I Asked Him to Marry Me

Silly title,
Silly subject.

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear someone got engaged?

How did he propose? 

I sent a picture of my ring to my friends and I got a few interesting reactions. Some didn’t realize it was a engagement ring, whilst others connected the dots right away.

The first question was,

“How did he ask you?”

I smiled.

I mean how would they know?

Since the beginning of time, it’s typical for a man to ask a woman for their hand in marriage, but why is that so? I thought we were suppose to be equal? I thought a woman can do whatever she wants to do? So why does the man have to ask? Why put all the pressure on him?

Every culture share different ideas with the concept of marriage, in some countries you have to ask permission from the partners parents first, others you don’t even get to choose your partner. Some might see them as silly wedding traditions, whilst others see them as sacred.

Why did I ask?

I always told myself as a kid that I would ask someone to marry me if it felt right and if I was ready. I didn’t expect my partner to ask me nor would he know that I would ask him. I would just leave it and see who would ask first. Even if he did beat me to it, I wouldn’t have had any hard feelings. If it happens, it happens.

I wanted to ask him to marry me in Paris because that’s where our relationship started many years ago. Was he expecting it? No. Never in a million years. Did he know that I had something planned? Clearly not, his face said it all.

It took him 10 minutes to realize that I was asking him to marry me. At first he thought that it was a prank, which I found hilarious.

I handed him a gift and told him it’s an early birthday present. He opened it and saw a pen with the engraving,

“Will you marry me Joshua?”

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The next day, he bought me a ring in Paris and put it on my finger.

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That’s what happened. I asked him to marry me and now I have a fiancée.

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– Siara

California – May 2017

For those who didn’t know, I was away during May. I was in California, mostly in Los Angeles. I had a lovely time with my other half and I spent time with my best friend who I had missed dearly. Two whole years since I saw him and it meant the world to me to see him again.

I met some of my friends who I had also missed dearly. I didn’t have a lot of time so I wasn’t able to see everyone which was a shame. Doesn’t mean I don’t like them less or anything it was just lack of time and place. For those who were able to meet me, I was very happy to catch up.

We rented a car and traveled all over the place. The longest route was to San Francisco. I had been there before so it wasn’t anything new but I went there to see my friends and to explore once again. I went to San Jose for the first time and it was quite warm compared to San Francisco. I was so surprised. The place we were staying at was in San Bruno and it was foggy AF there, like Silent Hill foggy. I was not fond of that weather at all. The place we stayed at had a indoor pool so I was freezing when I went to point A to B just for that swim. As soon as you leave that area, the fog is gone and you see the sun shining through, crazy. Not staying there next time I am down. *Shivers*
I think I lost time of how many times I went to the Cheesecake Factory but one thing I was disappointed was that I didn’t have my cheesecake : ( of all the things to miss. Vanilla Bean and Oreo Cheesecake…I will get you next time.

I had my Korean BBQ though, bless. I love Korean BBQ and we don’t have that self frying pan, whatever you call it here and I am mad disappointed. All you can eat BBQ is like heaven, gosh I am drooling just writing this. Calm down Siara.

Tender Greens is nice too. Not the comfiest place to sit and eat but the food is worth it. Kinda healthy…I guess.

The only fast food I actually enjoy eating is In N Out, nothing beats that. It’s not AMAZING like everyone says it is, because I feel like everyone is overrating it but it’s definitely a go to place if I would pick a fast food place. The animal style fries…yes please.


Okay I just realized that I am writing about food again which is a bit depressing. I did do other things than eating food. I went hiking in west LA, I went to the beach, hired a bike and biked around the boardwalk. I also went to the Santa Monica Pier (my hoooood) and went to the small cozy Santa Monica arcade like the good ol times.

I went to Little Tokyo in Downtown LA and had Japanese Udon noodles. (damn it food related again)


All of this made me so emotional and it’s crazy how my three years in LA went by so fast. It’s a place I adore and it will always be my home no matter where I am in this world. I have moved to a lot of places and whenever I wonder back on memory lane, LA pops into my mind. I will never let that go, it’s my happy little place and I was blessed to be able to live there.

I hope this post didn’t get cheesy and too much food related. There is also a video montage if you’re interested to watch. Hope you enjoy.

– Siara

London Town

As some of you already know, I went to London recently to see Bruno Mars live in the O2 Arena. Yes, I flew oversees just to see him #datdedicationtho. Before I actually saw him I was strolling around London, spending time with friends and eating out (#foodporn).

I usually don’t go to tourist:y places in London due to being in there too often. So seeing “Big Ben” and the whole parliament to me is just nothing special but wanted to take photos for my blog and I decided that the best place to take London photos would be at that location so that’s why we went there.

After that we went to grab some Boba tea at my favorite boba tea place, Chai Time.

mm chocolate boba tea….

After spending some time around Soho it was time to head to Nando’s to grab some dinner. Nando’s is probably my go to place whenever I don’t know what to eat. The restaurant can be found almost everywhere and I never get tired of it. They’re known for their tasty chicken.

mm Foodporn

I did go shopping too (#Primark4Lyfe) not clothes though, it was just random items that I needed and some make-up from The Body Shop. I got a really cool t-shirt thought that says Nintendo 64 on it though and I love it. Although I got it at the male section. I’m not fond of men size t-shirts, it looks like a potato bag when I wear them so I am going to use my lame skills and create a different look with the tshirt that I bought. I hope I won’t mess it up.

Next post will be all about Bruno Mars! Stay tuned.

– Siara

Is it Impossible to get Over a Fear?

Is it impossible to get over a fear?

Is it really? Or is that something we humans have put into our brain so that we don’t dare to face them? There are many questions regarding this and usually the case in this scenario is that people ignore their fears rather facing them. Why? It’s because it’s “easier” to just ignore it and pretend like nothing is wrong in the first place.

I’m here to tell you that fears are not impossible to overcome. I used to be one of those who’d rather ignore it and just get along with my life but due to a certain decision in my life I had no other choice to face that particular fear.

In 2012 I had decided that I wanted to move to America, California, LA. The distance from Sweden to LA is 8827 km, and it takes about 16 hours to get there with an airplane, including one layover. I have a fear of being “trapped” (not literally) as in, being inside an airplane for X amount of hours without being able to leave. That freaks me out. If I ride a bus I know that I can get off whenever I want on whatever stop but an airplane is a different story. I had never been on a long flight alone before too which made the whole experience even more difficult. I had no other choice than just get along with it. I decided to move and that was the sacrifice I had to make. I’ve taken about X flights within 2012-2017 and I never thought it would be able to get used to flying oversees back and forth from America to Europe. Today, I am way stronger than I was back in 2012 and that’s because I dealt with this fear rather than ignoring it.

So what’s my point with this post? Just to prove to you that a fear can dealt with as long as you are brave enough to face them. Don’t let that stop you from achieving a dream or getting stronger. You will learn and grow out of this.

It’s kinda funny writing about this because I’m actually on a plane right now heading to London. It just popped up into my mind.

 

– Siara

A New Chapter, Sacrifices & Growth

2017 will probably be one of my favorite years. I can’t tell you all the details yet but I have some big news to announce and I am looking forward to it. I am going to show my life a bit more than usual, open up which will be a bit weird because I am not used to it but it’s something I really want to do.

I want to grow and experience things. I want to see the world with my own eyes. There are so many things I want to do this year and I feel like it’s only the beginning. I turned 25 last week, which is insane. At the age of 20, I got a one way ticket to America, solo. I lived there for three whole years, crazy I know. Sometimes, you get a wake up call in life of wanting to do something new and risky. A lot of people don’t dare to even do them, instead they keep dreaming about it. Let me tell you a little secret, dreaming won’t take you anywhere. If you want to do things, you have to take the steps for yourself. Even if it’s baby steps, it still counts as progress. I am not talking about moving oversees now, I am talking about everything in life.

New things sounds scary, especially when it’s risky but how are you suppose to grow and learn from your mistakes when you don’t even make a single move at all? When you take a step and fail, you’ll know what to do next time to carry on. It makes you stronger along the way and wiser. Just because you fail doesn’t mean that you’ve lost it all. Failure is knowledge. It’s like the first time you fell off your bicycle when you were a kid when you took the short bumpy road rather than the long and even one. There are no shortcuts in life, same thing goes with success. Nothing is offered free in life, in order to achieve you have to be willing to sacrifice something in return.

This post is dedicated to those who are afraid of taking that first step. I want to tell you, whoever you are that everything will be fine as long as you keep walking forward. It will take time but eventually, you’ll get there.

You only live once, right?

– Siara

My DreamHack Winter 2016 #DHW16 Experience

So yeah…I went to DreamHack.

It wasn’t a planned to be honest and it wasn’t really for leisure. I went there for work purposes and stayed in Jönköping for one night (it’s about 2 hours away from Gothenburg) so that was the real reason for my visit at DreamHack.

I can’t really go into details of what I did there but it went quite well. I did a vlog though so that you guys can see how it really is at DreamHack.

For those who don’t know what DreamHack is, it’s the worlds largest digital LAN event that happens twice a year (in the same city). It all started with a group of friends playing games together in a basement as a gathering. After some time, this gathering turning out to get bigger and bigger and eventually got held at a school cafeteria. At that time, the event got the name DreamHack in year 1994. Today, DreamHack is not only being held in Sweden but it’s being held all over the world and is a big event for Esports such as CS:GO and League of Legends etc.

Hope that throwback gave you some info ; ) sit back and enjoy my lame vlog!

– Siara

Visiting Lido di Venezie

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Today was a wonderful day like yesterday.

We ended up waking up early and once again…eating breakfast on the bus (typical us). Today we headed to Lido di Venezia. This is an island that can be reached by boat. The boat ride costs €8 each (one way) and is about 45 minute long (really depends where you take the boat but that’s the time it took for us) we were lucky to find seats because it gets pretty packed and the boat comes every 20 minutes so you better catch your seat before anyone else!

img_051545 minutes later we ended up on the island and I must say, I fell in love. It wasn’t a lot of tourists around here, it was mostly locals and it wasn’t packed like the other places. We ended up strolling around and somehow found the beach lol. We were following people that seem to head to the beach and we ended up there luckily. It was so funny. We ended up being there for three hours. I got fried, literally. I had applied sunscreen on my whole body and redid it a couple of times and I still got burned : ( it was not fun. The sun there is way closer than California. I was actually surprised. I ended up going into the ocean a couple of times to cool off though!

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We ended up having lunch in this random restaurant that we chose. Got my Spaghetti Bolognese and Josh got a Pizza. There were so many things I wanted to order in the menu but I was scared of eating too much cheese once again so I skipped it. The Bolognese was alright. The first one we got in Venice was way better though.

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Later on we started strolling around the area and taking photos. Then we decided to head back. We had a 45 minute boat ride then a 20 minute bus ride to take and the time was close to 6 PM.

About 1 hour later we were finally back! We ended up going to the flat to quickly drop our things and then we ended up heading out once again  to grab some dinner.

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I am not sure if this was a mistake or not but…I ended up ordering a pizza with their homemade cheese from that particular town…very stupid of me. It was so good though : ( but it made me once again sick. It was one of the best pizzas I’ve ever tasted though.

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Josh ordered a burger once again. It did not come with a bun “lid” and it looked like it was on a bread toast rather than a hamburger bun lol.

It’s sad to say that tonight is our last night in Italy. I am actually not looking forward to tomorrow. This trip has been the most amazing trip ever and the fact that I got to travel here with someone special makes it even more special.

Would I visit Italy again? Definitely.

– Siara

Riding a Gondola in Venice

I don’t know where to start with this blog post. First of all, today was a magical day and also painful. Never wear uncomfortable high heels in Venice, actually, never wear heels in Venice in general, period.

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We took the bus to Venice early in the morning and ended up eating our breakfast on the bus so that we would avoid a lot of crowds in Venice. As soon as I arrived, I got amazed by the water canals and started taking photo of every single thing I found fascinating, like a real tourist lol. I was so amazed of this town and how it was “designed”. No cars, just boats. Venice is quite bigger than I thought it would be. Perhaps that’s because we were walking a lot today. We ended up heading to St Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco) and went up to the St Mark’s Tower to watch the view. Of course it was a long queue when we arrived (boo) but it only lasted for 30 minutes then we were good to go. The cost of going up the tower was €8 each.

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tower

We headed back down and that’s when my feet were killing me. The heels I was wearing were new and I hadn’t really walked with them a lot so I wasn’t sure if they were comfortable or not. I had to buy new shoes right away. We walked around a bit but no shoe places anywhere. We passed so many before we arrived to the square but now…nothing. After some while I ended up finding a few shops. Found a pair of shoes in my size (I didn’t care how they looked like, that’s how desperate I was) bought them and wore them right away. They looked alright but after like 1 hour of walking the insoles were sliding off somehow and when I took out my foot I noticed that the glue had melted off due to the heat. Cheap ass shoes indeed. Nothing I could’ve done I just had to deal with it the rest of the day (ended up throwing them when I got back).

Josh’s friend recommended a restaurant to eat in Venice and apparently they had meatballs in their menu! We got lost a few times but it took us a good hour to find it. When we finally arrived we saw a notice outside the door saying that the restaurant wont be open from mid July till end of August. I was really sad because I wanted my meatballs (sob) we ended up going into a random restaurant nearby and had some spaghetti bolognese and it was amazing.

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After that we ended up strolling around the area and enjoying the weather and the view. I always wanted to ride a Gondola ever since I was a little girl but the pricing of the 20 minute ride was ridiculous. The charge was €80 (daytime) to ride one. I am not sure if you need to pay more if there are more people than two on it though. We ended up going on one in the end and I must say it was worth it to me. Not because of my childhood dream coming through but the view and the canals were just so fascinating. All these buildings have a history and it was amazing to see all of that from the Gondola. I am happy that we went on one in the end.

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After that we decided to walk around the area once again, eat ice cream and take more photos. After some time, we decided to go back to the flat and have dinner around here instead. We had been walking since early in the morning and it was 6 PM when we decided to go back. My feet are still hurting from today and I just wanted to throw those shoes away and clean my feet from the glue of the shoes I got on me.

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I changed my outfit for the evening to feel a bit more fresh (lol) all that walking earlier made me uncomfortable in that dress. So we decided to take more photos and then find a place to eat. We went to a different place this time and they had some interesting things on their menu. I decided to get a eggplant pizza (I told  them to add dried beef on top of it to make it my own version) it was really good. I enjoyed it a lot. Josh ordered a funny looking hamburger that looked like a sandwich somehow. He enjoyed it regardless. After that we decided to head back and here I am writing this. It was a long day indeed but it was a memorable one.

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Can’t wait to head to Lido di Venezia tomorrow!

– Siara

My first gelato ice cream in Milano

fountain Today we decided to go to this park that I had never heard of. It was huge. Along the way (we actually got lost) we found a castle, well we actually found the castle first lol, clever right. And there were so many stray cats around the castle. They were everywhere! Taking naps and just strolling around. They were so cute and adorable. I bet the caste was theirs and they were just protecting it from evil, I am sure that’s the case *nods*

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Anyways, we finally found the park and then I saw that they were selling Gelato ice cream. I was curious about the taste because it was highly recommended to eat when traveling to Italy. I bought my Vanilla Gelato (I forgot to take a photo…) and it tasted alright. I was actually quite disappointed. Josh mentioned  that this isn’t “real” Gelato and that we need to find a better place to try it once again.
After strolling around the park and enjoying the view we decided to head back to check out the Air BnB. We were going to head to Venice from the station and I was looking forward to it a lot. The train ride wasn’t that long (2h 25min) we ended up eating lunch, snacks and watching a movie on the laptop. The view was nice and before I knew it, I had arrived to beautiful Venice.

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Link enjoying the train ride
We headed to our new Air BnB and then strolled around  the area. We aren’t located in the heart of Venice though, it’s about 20 minutes away. Because we arrived quite late today we decided to not go there and just explore the area instead which was nice. It was late in the evening and people were just around spending time together, it was very warm and cozy around the area and I loved it.

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We found a restaurant around the area and I ordered some Spaghetti Cabonara. It was so good but once again…I couldn’t handle the cheese. I don’t know what they put in their cheese but this one made me full and ill once again too. It wasn’t as severe as the previous dish though but I managed  to eat half of it at least. It was really good, I am not gonna deny that though.

On our way back, Josh got himself a Gelato icecream and he said that it tasted so much better than the one we had at the park. I didn’t get any because I didn’t want to get more sick (I really wanted some though)

I am looking forward to tomorrow. My dream is gonna come true!

 

– Siara

Milano, Italy

We arrived quite late on Friday and I was so exhausted. The weather was so warm in the evening though and I was loving it. We didn’t go out until the next day because the time was 10 pm and I wanted to sleep. We woke up quite early today and headed out for breakfast (there were no breakfast places close to the Air BnB though -_- so we ate at Burger King instead lol so lame) but then we took the tube and headed to see Duomo di Milano. Unfortunately…it was raining the whole day today. So I had  to carry around my umbrella. It was going to thunder too and we wanted  to go up the Cathedral but the combination of that didn’t sound good to my ears. Rain, thunder and being on top of a church, no thanks. So we ended up strolling around the area and taking photos.

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I had my first pasta in Italy today. I ordered a creamy chicken pasta with mushrooms (note that it was barely any chicken in my pasta, apparently they don’t put a lot of meat in their food) it was good but then I started to feel sick. I am not sure if it was the cheese in the pasta or not but I just didn’t feel good. I started to feel better after a nap when we got back to the flat.

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This was the pasta that I had (it looks good though. I would eat it again lol)

We went out for dinner around the area and found a really good place and I ordered my first Italian pizza, asparagus pizza.  I ordered it and it tasted pretty good. Although, it was a Margherita pizza with some asparagus on the top lol. Regardless, I was satisfied. I noticed that their pizza is even thinner than Swedish pizza which is insane! Yet I got full eating that.

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So much food, so little time.

– Siara