tired, and everything I try to do, tend to take a really long time.
Still, I'll hopefully be able to leave here in reasonable time, as I have at least a 6 hour-drive ahead of me, probably longer due to the weather!

So just a short post to wish you all Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2009!
All the Best!

(I might be able to get limited internet access when I'm away, and then I'll try to give you an update, but otherwise I'll be back in January!)

Take care!
/Jessica

Public Apology!

Things are pretty insane right now, to tell the truth!
I have been extremely tired lately, and things have been very confusing and I'm now trying to prepare for my holiday trip north, which isn't the easiest thing in the world. I had hoped to be able to leave tomorrow, Friday, but that is completely out of the question now. I really have to leave on Saturday, but it's going to be a tough time until I'm ready to go.

This entry will be a public apology to pretty much everyone I know. I know I have been able to meet a few of you now before the holidays, but not as much as I would have wanted to, and a lot of you I haven't even had the chance to meet! Believe me when I say I am truly sorry about that, I really wish I had stayed in touch better and that we had managed to get together. There's not much I can say, other than the fact that things really have been very chaotic and very confusing lately. I do hope that I will get better at staying in touch with my friends when I get back here after the holidays, I will definitely make an effort to do so. My spring semester will be quite different from this one, it will be intense, once again I will do more than full-time studies and I will also have my job as a mentor to consider, but since there are no lectures, I will be able to control my time in another way, and there will not be specific demands made on me every single day - so hopefully I will be able to catch up with those of you I have neglected now!
The apology also applies to more "online" friends and activities. I have cut back on such activity gradually, as the rest of my life - studies! - takes up too much time, but there are a few things that I'd like to hold on to, but that I have been neglecting too this semester. Mostly it's blogs! I do try to catch up and read blogs, but I have been terrible at leaving comments, and for that I am sorry! I am not active in a lot of Forums or Message Boards either nowadays, but there are two that I really like and want to stay in: Zunshine.com Message Board and AmandaTapping.com. Please know that I will also make an effort to be more of a regular there starting next year!

Okay, that's all for now! I just wanted to make this public before I dash off and will for the most part be out of internet- and computer access. I'll try to make a Goodbye-post before I leave, either tomorrow evening or Saturday morning!

And The Earth Shook!

Had quite an "interesting" experience this morning ...
I got up at about 5.30, did the usual cuddle with Zorro in front of the TV and started writing in my diary. Zorro settled down and fell asleep, just as he always does. All of a sudden, he jumps of from the couch with a loud "miaooo!" and rushes to the window - and seconds later, my entire apartment starts to shake ... really shake! I was completely unprepared, and didn't understand anything, at first I figured there were some construction work going on but quickly realized that my entire concrete nine-floor building would not shake like that ... It didn't last very long, but it really was an earthquake!! That's like ... impossible!! *shock* I've been in an earthquake??!? That can happen in California - or in the movies - not in my hometown!!
But it did ... It's been all over the news today, it was a rather large one, that measured 4.7 on the Richter scale - it's the worst earthquake we've had in Sweden for over 100 years! *yikes* The centre of it wasn't that close to where I live, but not too far away either, about 70-80 kilometres ... Nothing seriously damanged, though the electricity disappeared for a lot of people ... Some wake-up call, huh?!

I went into town around 10 this morning, I had a few errands to run, but they didn't work out at all. I thought I'd be really nervous about meeting the professor, but for some reason I wasn't ... always happy when that happens. I arrived at the Department fairly early, but I did find Johanna, so we chatted for a little while.
I met the professor at 11.15, and we had a really good conversation! It totally worked out, and I'm very happy about that. He'll be guiding me on all my courses next semester (the essay now being postponed, two so-called "reading-courses" and one larger essay), so it felt really good to have this talk now. Pretty much everything worked out the way I hoped, I didn't feel 'inferior' at all and I felt that he totally understood where I was going! Wonderful!

Then I went to meet my friend and her little boy! I don't think I've seen them since late september, and wow, he'd grown a lot!! *lol* He'll be one years old soon, and he was such a big boy! :) I also enjoyed catching up with my friend since we hadn't talked for so long!
Took me a while to get home, crowded buses and trains that were late, and by the time I got home I was completely exhausted!!
I have a million things to do right now, and I don't seem to get the energy to do even one of them ... not good!! Since I'll be leaving at the end of the week, Friday or Saturday, I really need to start working everything out ... but I'm SOOOO tired ...

I haven't heard anything about the Greek lecture, so I guess tomorrow is on ... at least I hope so, because if I do another trip in vain tomorrow morning, I'll probably be ready to kill someone! After the lecture we have a mentor-meeting, but I hope I'm not too exhausted when I get home, because I need to start getting organized now!

Take care!

An Unnecessary Trip!

I haven't had a great day today unfortunately, even though some things have been pretty okay.

I woke up feeling like a zombie this morning, I was really tired, and I was actually considering skipping lectures ... but since I missed a few last week, and we're going in to the last three lectures before the holidays, I got my act together and went ... Only to find out, after having waited for nearly half an hour at Uni, that the lecture today was cancelled!! Apparently the teacher's son had fallen ill and he had to stay home with him!
I know these things can happen, and it's nobody's fault, but my mood dropped like a brick wall!! I was furious and this combined with a few other issues sent my mood below zero! There was nothing to do but take the next train home!
Our teacher is usually really good at communicating through emails, and when I got home I found out he had sent an email about the cancelled lecture this morning! At first I was a bit upset, partly due to the fact that I hadn't checked my emails before I left, but also because it doesn't seem like part of a normal morning routine to actually start up the computer and check for Uni-related emails! And then I found out that he had sent the email a good 25 minutes after I had already left, so no matter what, I would have had made that unnecessary trip ... *sigh*

Moving on to a bit more positive news though - which turned out to be today's mail! I usually only get bills and bills and more bills, but today I got some really FUN mail! *yay*
I had made scraps of my little sisters and Zorro and printed them onto T-shirts for them for Christmas (feels safe to write about it now, since my Dad and his family are in Florida and will not check out the internet *lol*). I got the T-shirts today and they turned out pretty nice! It's hard to know the sizes, I think these were a bit too big, but hopefully the girls can wear them this summer as well! :)
I have added the scraps, and a few more, to my Picasa Album (Cute Sisters!), so feel free to check them out! (And anyone I've forgotten to send the URL to, just let me know and you'll get it!). There are also some new scraps in the Jessica digi.scraps-album at Picasa, if you want to check them out.

The other thing in the mail was a book I had actually forgotten all about! :) My Dad's sister's husband (!) is a professor of History of Religion (though not at the University I'm attending), and when I spoke to my aunt a while back, she mentioned he'd been part of a project regarding Ararat and Armenia, and they had published a book as a result of this project. She said she'd send me a copy of the book, but it had completely slipped my mind ... until today when it arrived in the mail! :) I won't have time to start reading it right away, but I'm definitely hoping to read it during Christmas holidays. I have some other books (or is it just one?) written by someone I know, and that is actually kind of a weird and funny feeling!

Now I'm mostly worrying about tomorrow! We got another mail from the Greek teacher, and aparently another one of his children has fallen ill as well, so we won't have lectures tomorrow. I am, however, meeting with my essay professor, and I'm gonna have to tell him that I won't be able to complete the essay during this semester. I'm not looking forward to that one little bit, even though I know, on a logical level, that shouldn't be such a big deal! After all, it is my decision, my responsibility and I have made the choice to prioritize the Greek courses this semester- but I know I have a tendancy to feel "inferior" in these situations and I try to start defending myself - which I shouldn't! - and the whole thing turns into a great big mess. Guess I shouldn't think too much ahead really, but it's hard not to. Still, it's only a brief meeting, and I'll just have to cope!

After the meeting awaits the fun stuff! :) I'm going to visit a friend and her young boy, he turns one year old in a little while! *cute!* I have only seen them once during this semester (!) since things have been so chaotic, so I'm really looking forward to that, it was nice we managed to find a time to meet before the holidays.

And then all I have left is a MAJOR clean up of the apartment and all the packing and preparations for my trip north ... And probably a lecture on Wednesday ... *phew, I think I'll keep busy!*

A Difficult Decision!

I have had to make a difficult decision this weekend, and while I'm not happy with it, I think it's the only decision I could have made under the circumstances. That doesn't make it any easier though ...

I have decided to, for the time being, drop my essay! I really really wanted to finish it this semester, but now I've come to realize, that's just not possible. I know I have, ever since the start of the semester, given the Greek courses priority, for a number of reasons. Partly because it is required that you spend a number of hours on it every single day, you have to be prepared for every day, which means you have to study regularly and a lot. I have also felt, almost from the beginning, that Greek has come rather easy for me. Even though I want to continue with Old Testament and Hebrew, I find Greek a lot easier - and that means I have been able to perform very well ... which of course makes me want to prioritize Greek.
I have had a hard time figuring out this essay, and I think at least part of that comes from the fact that I have always had my Greek studies lying on top of me. Even when I have set aside time for work on the essay, I have been occupied with what I am supposed to prepare in Greek ... and that simply doesn't work!

I have made one last effort, to put all my energies into the essay ever since the last exam, but for a number of reasons, it won't work. I won't be able to finish it in time, there's just no way. I know there's nothing more to do, I know I can't pull it off, but I still feel bad about having to postpone it ... Still, I don't see myself having any other choice at the moment!

So now I'm gonna try to reset my brain to go back to Greek and studies of the Galatians! :)

Actually Relaxing!

While my life is a chaotic mess at the moment, I have actually had some time for relaxation as well these past few days!! And much needed so, that's for sure!




Friday night I was invited to dinner with Sara and Johanna! We haven't seen each other in ages, Sara and I hardly ever see each other since she's moved on from the Theology Department, and even though I see Johanna occasionally, we're often off to one thing or another and don't have time to talk properly! I really enjoyed myself, and could actually relax a lot! I was a bit worried beforehand, since I'm so stressed out and worried about everything right now, that I wouldn't be able to wind down, but I really could! We had a great time with yummy food and lots of laughter - just the way it's supposed to be! Helen dropped by as well, a little later, and I haven't seen her since we were at Sofiero in May (!) so that was really great too!!


Sara is preparing the desert ...

... while Johanna is laughing! :)


Sara and Johanna doing 'the African Dance'! *lol*



And yesterday I was invited to Lena, to see their new apartment! Since I haven't been feeling the best lately, and mostly complained about everything, it was great to be able to see her outside of Uni, in a more relaxed environment! I also got to meet the sweetest, cutest little cat ... and I guess Zorro will be jealous now, but she was such a little darling! :) When I was getting ready to leave, she turned on the charm full-stop and I could hardly make it out the door! *lol*
(Sadly I had forgotten the camera ...)

It feels really wonderful to have been able to relax like this in the middle of everything that is going on right now, but I have to admit I'm finding it difficult trying to get back into the harsh reality now ... I have some rough times ahead of me, and I'm hoping to be able to blog my way through them as well, so you'll know what's going on ... so keep an eye out for updates! :)

Good But Irratic?!

Another strange day!
I'm making this a short entry, because I really don't feel that great at the moment, but I wanted to at least check it.
The good news of today is that we finally got our Greek exam back - and I cannot complain about the results ... I had 71 out of a possible 72!! *Yay!* What did bug me is that the mistake was more or less a typing error, which feels so stupid! I had made an analysis of verb correctly when I did it, and when I typed in the text that I handed in, I wrote it differently! So, so stupid! I know it doesn't matter in the long run, and I'm still really happy, but it would have been totally cool to say that I had top score on both exams, especially when it was so close ...

Other than that, my life is currently a mess - which is why I don't feel good ... I don't want to get into specifics, especially not right now, but at least you'll know why I might not update here every day, or why I'm (for those of you who know me in person) not that pleasant to be around right now ...

Take care!