Archive for August 2014

Travelling is my happiness.

I have just boarded the plane Fort Lauderdale-Frankfurt and I am feeling super excited! I am flying to Germany to visit my sister and to have a road trip to France. Did I mention this would be my first time in Europe? Oh yeah! I am already anticipating all the adventures of the road, the charm of Paris and Strasbourg and the character of Frankfurt.

This post is going to be rather sentimental. I simply can’t help it – the emotions are bubbling inside and must get out! Now, let me go back in time to describe the particular moment when I realized that travelling is what makes me happy.

How about watching sunrise?

I spent the past week or so planning, scheduling and mapping out my upcoming trip to Germany, including a 4-days road trip to France. I've never done this before, being blessed with a boyfriend who is always in charge of our travel plans, and let me tell you – it is no easy task! Of course, I could easily choose one of the hundreds of tours offered by travel agencies, but I've never been a fan of bus tours. They lack the spirit of adventure and freedom, which road trips are all about.

Anyways, with the time pressure, I've ended up feeling pretty stressful and this is not the feeling I hoped for before my long awaited Europe journey. So, to shake the stress off and to boost my positive energy, I decided to begin the day by going to the ocean and watching the sunrise. Best decision ever! Even though it was a bit cloudy and the sun did not make its full appearance, nothing compares to the beauty of sunrise! Well, maybe only the beauty of sunset.

Snorkel, snorkel and again snorkel. Then? Then snorkel some more!

Did I mention that this post is about snorkeling? Duh!

Last weekend we went to Key Largo for our friend’s birthday (you can read about Full Moon Party in Islamorada Here) and decided to kill two birds with one stone – fish and my friend Natalie… Just kidding, of course, the birds would be snorkeling and birthday celebration. It was my second time snorkeling (ever) and I must confess – I loooved it! On our way back to the shore I spent some time thinking why do I enjoy it so much? I came up with 3 major reasons why I love snorkeling:

Islamorada Full Moon Party at Florida Keys - an absolute gem!

Last Friday there was our friend’s birthday and we decided to experiment and do something different than a usual home party or a restaurant/lounge routine. Getting away for one day to Key Largo (an hour and a half drive from Miami) sounded awesome. We anticipated we would have a great time, but little did we know how much fun our mini trip was going to be!

The preparation was very simple – booking hotel rooms for the whole group and choosing a place for a birthday celebration. The hotel we chose, Creekside Inn, was nice and cozy, but probably a bit overpriced for that kind of accommodations. Hotels in Key Largo and Islamorada are generally very pricey, so booking in advance is a wise thing to do. Anyways, as everybody arrived at the hotel and started getting ready for the celebration, the mood was already adventurous and fun. I loved the atmosphere before the party of everybody being together, girls sharing makeup and feeling excited, while guys (who generally get ready in less than 5 minutes) drinking beer on the deck and joking around.

Having awesome time, while spending almost no money! (or two great evenings for $40)

Life is beautiful, when you live in Miami and the weather is gorgeous all year round. Life is especially beautiful, when the summer semester is over and you have the whole month just for yourself (work doesn’t count if you are a freelancer and work from home at your own convenience, as I do). So, once I stopped being ecstatic and got over the happy thought that there will be no more classes for a WHOLE month – naturally followed the question “What do I do with my free time?”

So that you better understand what kind of person I am, I probably should mention, that I love saving money and experimenting with living on tiny budgets. Not because we are struggling with money, but because there is always something useful you can do with it, instead of carelessly throwing it away. Anyways, here’s how we spent two awesome evenings for a total of $40.

Hello!

My name is Ekaterina (which is Russian, long and impossible to pronounce), but the short version of it is not so bad – Katya. I reside in Miami for 10 years now and I am completely in love with this bold, colorful, international paradise, even though I had hard times getting along with it, being originally from Tomsk - a tiny and modest, but no less wonderful city in Russia. I speak with an accent and my grammar by all means is not without a flaw – for which I am sorry and will appreciate any critique or advice!

I live with my boyfriend whom I love dearly (except for occasional urges to kill him slowly…) and I have awesome friends who I consider to be my second family. My parents live in Russia and younger best ever sister is studying in Germany. We meet once a year, if we are lucky. It is tough, but thanks to Skype and things alike we manage to stay close despite of living on different continents. I am getting 32 this year (brrr, this deserves a separate post) and until recently I wasn’t ready to settle down, have babies, a family of my own and all the following responsibilities. Until recently. Today I know that I really want all the things I was afraid of not so long ago. A cozy house, a loving husband, a kid or two, a dog and a cat and all the noise, craziness, but also all the happiness that comes with it.

Anyways, the idea of starting a lifestyle blog has been haunting me for the past year or so. Every time I was feeling particularly happy and fascinated by life and its wonders, or overwhelmed with joy for no particular reason, or caused by little and so insignificant things – I felt this urge to share my journey and newly adopted positive take on living with all its simple pleasures. I am not a cock-eyed optimist. By nature, I am rather cynical and surely had my share of ups and downs. But ever since my discovery that a positive attitude turns things upside down and makes you a genuinely happy person – I’ve started watching my cynical, easily depressed nature and made great progress!

I would love to create a spot filled with positive energy and meet same minded people. I secretly wish this blog will encourage you to keep up putting positive spin on whatever events there are ahead of us, while helping me not to fall off the wagon myself.

Except for the posts devoted to the joy of living and my personal life journal, this blog will be focused on travelling, photography and whatever other hobbies I might acquire down the road. I love anything creative and aesthetically pleasing and constantly have tons of ideas of projects which I rarely begin and almost never finish! (This blog is one of them) Being selfish again, I hope the blog will help me with this problem as well – after all, once you say it out loud, there is muuuch more pressure to stick with your words and actually do things, rather than just say them.

Well, enough for the first post, huh? Welcome to Atstarfish and I hope you enjoy your time here!

You can subscribe to this blog via email or follow on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can reach me with any questions or just to say hi at: katya.starfish@gmail.com.