nothing much to say

just because i seem to have a reader that actually cares if i write here or not, here goes another post :)

life has been busy lately, and even if i've been on vacation for the last few days it does not mean that it has been any less busier. 

life's given me plenty to feel happy about, work is going great, science is still on the same place, but my understanding of it has greatly increased, and my social and personal life is going incredibly well, and i couldn't be happier :)

so no, today i don't have anything deep to write, nor anything that sounds thought out... all i have to say is that i'll try to come and say hello more often, and well, Lia, when will we go grab a cup of coffee?

classroom

i love teaching. i had done it in portugal, before coming here, and i found that it was an amazing experience. the fact that you need to get your mind organised before explaining your thoughts to others lets you connect loose ends on your knowledge.
anyway, i've started teaching in france. i've realised that it is harder to express myself in french rather than in portuguese (nothing new here), but it turns out that it is a great exercise, since i must not only express my knowledge on the subject, but it also makes me use a more formal french... anyway, it is really cool, and i'm very very happy to be teaching again!

confidence

tonight i'm happy with myself. I am usually not that confident in my ideas when it comes to improvisation. Maybe it's a language issue, and i don't always find the words to express what i want, or maybe it's just that  i don't feel at ease to go over someone else's idea. Either way, tonight i got to carry my idea! Execution might have been a bit off, but i was still happy with the results. Tonight i got the confidence to say "i've got a good idea, follow my lead", and it kind of boosted my confidence a bit... next step is getting confidence in my acting capabilities, and then everything should go great...

pression

when you want to make an impression on someone you always end up not knowing what to say. Pressure gets too high, and words don't seem to flow. There is some kind of psychological phenomena that gets over your thinking and prevents you from being you. This leads to the person you're trying to impress not getting impressed at all, and to you feeling bad that you failed at what you wanted to do.
What is it that makes it so hard to be ourselves all the time, around everyone? why is it that you can't get words out to the people you want to tell the world to? it would be nice, just for once, to turn off the pressure button and just talk, just say anything at all...

what you want

"you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might just get what you need...".

Sometimes you want something, and then, for some unknown reason, you end up getting something you don't actually want... then you get two choices: you either keep what you don't want and settle down with it, or you don't, and risk not getting what you want nor what you got in the first place... I usually go for the second option... keeping what comes your way is an easy task, but fighting for what you want, and eventually for what you end up needing, is what brings you happiness in the end. It's what makes you want to smile in the morning when you wake up, and at night when you go to sleep... and yes, sometimes it is possible that what you want is, in fact, exactly what you need...

tired

I'm tired... but it's the good kind of tired. The tiredness you feel after you've done something that pleases you. In Portugal we have a saying that says "quem corre por gosto não cansa", which means that you're not supposed to get tired when you're doing something you like. I think of it in a different way... I do believe you can get tired, even if you love what you do. The thing is that the feeling of accomplishment and self-satisfaction at the end is different then when you're not pleased with what you do!
In the end, the only thing that matters is if you enjoyed yourself or not, if you gave it all your best, and if you're pleased with the results... me, I am tired, but I enjoyed myself a lot, put in my best effort and got the best out of it, so I can only assume that I loved doing what made me feel this tired...

boys and girls

Ever since I was a kid I've always get along great with boys. I guess it is my brother's fault. He is older, and when he'd bring his friends home I'd always want to hang out with them... it used to get on his nerves, but since I was the cute little girl, they'd let me stay play with them. Also most of my neighbors while I grew up were boys. This all led to me being what in portuguese we call a "Maria-rapaz" which means the girl that does all the stuff as if she were a boy.
I guess with time I've become more of a girl, but I've kept getting along great with guys... I don't know if this fact had anything to do with the career path I followed, but I'm happy that what I enjoy doing is more "guyish" than "girlish", because I'd never be able to deal with large groups of girls working together...
I have come to realize that whenever I had to work with more girls than boys I would end up being upset. It is very hard for me to get mad at someone, but somehow something always went wrong, or someone would always find a way to make unuseful remarks, and that is one of the things that ticks me...
Anyway, I had to decide something with a couple of girls over the last few days, and well, we had a "girls not agreeing" moment and it got on my nerves... even more when they finally asked a guys opinion and it wound up being what I had said in the first place...