Monday Memories

Hiking in the Rainforest in Costa Rica with my fabulous sister, Zelda (left, in shorts)

I love traveling the world (and sometimes staying at my comfy, cozy home) with family and friends. On Mondays I'm going to try to take a look back at some happy memories, and remember to be grateful for all the wonderful opportunities life has provided!

This one is from trip to Costa Rica we took as family the summer after my first year of medical school. My parents, Zelda, and my grandparents all flew over and met in San Jose. We spent many happy hours trekking different trails and enjoying the amazing nature of the tropics. We were able to visit both coasts and spent a week in the middle of the Rainforest at a research station studying the habits of fruit bats! We had to wake up at four in the morning because bats are most active at dawn and dusk, but it was such a unique experience even this epic sleep-inner loved every minute! 

I also love this photo because I vividly remember bickering with Zelda about whose turn it was to carry the backpack with our picnic lunch the whole way up that mountain. Now she lives in Rotterdam and is so far away, I would carry her backpack for her every day if I could! Funny what growing up does to you.

Look up at the Sky!

-Zanna

An Advent Potluck

Finn takes a catnap on our couch after dinner

Last weekend Karl and I hopped over to Berlin to visit my parents and partake in a big ol' Advent Potluck. It was wonderful to see all my parents' friends again, they have a very cool, very tight-knit group whom I've known all my life. They're all like uncles and aunts to me and their kids are the cutest pseudo-cousins ever! I cooked a chicken with lemon and thyme and my Mom made an awesome Mung Bean Soup. Everyone brought something; quinoa salad, roasted zucchini, plain pasta for the kiddies...we ended up with a eclectic mix and a marvelous meal!

Afterwards, Mama hauled mine and Zelda's old Barbies from some forgotten corner and we played wedding, road trip and high-fashion runway until dessert was served. I had forgot how many outfits and accessories we had, but I must say Barbie play is somewhat boring now I'm grown up.  Pretty much limited to dressing and undressing them. Dialogue was minimal due to the two-year-old's lack of interest in my plot ideas.

Also on the weekend, we went to Yoga as a family (Papa and Karl are utterly inflexible but endearingly dedicated), watched a documentary at Hackischer Höfe Kino, in my opinion one of the world's coolest movie theaters. We also went to see an exhibition at C/O Berlin at their new location in the Amerika Haus right by Zoo Station. The show is called "Magnum. Contact Sheets" and looks at the perspective and the context in which famous photographs were shot. D-Day by Robert Capa, the Tank Man at Tiananmen Square and the iconic Che Guevara portrait are on display and it's absolutely fascinating to see the contact sheets those images came from and learn about the way they were captured. If you're in Berlin, check it out!

Wonderful weekend. Thank you, Karl and Parents!

Look up at the Sky,

-Zanna

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome...

Our Family Reunion in Sicily--Staring meditatively at the ocean and the sky

Welcome to my new years resolution, begun prematurely and with the very best of intentions. I want to be a journal-er more than a blogger, to be honest, but year after year and in many attempts I have failed miserably at this task. I used to write a diary when I was a teenager, and continue to get my act together and document trips (2014: Skiing in the Alps, Paris, Prague, Rotterdam, Sicily, South Africa and Edinburgh! More on those adventures later...) but the act of putting pen to paper to capture every day life somehow eludes me. And frustrates me. Immensely. I love looking back, paging through old journals from a time I still consistently wrote in them. A different and yet deeply familiar voice sings back, of fights with parents and little sister, childhood dramas and adolescent dreams, what we had for dinner and where we went sledding, shopping, gallery-hopping on any particular day. I want my old self to look back on this youth, these precious student-y, med-school-cramming days and to know which tests I hated, which recipes I loved. Can't rely on this dusty camera in my head!

So, this is my attempt to be accountable. You are my workout buddy and my AA sponsor. I will be true, will write to you, when I'm bouncy, when I'm blue. No, no more Dr. Seuss rhymes.  Promise.

Apart from my last ditch effort to keep some words nailed down from windy time, I'm also just plain curious about blogging. Whats up with blogs, anyway? Are they just the narcissistic monuments of the selfie generation? Do we need the positive reinforcement that we're living life correctly? Or is there something really to it? Before starting this, my first blog, I looked around the blogosphere (word usuage?) and everyone who shared a  "why i blog" post seems totally enraptured by both the experience itself and the sense of community provided by this new literary art form. I was particularly intrigued--and pushed over the edge, thus my early start-- by this little list I stumbled across. Number 3 and number 12, here I come!

 So, again: I'm curious. Lets see...