I am just an ordinary girl, in an ordinary world who loves to share her writing with you all, so please come and check out my daily blog, you won't regret it.
Today was a pretty relaxed day. We started the day off with a trip to Plettenberg Bay for some sightseeing and we also had some breakfast on the beachfront. We didn’t really stay very long at Plettenberg Bay because there were some other places we needed to go to. We went to Billabong before we left so that my mom could get a new bikini and I got a pair of sunglasses.
Later on, during the day we took a walk to Thesan Island which wasn’t too far away from where we were staying. My mom and I were hoping we could find this small clothing store that we went into the last time we went there for holiday, but it unfortunately wasn’t there anymore. We got a little hungry from all the walking, so we decided to go for some Tapas at a restaurant in Thesan Island called Tapas.
After we had walked back from Thesan Island, we went back to Knysna and had a look at the market by the apartments we were staying at, I got some clothes, jewellery and crystals from a crystal shop.
After we walked through the market, we went back to the apartment and chilled for the rest of the day.
That was day 4 of my Knysna holiday, I will post about day 5 tomorrow.
Today we started off the day by having breakfast at a restaurant on the Knysna Heads. It was so nice because we had beautiful views of the lagoon. I had some delicious fried eggs and bacon and a coffee.
After we had Breakfast at the Knysna Heads we had a nice drive to Brenton On Sea, the drive there was really amazing, we were driving pretty high up and so we got to see some really spectacular sights. Knysna is just such a beautiful place with so much greenery and life. We eventually got to Brenton On Sea and were very impressed with what we saw, the stairs that lead down to the beach were decorated with a mosaic and there were some nice houses and restaurants in the area.
We have now left Brenton On Sea and have decided to go to our absolute favourite beach…. BUFFALS BAY. In my opinion there is no other beach that has topped that one. It is so clean there and the ocean is calm, this made it very easy to swim in. I am not really a person who likes to go into the ocean but even I enjoyed it. The beach was also really busy which was nice, and it was really great to go for walks on the beach along the ocean and see all the people fishing, playing bat and ball and even just chilling on the beach with their friends and family. We had some delicious chips while we were on the beach for lunch.
We then decided to leave the beach and go back to our apartment for some nice chilling time and after our chill time we went to another amazing restaurant named 34 Degrees South, it was right opposite the apartment, so we just walked there. I had a nice Pizza for dinner.
On our second day at Knysna the weather was so beautiful, the sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the sky. It was the perfect day to go exploring all the different things that Sedgefield has to offer.
We started the day by going to one of our favourite places, the Sedgefield market. When we got to the market we got some hot dogs with the German sausages for breakfast, because we didn’t eat any breakfast before we had left.
The market was amazing, there were so many great stalls and I bought quite a lot of stuff, I finally found Dungarees and a whole bunch of other things like shorts, shirts and jewellery. We had such a blast!
We then went to go explore the Sedgefield beaches which were really beautiful. The beaches in Sedgefield were really clean and the ocean was nice and blue. We didn’t swim on the beach or anything, we mainly just walked on the beach for a while because we didn’t have any costumes or towels.
Now it was time to head back to Knysna and have lunch at another one of our favourite restaurants called Drydock. We had some Mussels for a starter and Prawns for mains, I even managed to squeeze a dessert out of my parents. It was one of the best meals we had last time we went to Knysna, and I definitely enjoyed it the second time around.
We ended off the day by chilling in our apartment and watching movies.
That was how Day 2 went, tomorrow I will post about Day 3.
So, it’s been a while since I last posted, mainly because I got a new job at Match Padel in Cedar Square which I am loving, but I will do a separate post about that another time. For today my blog post is about the amazing holiday I went on with my parents.
My parents and I went to the airport on the 6th of December, and we were taken there by an awesome car service that came highly recommended. We flew from O.R Tambo because its the only airport that has a flight to George. This was not only the second time I have flown on an airplane in my whole 25 years of life, but it was also the first time I have ever flown from O.R Tambo. This was an incredibly exciting experience for me because O.R Tambo is such a huge airport and there are so many different shops to see.
We had to get to the airport 2 hours early and since we didn’t have time to eat breakfast before we left the house, we decided to get some scrumptious Wimpy, I had my usual toasted sandwich and a Coke. While we were having our breakfast, we made sure we got a nice seat right next to the window so that we could see all the planes take off and land, my favourite form of airport entertainment. We have now finished our breakfast and are heading to the departures waiting area, to wait for our flight. We waited for about 1 hour and then eventually went onto the plane.
The last time I flew on a plane was terrifying for me mainly because I am incredibly afraid of heights. I decided to sit by the window on my flight and I did not expect take off to be so sudden and so quick, I always thought when planes take off its slow and not as nerve wrecking, but I was unfortunately mistaken because I was incredibly nervous the whole time. This year when I went on the plane, I was a bit more prepared, I had my headphones with me so that the music could drown out the sounds of the plane’s engine and I did all of my breathing exercises. I was still terrified because I sat by the window again, but my mom’s hand wasn’t as red this time from my squeezing it so that’s progress.
When we landed at George airport it was really windy and quite cold, it even started raining at some point. After we collected our luggage, we went to the car rentals area and got our rental car, which was actually a very nice car. It was a manual so naturally my dad did all the driving. It took us about 1 hour to get to Knysna from the George airport, but there were some beautiful sights that we saw.
When we arrived at Knysna, we unpacked our suitcases and then just chilled inside for a bit before ending our day with the best Pasta ever at Marios (our favourite restaurant). We pre booked it while we were in Joburg.
That was our Day 1 in Knysna, tomorrow I will about Day 2
I was watching a show called “Good Trouble” the other day and one of the characters was saying that some people live in black and white but we all exist in the grey.
I agree with that statement 100%, so much so that I decided to blog about it.
For the longest time, people all over the world have been taught that life goes either one way or another, good or bad, we call it “living in the black or white”. Nobody ever actually tells us about the feelings or moments that exist outside of the Black and white as if those are the only two options and that we are just supposed to accept that. We don’t have to accept that though because there are other options as well.
Most of the time we are taught that people are good, or people are bad, but we are never taught that they could possibly be both at the same time. You may have a good person that has done one bad thing in a moment of weakness or accidentally, but that does not make them a bad person, it just means that they had a moment that was “out of character”… we all get to have those moments. We judge people based on their past, but we don’t realise that their future could be so different, and they try so hard to prove that to other people that it actually makes them unhappy and sometimes even depressed and that is purely because we do not give them a chance to prove us wrong. I have realised that people read the first chapter of a book and always think that they can predict what the ending could be like that they don’t read the pages in the middle of the book, but those are the pages that count the most because they are the ones that change the book completely and could possibly give it a different and unexpected ending.
So before you judge people by the way they were in the past, rather get to know them as they are now.
It is now that time of the year where we all celebrate Halloween by going out trick or treating with the little kids and get lots of candy, or if you don’t have any kids then its time to celebrate it by going out to the biggest and best party you can find and party all night long, resulting in a hangover the next day.
Have you ever stopped to think about what the history of Halloween is, I certainly have, which is why I have decided to write about it. So, let’s dive into it!
The celebration of Halloween has 2 different origins. The first one is in a pre-Christian Celtic feast associated with the Celtic New Year. The second one is in the Christian celebration of All Saints Day (1st Nov) and All Souls Day (2nd Nov). In the British Isles November 1st is called All Hallows, therefore the evening before is All Hallows Eve.
Let’s talk about The Celtic Feast first
The ancient Celtic peoples who live in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Brittany celebrated their New Year’s Day on what would be November 1st on our calendar. The period prior to the New Year, as the year slowed down, was a time that most of the people considered to be the mystery of human death. It was believed that on the last night of the year the lord of death, Samhain, allowed the souls of the dead to go back to their homes. Souls that had died in sin, and in Celtic belief imprisoned in the bodies of animals, could be released through gifts to the lord of death, including human sacrifices. The people believed that evil spirits, demons, ghosts, witches were also free to roam around this night and could be calmed down by a feast. They would also leave you alone if you dressed like them and appeared to be one of them. Families would also extinguish their hearth fires on this evening to be re-lit from a common New Year’s bonfire built on the hilltops, which was meant to symbolize the driving away of darkness and evil with the coming of the new year. The jack-o-lantern as a means of scaring away evil and providing light may be a vestige of this custom. When the Romans conquered France and Britain in the century before and after Christ, the bloody elements of Druidic practice were banned.
Now let’s talk about The Christian Feast of All Saints and Souls
During the first 3 centuries of Christianity the Church had to operate “underground” due to the persecutions of the Roman state against her. During this time there were many martyrs who died for their faith in Jesus Christ. The most renowned of these were honoured locally by the preservation of the relics and by the celebration of the anniversary of their death, as a feast in honour of their birth into eternal life. As time passed, neighbouring dioceses would honour each other’s martyrs and exchange relics for respect, the way the first century Christians kept the clothes and handkerchiefs touched by St. Paul.
At the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th the most vicious of all persecutions occurred, and that would be the time of the emperor Diocletian. The martyrs became so many that in some places it was impossible to commemorate even the most important ones. The need for a common feast of all martyrs was becoming evident. In the middle of the 4th century, these feasts became a reality in some places.
The feast of All Souls developed more gradually, first with a monastic celebration of their departed on October 1st. This seems to have occurred first in Germany in the 900s. The patronage of St. Odilio of Cluny extended this feast to other monasteries, first of his own Order, then to Benedictines and others, from where it spread to dioceses, including Rome. It was only in 1915 that the special privilege of three Masses was granted to all priests by Pope Benedict XV.
Now let’s not forget about Halloween during Christian times
The conversion of Celtic peoples to Christianity did not dampen their enthusiasm for the pre-Christian year-end custom of feasts, bonfires, and masks, and New Year’s Eve costume parties. The proximity to the developing Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls resulted in an attempt to move the celebration to the evening before All Souls, when children would go door to door receiving treats for a promise of prayer for the dead of the household. This attempt to associate the Celtic remembrance of the dead with the Christian memorial failed and the celebration remained a year-end custom, though Halloween remains mainly a children’s feast.
With the massive emigration of Irish in the last century the All Hallows Eve customs of costumes, jack-o-lanterns and trick or treating, were transported to North America. Scary costumes remain the historical norm for Halloween, though the advent of more sinister and violent times has encouraged many parents to take a gentler approach. Today many families, and even parishes, host parties, often with costumes of the saints, the poor souls or famous Catholics and other elements which re-enforce the Christian side of Halloween’s origins.
I hope you enjoyed my post and found these facts to be as interesting as I thought they were. I certainly didn’t realise how much history there really was.
So it has definitely been a while since I last posted on my blog and I must say that a ton of crazy things have happened to me.
In April I decided to take a leap of faith and I resigned from Jozi Padel to venture into a new career called Tumbling Tigerz. At Tumbling Tigerz, we work with kids between the ages of 2 and 6 years old and we travel to different schools around Joburg, a very tiring but rewarding job. We do obstacle courses and games with them that work on their hand eye coordination and improve their motor skills. This job has definitely taken me out of my comfort zone a couple times due to the fact that I have to drive a lot and often very far distances, the reason why I say this is taking me out of my comfort zone is because I am a very anxious person especially when it comes to driving far distances and so therefore I tend to stick to my little bubble.
After working at Tumbling Tigerz for about 3 months, I decided that I needed to resign because of reasons that were out of my control. Even though I loved the job so much, it just was not the right fit for me. I then decided to accept a job at Match Padel in Cedar Square…. I guess all roads lead back to Padel. It has been a completely chaotic ride for me, but I have no regrets.
After leaving Tumbling Tigerz, I am now only working my shifts at Match Padel and I am actually really happy there, I like the people I am working with and I like how organized everything is. I work a lot with the court coordinating, tournaments, socials, coaching etc…
So that is basically what my life currently looks like and even though it has been tough lately, I am very grateful to be where I am.
Thanks for reading my post, catch up with you soon xx
To say that it has been a while since I last posted would be an understatement.
For the last 24 years of my life, I have been living with my amazing and supportive parents, I have loved every second of it and now that I have made the decision to venture out and move into my own place, I have realised just how much I actually relied on them, and I can probably say that I took it for granted. I now live on my own in a beautiful and perfectly sized apartment in Lonehill.
I have now been living on my own for just under one month and it has been going really well so far… I have had my ups and downs but then again… who doesn’t. My favourite part of it all was the moving process, buying all of my furniture, painting the apartment, moving everything into it and cherishing those last few days I had with my parents, because even though I love living on my own, I do miss them dearly.
I have learnt a lot of things over the last month, responsibilities like; doing the dishes, washing my own laundry and drying it… thank God for the invention of the Tumble Dryer, cooking my own food (haven’t exactly nailed that one just yet, but I am working on it) and keeping the place clean… there was a night where I had a lot of ants and let’s just say I am very thankful for ant traps.
Not only did I learn household responsibilities, but I also learnt a lot about myself as a person. I learnt that I am actually capable of doing a lot more than I ever though I would, and I have also slowly but surely been gaining a lot more independence and I think that is my favourite part of living on my own. I now know that even though I do love being around people, I do not have to depend on others because I can take care of myself and I think that is a very important lesson for everyone to learn at some point in their lives… some take longer than others to learn this lesson, but that is not always a bad thing because everybody learns their life lessons in different ways and different paces.
There have been so many other new things that have happened in my life, but if I added all those things in one post then it would be a never-ending post. I will update you more in my next post.
Thank you for reading my post, and don’t forget to “keep calm and carry on”.
I hope you are having a fantastic week and an even better day.
I have been asked by a couple people to share the reason why I started blogging in the first place and it is actually something that I have been wanting to write about for a while now and I just haven’t gotten to it.
My passion for writing started when I was in high school, I used to write little stories for my English teacher and then he would mark them and tell me what I could improve on, because I actually wanted to initially be an author, I am still trying to write a book but it is not very easy.
I used to always want to be a professional Tennis player, but when I realised that dream was not going to come true I had to start thinking about what would come next for me, I always had an interest in writing journals and like I said little stories and the more I did this, the stronger my passion for writing grew and I realised my dream job is to be a Journalist. I was very prepared to be a Journalist but unfortunately my English grades were not high enough. For a while I was really upset about this because the thought of writing as a career was so exciting to me.
One day, my mom recommended to me that I start writing a blog, it isn’t the same as being a Journalist but at least this way I can still share my thoughts with everyone in the best way I know how to, and I can interview people on different topics and still be a writer even though I won’t be getting paid for it, I thought that sounded like a great idea because the payment was not the only reason I wanted to do it, I just wanted to share my thoughts and stories with people and if I can motivate people in anyway then that is a huge bonus. So, I took the plunge, and I started this blog, and I am beyond happy that I did because this blog has become my baby and is the way I can express myself in a healthy way.
I wrote an article once about The History of Easter and a lady from Kickass Bosslady magazine liked it so much that she actually wanted me to write for her magazine, I mean what are the chances of that. So I wrote a couple articles for them for quite a long time but unfortunately I no longer do that.
So that is my story of how and why I became a blogger. If you ever have a dream, don’t let people tell you that you cannot achieve it because there are always ways to achieve your goals and dreams, all you need to do is think outside of the box.
I hope you have had a great week and have awesome plans for the weekend. I had the best week I have ever had in a very long time. On Tuesday the 19 September at approximately 09:00 in the morning, my nephew was born. As most of you already know, I have a soon to be 5-year-old nephew already who is the absolute light of my life, I am so happy that he now has a little brother whom he already loves with all his heart, and I have another nephew who I love already. My heart is now split into 2, one half is for Ryley and the other is for baby Oliver.
The reason why the title of this post is called “Unexpected Passions” is because I have recently taken on a new activity which has very quickly become one of my ultimate passions, this activity is pole dancing. The reason why it is so unexpected is because I have always been a pretty conservative and private person, but I have always been so fascinated with pole dancing that I decided to give it a try. At first I was hesitant because like always I was worried about what people would think, but then I realised that I don’t really care what people think, if I really want to do something then I am going to do it and I am so happy that was my mindset. Nobody actually judged me at all, most people were surprised but a lot were also impressed because pole dancing takes a lot of core strength and well basically all the upper body strength you have. My confidence has als0 gone up a ton.
If you every want to do something whether it be in relationships or hobbies, you must never let the judgments from other people keep you from doing what makes you happy. Most of the time you won’t be judged by it at all, because people actually surprise you by being impressed with your bravery to actually do it.
Remember… you only live once.
I would like to end this with a quote by Mae West ” You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough “.
Thanks for reading my post guys, don’t forget to regret nothing, enjoy everything and be happy.
Kelly's Daily Blog 