Writing Motivation & Jane's Life in May

It's been quite the while since we've posted. Not that we haven't been bothered to write, it's just we've been stuck as to what to post about exactly. It's tricky when you're a lifestyle blog surrounding a long distance relationship - you don't really have much to write about other than how much you miss your other half and although it'd be a way to get out the emotions for us, it wouldn't really be fun to read constantly for our readers, now would it? ;)





In other news, the planned family trip to Holland has been postponed to probably later in the year due to some family and personal reasons for me, although I would love to visit Holland and see my Davy's country right now it's just not possible due to unforeseen circumstances. But! I do get to see Davy on his 21st birthday in June as my parents have arranged and booked him a ticket so we can spend 2 whole weeks together. So I get to watch the World Cup and spend Davy's birthday with him! Yay! :)

As well as that, we've ordered a very special 21st birthday cake for him (it's a surprise so I can't reveal the design to anyone but family, teehehe) from a very talented lady who goes by Vanilla Pod - she's been regularly making birthday cakes (and our Christmas one) for us since sometime last year. If you live in Cornwall, I seriously recommend her! Her cakes are incredible. She recently made my Mummy's 50th birthday cake which was super delicious. So if you're within the county of Cornwall and/or live near St Austell, please check her yummy baking skills out!

As you all know, I started learning Dutch in the last month or so. I think it's roughly two months now. Progress has been ticking along nicely. I'm almost at week 4(!!!!!!) in my Dutch in 3 Months books, I'm grasping and understanding things a lot more quicker. My pronunciation is still, I think, quite good. I'm getting to the stage where I'm starting to add emotion into sentences - even if they're in a book written down - which I'm proud of myself. I was getting a little tired of sounding so robotic, heh. I also started listening to Pimsleur Dutch lessons, although I find myself getting distracted at times from sitting there listening to the mp3s, I have noticed I'm starting to understand things when they're spoken in a slightly faster pace instead of word for word. Although I lost a little motivation to learn, and learn constantly - I have been working through the lack of motivation by practising the things I know and to not give myself so much criticism for the times I get things wrong. I make the mistake, try again until I feel I've got it then move on. Another thing I did was update and organise my excel file full of words, I've still got a lot to learn but with it being so organised it keeps my memory sharp of what article goes with which noun, how to pronounce something when I'm unsure and which word class each word belongs to. I'm a bit shy about sharing it as it'll probably look really silly! But if you're interested, drop a comment and I'll dropbox the link to those who are interested.

And I made new friends from Duolingo! Which both, coincidentally enough, are also in a long distance relationship! How ironic. But it's so nice knowing there are other couples who are exactly in the same circumstances as you are. It's made me feel less lonely and less anxious about the heart-wrenching moments being without my other half. So that's really nice, plus they're both really polite, sweet people - one of which said she's interested in doing a guest post for us regarding when she first met her own Dutchie! How awesome is that?! Duolingo isn't just for learning languages. It's for connecting people who know what you're going through whilst learning that new language whether your reason is learning the language for a loved one so you can communicate in another way, or just because you'd love to learn a language (or many for that matter). The community within Duo is just fantastic.  Feel free to follow me on there

In my next post, I'll tell you about this story I'm hoping to start to write. Davy helped me figure out the plot, and outline characters, locations. I've just got to figure out the events within the story that happens. I'm not going to make it too complex for myself as the last idea I had was far beyond my reach and probably not a good place to start way ahead of what I know I can and can't do as a writer. Baby steps is probably the best starting point for me, so we'll see how it goes from there!

I hope you've all enjoyed the May bank holiday! Sorry for the lack of pictures, I just haven't had anything to photograph :o