RealTalk: Don't assume you know anything about a stranger

Some people might think that my happiness comes from ignorance or naivety, but they are wrong.

This happiness blossomed out of true pain and suffering. It's appreciation for knowing and having experienced, how bad things can get.

This happiness is real!
If you are willing to learn and accept, you don't have to fake anything.

And questioning somebody else's happiness, just makes your own questionable. 

Sea Life Aquarium - Königswinter

I recently visited Germany again.
On my first weekend I went to the Sea Life Aquarium in Königswinter. It's been a long time since my last visit considering I went there for the grand opening about 8 years ago.
Since I hadn't used my DSLR in a while, I decided to do some underwater photography.

#sealife #königswinter #clownfish #shark #turtle #stingray 

#jellyfish #axolotl #lionfish #seahorse

RealTalk: Opening up to people always leaves room for the possibility of them hurting you.

I've been trying very hard to let my walls down and let people in but I feel that out of five tries I'm always getting hurt four times.
It really makes me wonder why I shouldn't build even higher and thicker walls.
If you've been through a lot, letting your guard down takes some serious effort. And if the few people hurt you, after you trusted them and let them in, you start losing faith in the process.
So even if a crowd stands outside and you are almost all alone on the other side of the wall - it does feel safer there... 

So sorry for keeping almost everyone at a safe distance. I'm not trying to be mysterious - I'm just sick of getting hurt.

Introducing Noonday Collection - Just in time for Valentine's Day

With the day of public display of love, aka Valentine’s Day, approaching many people are looking for present ideas and different ways to show some love.

And what better way is there than gifting your loved ones, including yourself, with something beautiful and supporting something good at the same time.

We are always searching for ways to broaden our horizons or looking for things that bring us happiness. And recently I found something that gets me excited and makes me very happy.
A few months ago I started working as a jewelry ambassador for Noonday Collection. 

The company creates a fair trade marketplace for Artisans across the globe to sell their jewelry and accessories, focusing on some of the most vulnerable communities in the world.
What started out as a fundraiser to help out an adoption, blossomed into an incredible business that changes lives for many people all around the world.

The Noonday Collection supports child adoptions, women in communities without gender equality, remote areas and even fights against trafficking and sexual exploitation.
Every piece in the collection is created by Artisans with incredible and moving life stories and with the country's own resources. Additionally, no animal gets killed for the purpose of the jewelry. Any animal products are byproducts of the community or only harvest after the animal dies of a natural causes.

I will share another blog entry with more details on the amazing things Noonday Collection does and supports. This was just suppose to be a little introductory.
Since “A picture is worth a thousand words” feel free to check out my website and see. Stay tuned for more infos!

#Noondaycollection #Valentinesday #artisans #giftideas

Hmm look at that... 2017 didn't suck that much!

I found this post I started to write in the beginning of the year... Seeing that this year is about to end, I finished my draft and post it before I forget it again....


I was checking through my drafts and realized I only posted one thing in 2017 - an upset rant about the injustice towards singles. Great...
That made me rethink the last year. And I gotta say, it didn't even suck that much.
I won't get into certain changes, people have been complaining about, because I can't hear it anymore!
I was looking at my personal year. Apart from some things that were super inconvenient and terrifying, but turned out to be the kick in the butt I needed (and was long overdue), it was an "okay" year. I don't want to say it was great, because I definitely had better years, but it was still okay. In some cases even awesome.
Since I was not in the mood of posting last year (not even on facebook), I neglected some experiences that I think are worth mentioning.

The following is a super personal view, so if you don't know me aka you're not a friend or family member, this is going to be flat out weird. You might want to consider stop reading right now!
Honestly, I think this post is more just a recap for myself than for ANYONE else... 😅

So without any logical order, here it goes:

Snow in Tahoe - Tobi's first snow

In the beginning of every year my sister and her family like to go to the snow. Sometimes I come along, other times I stay behind with the dog. Either way I always get some quality Tobi-time!
In early 2017 we went all together and I've never experienced that much snow before. It was just awesome! And watching Tobi run through the snow like a happy bunny was just the cherry on top.

Then a few of weeks later my amazing friend Mattea got married.

That wedding was special to me because for the first time I was the Maid of Honor and the photographer for the day.
The wedding was at the city hall in San Francisco.
The night before we were going to stay in the city to get drinks but last minute the guys decided not to come with us.
Prepared as I am, I already ordered all kinds of bachelorette party items weeks before and we spontaneously turned our classy drink night into a super fun and slightly stereotypical bachelorette party.











The next morning we had to do the bouquet and the bride's flower crown with quite bad hangovers. 😁
However both turn out so much better than we had thought.
After a pretty rough morning, the rest of the wedding day was just incredibly beautiful.








Music-wise I experienced a little out of both my worlds that year. I like to refer to that time as "The return of k-pop into my life".
I hadn't really listened to any k-pop in years but I was getting a little tired of my regular playlists that's why I randomly started to listen to Big Bang again.
YouTube introduced the show Running Man to me. And through that I found new awesome bands like 2PM, GOT7 and BTS.
To round it up, I got to see the king himself, GD, live!
It was the most expensive concert ticket I've ever bought but it was so worth it. 🤩

Speaking of music, I also finally got to see Simple Plan live for the first time.

That was a super spontaneous idea because the concert was in Sacramento in the middle of the week. And we almost ended up in the middle of a big highway accident. Luckily we made it to Sacrament and the concert was great. It was the 10 year anniversary of their first album which was cool. But I like "Still Not Getting Any" and "Get Your Heart On!" more.



New Years resolution

Like every year my New Year's resolution was to work out more. To actually make it happen I set a goal to work towards - a Mud Race in October.
I also got a fitbit which changed a lot of my daily routine.
We have (what I call) a Fitbit family - meaning: We all have Fitbits and are in constant competition with each other. I can't help but brag... Since I walk everywhere, I'm always on top of the list.
I started working out every other day and went to yoga and a hike every Sunday. I got fit really fast, proving to myself that it's really up to me how in shape I am. My new found love for exercise made me experience some awesome trips. First up:

Mission Peak

In May, Mattea and I decided to change up our yoga-hike-brunch routine by hiking Mission Peak. We didn't have any idea what we were in for. It was a spontaneous decision that was rough and great at the same time.
Since we didn't do any research (we thought 'it's just another hike') we didn't bring energy snacks, sun block or hats but instead I carried my leather backpack with a bunch of my gadgets in it.
Luckily enough we brought a bottle of water each.
We started the hike early in the day while it was still foggy.
The hike is just about 2 miles per direction which is not a lot for me since I used to walk 5 miles every day to work and back. Well that's what I thought... I did not account for the incline which is basically like climbing stairs.
We took a couple of breaks to catch our breaths but in the end we climbed up so fast that I got altitude sickness and started to get nauseous.
When the path ends you have to climb up the rest to get to the top and the totem pole.

And even though I got nauseous, exhausted and had a pretty bad headache, the view was worth the trip. 

We managed to have the perfect timing because the fog sheltered us from the sun on our way up. Once we arrived we were higher than the fog so it looked like we were above the clouds and by the time we went back down the sun had evaporated the fog and we had a clear sky. 

The way down was super fast but it's pretty hard on the knees!

In the beginning we thought the hike would take up maybe 2h of our time and we could still make it to yoga afterwards. In the end it took us over 4h and by the time we arrived back at the car I was so exhausted that I passed out on the way to the lunch place.

After our little energy boost I took care of some more errands and in the end my fitbit results for the day set a couple of new records for me.

The other cool trip we did was MuckFest. 
Doing a mud race had been on my to do list and we got ourselves fit enough that we had no trouble with any of the obstacles.
I even had to face one of my fears and jumped off a ledge into a big pillow 10m below.

Getting dirty while crawling through the mud is just too much fun. I can't wait to do it again!

One of my highlights of 2017 was ComicCon! 
I covered the event for Eventseeker (see full coverage here) I took some great photos that day. But seeing certain guests was the best thing!

Being a huge Flash and Harry Potter fan, seeing Gustin Grant and Tom Felton close up was awesome.
The two of them have funny chemistry.
Easy one of the best panels I've seen so far.

Another huge highlight was to see Buzz Aldrin. 

His panel was funny and incredibly inspirational!
Despite his age he still pushes for more achievements and manages to find new adventures.

Since a few people have acted strange after I mentioned him, here a little explanation:

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were the first two humans who landed on the Moon.

Since I had a press pass for the event, I even got invited to a special Techshow the day before the convention. And there I 'met' the co-founder of Silicon Valley ComicCon and Apple, Steve Wozniak. 

Apart from ComicCon I also visited the Heroes and Villains FanFest again. I liked the first one a lot more than a bunch of other conventions I covered so I was pretty disappointed in that year's edition. The panels were no longer in the same room as the sale exhibition and artists and once they closed the doors there was no way of checking out the panels not even through screens on the outside.

Aladdin Musical

I haven't seen a lot of musicals but that year we went to see Aladdin. We got the tickets super early and heard so many good things about it that our expectation and our excitement were pretty high.
And we did not get disappointed! The musical was incredible. I think I liked it even better than Lion King.

 In the fall I did a couple of weekend trips.
First I went to Malibu with a couple of friends.

We hiked Point Dume Trail which is pretty cool and I would recommend it to anyone asking for a beautiful trail around Malibu.

Afterwards we went to walk around at Venice Beach.

And even though all of us had been in L.A. quite a few times we even found something none of us had visited before - Venice Canals. All in all, a great trip

Universal Studios in Los Angeles

 A couple of weekends later I went to L.A. again. This time with my family.
Instead of having a party my niece asked for a trip to Universal Studios; Potterland to be precise.

Since everyone else wasn't in the mood for roller coasters and I just happened to start liking them the year before, I went on all the rides my niece wanted to try.
She was super brave and she said some of the most adorable things while on the ride.

The light show at Hogwarts is definitely worth watching!

 Random stuff from the year 2017

I figured out how to do origami.
Little side note, it's not as relaxing as you might think!

In fact it can be straight up irritating...

Well, at least I managed to fold our dog.

I colored my hair burgundy for the first time. And even though I wasn't sure if I liked it. Everyone else seemed to love it and I got used to it.
Even I liked it after a couple of days and I did it a few times afterwards again.





I always got annoyed when I wanted to see, try or go somewhere and nobody was interested in the same thing or too busy to do it. To not miss out because of others I started doing the most random things by myself. It's an empowering experience and I even prefer doing certain things on my own now.
That year I crossed another thing off my list:
I finally went to the movie theater all by myself.
I watched Thor Ragnarok with only two other people in the movie theater. I felt a little bit awkward cracking up by myself but after 5min I didn't even think about it anymore. I had a great time! 😁


My best friend Sarah and my brother also gave me something for Christmas I've been meaning to buy for the last 12 years - a blender. And instead of just getting me any of them - they gave me the one I've been wanting to buy since the first time I used it - a Nutribullet! YAY!! (I'm actually not getting paid to mention certain things! These emotions are real)

I'm pretty sure there was more random stuff that happened that year but 2019 is around the corner and tooooo much happened this year (2018) to make me forget the small stuff from the year before.


However in the spirit of keeping it real, the year hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows. Here are some personal negative things that also happened to be in the end of the year, making the ending slightly grim.

I spend a night in the worst hotel I've ever been in. It was in downtown San Francisco and it was ridiculously expensive. As an example: I had to stand on a chair to reach the 'light switch' hanging from the ceiling. 

I had passport trouble which kept me from visiting my family and best friend in Europe.

The wild fires in Sonoma were just terrible....

And on a more personal side:

I had to find a new place to live. My former house mates were going to sell the house we were living in and I had to move yet again.
I was super nervous about the move but in the end everything turned out perfect. I found a new place within one week, I loved the new place and I'm was now super close to my family and my office.
So even though it seemed bad, this actually turned out for the best. Even though I did have a couple of crazy house mates. But luckily they only stayed for a couple of months.

Towards the end of that year I also thought I might lose my job. It was super scary and I can't describe how worried I was. But again, it was for the best.
Even though I was able to stay on, I now had my resume online and I had recruiters contacting me. I absolutely loved my job but I couldn't reject the final offer that came in. It was a work fairytale. 

I guess the constant complaining and whining from everyone around me made me think that it was a completely terrible year. But looking back on all the great things and experiences, it really wasn't that bad. Not at all! 

Overall it was actually a pretty good year. 

#tahoe #weddingbouquet #GD #simpleplan #missionpeak #fitbit #muckfest #SVcomiccon #GustinGrant #TomFelton #BuzzAldrin #SteveWozniak #heroesandvillains #Aladdin #Malibu #Universalstudios #potterland #origami