The First Batch Of PICTURES: Scenery of Tottori within Walking Distance

Finally! The pictures have arrived! I kept postponing this to “tomorrow”, and then decided that today is tomorrow. :P


So this post as well as the next few posts will focus on pictures. Today I'll show where I live! If you want to see specific pictures in a following blog post, just ask me!


Let's start with the most important picture:

A lot of people didn't believe this was really my university' mascot. I'm hoping this proves it.
In Belgium, all school/university logos are like this:

No wonder no one believed me.

Many were also curious why I chose Tottori University. It's a small university, not well known in Europe. There were two main reasons: 1. I could freely take on courses 2. The environment had beautiful, rich nature. The mascot might have also played a role in deciding, but let's go with these two.
Taking on courses: check. I enrolled in a few courses.The Japanese level is still too high for me. I think one of the lectures is about plants. Let's hope I figure out the rest too.
Rich nature: mountains! I love mountains! That's the first thing I noticed upon arrival - mountains everywhere! Covered in green, thick forest, seemingly floating above the clouds...

So let's show off some mountains! Click on a picture to enlarge it.

Pretty much mountains all around. Except for the beach part. The mountains slowly fade into hills, and then there's suddenly the Japanese sea!

 

 

Next, a few random trees and shrine scenery. I love nature. The first time visiting a shrine, I didn't bring my camera. However, yesterday I went to the forest! With my camera! That's material for a different post.

Took this one whilst riding my bike. :P

 

To end with, here I am with my classmates ^_^

 
So in today's post I only covered scenery within walking distance from my house. A few were shot by Marcos (link leads his Portugese blog).
Note: all pictures are unedited.

Reasons Why I Shouldn't Travel By Plane

Tomorrow I finally leave for Japan... 

1. I try to board the wrong plane

"Look, a plane!"
"I have to be on a plane..."
"Must. Get. On. Plane."

Luckily, there's always a lady at the gate to stop me.

2. I lose my stuff

Credit to hotblack, MorgueFile license

3. I forget about boarding rules

4. I like airplane food

...and that just can't be a good thing!

23kg, that's 288 pairs of socks, or 1/32 of a cow

You know the weight limit checked luggage has? 23kg per piece. 23 kilograms. How much of my life would fit in a 23kg piece of luggage?

I bought a big ass bag.

Seriously. I fit in it.

I tried sleeping in it, but it isn't as comfortable as it is big.

If I with my 65 kilos fit in my bag, then how much will it weigh once I've filled it to the brim? Will it weigh 65kg? That's quite a pricy overweight luggage fine. I should only fill it with lightweight stuff, like socks. Let's keep the shampoo and rock collection aside for now.
So I started packing.

Shoes! Socks! Tops!

After I had filled my case with socks (and a few towels), I tried to lift it.
OH DEAR SO HEAVY
This was 80 kilos at least!

So I acquired a scale to check its weight.

10,1 KG

Oh, okay. It were just my arms being weak. Quite a surprise, as I'm able to do as much as six push-ups! For real, check it out:

So... This bag bursting out of its zippers...
Wait, 10,1 KG? Not even half of the limit? This thing was filled to the brim! Or to the zipper, if that's the expressions for luggage.

I was flabbergasted. People, what's this fuss about weight limit panic? It's not like I am taking too little with me – I got four pairs of shoes, and five pants!

I looked for more possessions to stuff in my bag. The unnecessary but not completely useless kind of things, you know. And the heavier the better.

"This rock would make a great paperweight."

 
 I ended up packing stacks of printing paper, to not let the unused kilos go to waste.

CHILDHOOD STORIES: Why I Ate My Boogers

As I child, I ate my boogers. Openly. Incessantly. Proudly.
My parents must have been desperate. They couldn't make me stop in any way. My parents failed to figure out why I did this. Or why I even encouraged other children to do it. 

If they had known why, maybe they could have stopped me. It all started with a penguin.

On a family trip to the zoo, we met this guy:

I asked why this new penguin had yellow thingies on his head.

"That's spaghetti," my father said.
"Yes," added my mother. "When he's starving, he can eat it."


Woa. How mesmerizing, the wonders of nature! A built-in food factory? Amazing!
It didn't take me long to realize that we, humans, also had such a food factory.

Finally I understood why my nose made icky boogers all the time! I was lacking food!
So I started eating my boogers. As nature had intended.

Day in, day out, my nose continued to provide boogers, signaling my lack of sufficient nutrition. I noticed boogers in other children's noses. Eager to save them from starvation, I convinced many, many fellow toddlers to join me eating the fruits of my immune system.


Too bad they didn't taste like spaghetti.

~Closing Note~
Yes, I did eventually realize that the penguin didn't carry spaghetti around. Moral of the story: don't listen to your parents.

The Internet Is For Awesome

The internet isn't awesome. You are making it awesome.

Why? Because you gather up all the nice and cool and fascinating stuff, and then you put it in your basket. You got a basket of internet awesome.

Look, here's something from my basket of awesome. It's okay, take it as a gift from me to you. 

Hyperbole and a Half

Allie from Hyperbole and a Half made the awesome and we share the awesome. We share it through the internet.
That makes the internet just as awesome as a telephone line. It just depends on whether you're sharing a mighty funny joke or the latest news on your grandmother's sister's kidney stone development. You shouldn't do the latter, just like I shouldn't summarize my complete post in the introduction.

I used to be a social media paria. I did have a Facebook and Twitter, but never used it. What was it for? Keeping in touch with people? Hell, I had plenty of options to contact my friends. I didn't see why we needed this.
Only this summer I figured out that social media aren't about friends. It's about finding the awesome.

Imagine being on the lookout for new music. You've gone through your playlists all to many times, you've gone to concerts of your big idols. How are you going to find something new?
You can google "cool music". You can look up the genre on Wikipedia and check what other bands match.
Or you can post on Facebook and have twenty not-really-friends-but-fun-people say "Hey, you like that band, aye? So try this!". 

I forgive you for rolling your eyes and saying "duh!". Hey, this was new to me. 

I discovered my hobby - digital painting - thanks to the internet. For twenty years, I had no idea digital painting existed. Until someone said "Check out this cool art!".
Same for webcomics. You like one webcomic, but finished reading it. Are you finding your new favourite through scanning a list of webcomics to date? More likely, you find the pot of gold through a recommendation, either directly, or through someone featuring it.

In short, I completely overturned how I used the internet. From making every trip to surfing the web a lonely quest, I first checked in the inn and asked what new thingies and stuffs people had discovered. In turn, I share what's worth sharing. Like this video:

NEWS FLASH: University Accepted Me

I got enrolled in a university with this mascot:

Tottori University

My life is now 18% cooler than yours.