Hello! Today I am currently touring Italy!! We are going from Venice to Verona to Florence to Pisa to Rome. I’ll post all about it soon! Hope you are having a great day!
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Tag: learning
European Cruise: Day 2
Wow does it take a long time to get from Portland, Oregon to Venice, Italy! After more than 24 hours of traveling, we have arrived!!! We landed around 4:30pm Venice time.
1st order of business: find everyone and find our AirBnB rental.
It’s a cute little place with 2 bathrooms 3 bedrooms a little loft and a couch and just feet from the Vapparettos and so much more!
Then it was exploring time!
everywhere you look is beautiful
Saw all this in about 30 min hahahaha!!!!
But man when the tide comes in you can definitely tell that this place is sinking. Walking around after dark gave us wet socks and shoes.
And oh man the humidity!!!! I never thought of Venice being humid but it is!!!!
Now we are dead tired. Gonna get some food and crash for the night.
European Cruise: day 1
Traveling from PDX to LAX and LAX to Venice!
I can’t believe this day is here!!! It came soooo fast! That is how i know i’m an adult, things come quicker than i could have imagined instead of dragging out hahaha.
Wonderful Bf drove me to the airport this morning.
Starbucks needed before boarding our first flight to LAX
Double decker planes, who knew
Many hours to kill in between flights.
Now we are waiting for more in our party to join us then its on to Amsterdam with a slightly tight plane change then on to Venice! Talk to you soon!
Woo on the plan to Amsterdam!! We got the ‘extra room’ seats.
Business class has suites! What does 1st class look like lol. It’s upstairs! Fancy plane lol
Ahhhh we leave for Europe tomorrow!!!!
I am definitely going to have to take a sleep-aid to be able to get any sleep tonight.
With that statement lets talk about what to do the night before you travel:
Do not take a sleep aid an less than 9 hours before you need to get up. Better safe than sorry.
Double check your list and make sure you have everything. You don’t want to travel to Siberia and realize you forgot your mittens.
Set out what you are going to wear on your journey tomorrow. Check in for your travel arrangements if you can, that is one less thing you have to worry about tomorrow especially if you are running late.
Have snacks ready to take with you so you are not tempted by overpriced junk at the airport.
Double check your suitcase and any carry-ons to make sure everything is where it needs to be.
See you tomorrow for the beginning of another adventure of a lifetime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Monday Motivation**September 11, 2017
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Working out last week was a total bust since basically the entire state of Oregon was (and still mostly is) on fire. It was literally raining ash and I was not going to work out in that. I haven’t had a gym membership for a few months so I could save money so I couldn’t go inside on a treadmill. Hopefully this week is going to be better and I can find my motivation again because it has been about 2.5 weeks since I got out there and ran.
How are your workouts going?
Grandparent’s day!!!
Shout out to my amazing grandmother!!!! Just like my amazing mom that I talked about on mother’s day my grandma is one for the books. She is the matriarch of our family in the true sense of the word, we all visit and gather around her. For someone who has been alive for 90 years she is surprisingly forward thinking, like my mother she does not judge people she only supports. It is no wonder that I have such an amazing mother when she was raised by such an amazing person.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a very warm, loving family and I think it is in most part to this wonderful woman who had a hand in raising us all, either directly or indirectly.
Remember that life is fleeting and you never know what tomorrow holds, tell the people you love how you feel, reach out to someone today and tell them that you love them.
1 week to Europe!!!
Holy Hanna I fly to Europe in a week!!! I don’t know how I am going to sleep this week!
Things you should be doing the week before you travel:
print out all confirmations; flights, trains, boats, activities, everything. Print a copy of your itinerary.
Start the basics of your packing (if you are going on a long trip and don’t want a million suit cases you will pack and repack to find the best way to fit everything in.
How are you getting to the airport, train station, bus station, boat etc? Are you taking a cab or Uber, or do you need to make arrangements with someone to take you AND pick you up? Nail down that information now.
Also make copies of all important documents, passport, ID, insurance cards etc. Also leave a copy of each of these with someone who is not traveling with you, generally your emergency contact.
Take a deep breath and enjoy this exciting anticipation!
Monday Motivation**September 4, 2017
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Goodbye August and Hello September!!
Wow August flew by.
School: My final ‘opens’ online today and closes on the 6th so lots of studying going on over here. This basically means I can take my final anytime in the next 2 days. It is online, 100 cumulative questions and I have 82 minutes to complete it. Whatever I have done will submit after 82 minutes. After that I am done for a few months! I will think of it as winter vacation hahahahaha.
Food and Fitness: In the next 2 weeks I am trying to get as much food bought, made, frozen and prepped as possible. When I get back from the cruise my budget will be even more restricted. I will by trying to save a bit to go toward my expensive CNA class come January, my BF and I are trying to find a place to move into together which will also cost money and of course I need to continue to work on paying my roommate back as she paid upfront for 95% of my Europe costs so I owe her about 2 grand still. Oh the joys of being poor. But overall in my life I can’t complain too much, my life could be so much worse, so I choose to not stress about my debt and instead slowly chip away at it.
As far as workouts go, if I get a workout in before I finish my final, great, but I am not banking on it so my goal this week is 3-4 workouts.
10 days and counting to europe!!!!!
Let’s see where I can pinch some pennies
I have on many occasions talked about being broke and my debt, and I fully acknowledge that I need to save money yet somehow in the moment it feels ok to drive through somewhere or buy things to make a meal because it sounds good or I am craving it or I really want to watch the next episode of a TV show so I purchase it for $2 on amazon…what is $2 right? The problem is that $2 turns into $6 without me even really thinking about it or truly comprehending in the moment that I just basically bought a Frappuccino from Starbucks.
A few months ago I added up all the misc food spending I did and since then I have been doing a lot better about impromptu grocery runs and fast food runs which has totally helped my budget and my waistline hahaha.
I think it is time to take it a step further and break down everything I spend so I really get a feel for my spending. I think I have said that I grew up in a pretty instant gratification household with a dad (who I love and miss everyday and was an amazing dad but like all humans had his flaws) taught his kids through example that if you want something, throw down some plastic and get it. We all have champagne tastes on a beer budget. Even when we make more money we somehow manage to spend more money.
Anyways:
I am going to use this blog to keep me honest as in I am going to be brutally honest about my finances. From Saturday to Saturday I am going to break down every time any money leaves my pocket/checking account/credit card/etc. And see if it is something I really need or an impulse buy or what. Ready?
Saturday:
Starting checking balance: $500.68
Balance on credit cards
1: so close to paying it off!!! 3 more months!
2: $200 over limit (thankfully they don’t charge a fee)
3: (at limit)
-230.00 from checking account for car payment (yay paying a bill!!! and paying $2 more than is actually owed per month to knock 1 entire month’s payment off at the end)
-4.50 from checking for pajamas from Amazon (not needed, pleasure buy)
-6.19 from checking account for lunch from Subway (not needed, I didn’t make extra biscuits yesterday for my lunch today because I was lazy, so money expended because I didn’t prep fully)
-7.99 from checking for Netflix.com (in theory this should be good because I did it so that when my bf and I get an apt we wont be tempted to pay for cable, and we will go out to the movies less, but it is not a necessity and we haven’t moved yet)
-21.53 from checking for groceries from Grocery Outlet (yay for getting everything I can at the cheap place first)
-10.30 from checking for groceries from Wal-Mart (2 impulse buys here, 4 corn for $1 and Carmel M&Ms, I am not ashamed of the corn buy lol)
My 2 grocery shopping trips went well, for about $30 I made 10 meals last night and have 2 ears of corn left to snack on as well as 2/3 of a rotisserie chicken to put in salads this week and much on. I also have 12 top ramen hahahahahaha. So all in all I can probably weasel about 25 meals out of that $30. Not too shabby.
Ending checking balance: $220.17
Balance on credit card
1: Same as starting
2: same as starting
3: same as starting
Unnecessary money spent $20.02!!!!!!!!!!! A few small things I didn’t think mattered in the moment turned into me basically throwing away a $20 bill.
I will check back in on Tuesday to see how Sunday and Monday went.
School Catch-up
How is school going this quarter…..ehh. My class ends in 4 days, I currently have an A so I am doing something right but by no means did I perform to the best of my ability. I did great at the beginning of the quarter, I set time aside to study and did my vocab, read the book chapters and worked through the workbook and looked at the online lessons. As the quarter progressed I started just doing the vocab, which did enough that I have an A in the class but currently there is a significant chance it will drop to a B after the final which is 40% of my grade.
Monday evening and all of Tuesday will be reviewing and cramming so I don’t bomb the final which is comprehensive.
I think several things contributed to me slacking off at the end here:
- Taking the class online makes it easy to slack, I don’t need to answer a teachers questions or contribute to any in class discussions.
- At work I was either studying or had it up in the background while I was taking a break from the vocab and reading a book online, which meant that for almost 40 hours a week I was doing superficial easy studying of medical terminology (which seems like it would be great but I am at work so I can’t really focus which means this wasn’t very deep studying) and because I was ‘studying’ it so much I had no desire to even look at or think about medical terminology outside of work. I did a little studying on my phone here and there but that quickly ceased.
- I watch WAY too much TV outside of work, this has always been a problem for me, I become so unproductive when I turn the TV on, and once I turn it on, it tends to stay turned on. As my work load becomes more intense this will HAVE to change.
- All lumped into one: time management, space, organization
- I need to create a study space, someplace I go or set up that says it’s study time. I used to have a whole setup when I first went to school. I still have everything I need but haven’t created the space. Or of course I would camp out on campus in the library between classes or between class and work and I haven’t gotten back to giving myself that option yet.
- Headspace-I don’t think I have completely readjusted to being a student, I am still seeing work as the largest commitment in my life and I need to shift that thinking and focus to school.
I will not be taking any classes during the fall semester/quarter due to the cruise. I am going to go enjoy the cruise and enjoy this as my last big adventure for a little while because live is going to severely change. When I get back I need to get all my vaccines up to date, and take the American Red Cross’ Basic live saving CPR class then apply for a CNA class. My boyfriend and I are also working on moving in together. I will start the CNA class in January (baring any problems) which is a 7 credit class and will take a lot of time. After that it is the nursing program which will take more time. So I have 4.5 miles to get my sh*t completely together. I will keep you posted!
Trailing the blonde 