Hello everyone!

I know it's been a while, but I am trying to make up for that now!

Actually, one month is not too bad. It means, I have to more to write about! And actually I do have lots to tell. :)
One of that is (of course) Christmas! Here in Canada, Christmas Eve is not the important day but Christmas Day (December 25^th)! On Christmas Day, I got woken up at 6.15am from my host siblings to take a look in our stockings. My host mum put nice small things in there. She even sewed my own stocking for me! :)

A few hours later, we had really good breakfast with homemade cinnamon rolls. Yummy! And then...unwrapping Christmas presents began. It took us quite a while considering we were seven people who had to open Christmas presents from each of the others while everyone was looking. :P I got really nice presents, thanks to the Bornmans <3

Later on, we did a nice walk outside, had an awesome dinner, played games, watched movies and sat next to our Christmas tree which was lightened with real (!) candles. So beautiful!

So Christmas was great! I hope, yours was as well :)

Only a week later, it was already New Years Eve. I was at my old hostfamily from four years ago. I have to say, this New Years Eve was very different to what I am used to : No firework, no sparkling wine (forgot about it) and we even missed the countdown. ;) Nontheless, it was a good start in the New Year 2014...with playing card games and learning to play the cup song from “Pitch Perfect”. :)
If you don't know the song...well, here it is:

And on the first day of the year 2014, we had really good cheese fondue with my current hostfamily. Sorry, no photo for that! ;) But fondue is pretty awesome, you gotta admit that! :P

 

A few days later, we had chocolate fondue :D

Haha, I guess, you guys are pretty annoyed from all my food photos (I just love food phoots...or maybe I just love food too much, who knows? ;) ). Now to some more important things that happened in my life.

Most importantly. The other Dutch intern is back in the Netherlands now (Menno, if you read that: Had a great time here with you at Abco! :) ), but we have now someone German here, who is on the visit! :) (You might have seen him in my last post from our FragMutti-Clip!)

I guess, his first week must have been really cool for him, because it was also for me!
We visited the set of Uwe Boll's new movie “Rampage 2”. And there might even be a chance that we are in there, because we were extras! I will let you know, if that happens! ;) Anyways, that was a really fun experience and it was good to see how it is on a real film set. I don't know how much I am allowed to say, but I can tell you ...I' saw quite a lot of action scenes that day. ;)

Actually, I just saw that teaser and realized that I did see quite a lot of that live on set! ;) Isn't that exploding car awesome???
Here, watch the teaser:

OMG, I just realized, you can actually see us in the teaser. :D Well, at least the others, I am just kind of in the picture...;) Take a look at 0:44-0:45min! Sorry, but I just saw it and it made my day! ;)

Btw, exactely here, I wanted to show you a picture with me and the main character...but apparently I have deleted the photos. :( I'll search for them though! Ugh, how I hate that..

Anyways, the experience was pretty cool! :)

Btw, did anyone of you make New Years resolutions? I didn't...cause I don't promise to do something, I can't break my promises. ;) Nonetheless, I have figured out, that I live in a city that is having tons of events...but I am not going to many of them. Well. That changed. :) During the last month, I've been to quite a lot of events, so...here they are. ;)

No 1: Draw by Night

This is an event that brings people that like to draw...and then they draw something together – under a certain topic. January's topic was “The Hand Off” and we were doing drawing collaborations of incorporate corpses...which is what you can see in the photo. That was fun! :)

No 2: David Sossa Concert

As I love classical guitar, I went to a classical guitar concert by Canadian-Colombian guitarist David Sossa. The Vancouver Public Library has some great events!

No 3: Photo Workshop “Creative Lightning”

The photohaus (I later figured out that the owners are German :P ) in Vancouver had open house and offered free short workshops. I saw one about Creative Lightning and that was pretty interesting as the photographer did a live photo shooting and we could see the differences various light sets make.

No 4: Chinese New Year

GONG CI FAT CAI! I wish you all a happy Chinese New Year! :) Here in Vancouver was the biggest Chinese New Year parade of Canada! (or even North America, I am not sure about that)

It was really interesting to watch...lots of lion dancers and dragons! Really cool! There was also one group that was really fun and reminded me of the German “Fasching” :D People dressed up as horses, dancing around, playing instruments and singing some song about “horse” ;) You must know, it is the year of the horse now..

No 4: LunarFest

There's more to Chinese New Year in Vancouver than “just” the Parade. For example, the Lunar Fest I went to with my friend Ashley! :) We saw among other things a lantern show which explained traditions of Chinese, Thai and Korean New Year! :)

So yes, that is happening in my life! :) Sorry, it took me so long to give you an update :)

Oh, one more thing that is about my workplace. We moved! Just in the building though. ;) But I really like our new place and as the “intern room” got finished last week, we can also finally move our stuff that is all over our office at the moment...;)

Oh, and yesterday it was pretty cool at the Giants :) It was family day and also pinkshirt day which is an antibullying day and some people did a really cool flashmob! Look at this video someone took!

And here is a nice clip of the Giants :))

http://vancouvergiants.com/article/vancouver-giants-take-a-stand-against-bullying

And for the end of this post, just some photos that I'd like to share with you! :) There's not always a need of a story being told behind photos...:) I can just tell you one thing: Some of them are from a bike tour through Vancouver and there is going to be a show sooner or less. ;)

And this is a cute video for you:

 So that's it! :) See you next time, hopefully sooner...but no promise! As you know, I might break it and you don't want that to happen, right?

Before I say bye, I just wanted to tell you about the changenomination again, because neknomination is still going on and it is just going crazy. I can just say, that some people think it is cool to lie on a frozen lake half naked (where you can see their bare butt!), crawl to a cup of beer and drink it. That is just NOT COOL. So, I would suggest changenomination instead. Here are the links again to my explanation and my actual changenomination video: 

http://youtu.be/DLqrKkcYhsc and http://youtu.be/Q4KZHt3Gim8

And I would like to thank Adrian and Michaela for spreading the changenomination by doing one and nominating others! I can already see it spreading the world :)

My third nominated person apparently didn't do a changenomination, but oh well.. I'll see.

Alright, thanks for being so patient, for waiting and for reading this long post now!

Ich drücke euch alle aus der Ferne! :)

Nina

PS: Sorry fuer die schlechte Quali der Videos, habs das erste mal auf Blogger gemacht und naja..egal. :P

Long time, no post...sorry!

Hello everyone!

I'm glad to see that you are still here, looking for new blogposts here. You must be craving for new ones, because I haven't written in like forever. I am sorry! I will definitely give you an update on my life in Vancouver soon - not today, but hopefully on the weekend.

In the meantime, I will help you to bridge this time until the next post with some videos. Some are actually quite "old" now (sorry!!), but some of them are pretty new.

First of all, some new episodes for you guys!

Here's the Christmas episode that Sharleen and I created (it was aired in December last year):

Then there's a video from TulipTV where we interviewed the producer of "Red Light Green Light", a documentary about sex trafficking and prostitution. You can't see me in the interview, but it is quite an interesting topic and there will be more coming soon (an interview with an actual prostitute!).

And the last episode for you guys : Berliner Currywurst in Vancouver! I didn't do anything in this episode (I was on Grouse Mountain with Sharleen :P), but it's nice to watch so check it out!

So...now we will get to some shorter clips! :)

First of all, something really short: One of the rooms in our building is for lease and guess who took the photos? Me!

Something funnier can be found here: Our new FragMutti-Clip! :) This time no editing of mine, but I did the camera work and I am in there as well! ;)

These are all the new clips I want to share with you from my company.

But now to something more personal. I guess you have all seen the NekNominations on Facebook. I think, it is pretty stupid. Instead, I like the idea of ChangeNominations. I uploaded a video explaining this idea (it is not my own idea): http://youtu.be/DLqrKkcYhsc (das mit der Videovorschau klappt grad iwie nicht)

And here is my video doing the ChangeNomination!
http://youtu.be/Q4KZHt3Gim8 (die Vorschau klappt auch hier nicht..)

So yeah, that's it for now! Make sure to come back here on the weekend! Stay tuned! :)

Liebe Grüße aus Kanada!
Nina :)

#changenomination

Christmas events and more! :)

Hallo liebe Ninas-Blog-lesende Gemeinde! ;)

Again a few weeks have past, but I will try to give you a short update on my life here in Canada.

It’s been quite stressful for the last few weeks at work.

Two reasons for that: We’re just finishing a project here at AbcoFilm and we have to make sure everything is fine with it. Die letzten Schliffe sozusagen! ;)

Secondly: My German-Canadian friend Sharleen and I are (as I said before) working on a Christmas show for AhornTV. Therefore we went to various Christmas events. Actually, it was supposed to be broadcasted last week..and it was supposed to be two parts. We do have two parts (we are currently editing the second part) BUT we just couldn’t broadcast the second one. Sharleen edited it (she worked all night for that!) and that part was fine, but what wasn’t fine at all was the SOUND. Somehow, the camera (Canon 5D) just wouldn’t get the audio right – even though it was with a microphone. You can’t broadcast it like that. Our plan now is to at least edit it a bit more and then put it in the internet at least. I will let you know as soon as it is uploaded! :)

Anyways, here are some impressions of the events we went to for the first part of the Christmas show (I’ve already shown you the Vanillekipferl and the Gingerbread Man):

As the first show didn’t work out, we wanted to make our second one way better. So what did we do? We went on Grouse Mountain, a mountain right next to Vancouver! :) They have a Christmas event there called “Peak of Christmas”. This time we wanted a not messed up sound and used a beachtec box as well for some parts the lavalier microphones (the small ones that you can clip on your clothes). We looked quite professional…Sharleen even had steadicam with her and looked quite cute with her big fat backpack! (She looked like a First Grade student :D).

Sorry, schlechte Handyquali! :D

We had a great time on the mountain although it was a little rainy. I could even pet a reindeer! Soo cuuuute! :) And I did some ice skating..I was so bad, I even used those helping thingies at the beginning! ;) It was fun though hahah :D And there was also a really nice gingerbread village…

But that day wasn’t over yet! On my way home I saw an invasion of Santas ;) There must have been some kind of event downtown. And while I was sitting in the bus, I suddenly saw a red blinking ball in front of a bus. It was a Reindeer Bus! :D Like this, just with more decoration on the outside: http://www.trans-continental.ca/vancouver/ReindeerBus/  So funny! :D

Another fun story is from my other work at the Giants. :) Here in Canada, it is kind of tradition to do a “Teddybear Toss”. Everyone brings stuffies (or buys them at the stadium) and when the home team (here: The Vancouver Giants) score their first goal, everyone throws his stuffie on the ice. They all go to charity.  It was such a great experience! The Giants scored during the second period and suddenly all went crazy! ;) It lasted for several minutes! The ice was covered with stuffies! :D

Two days after that I got another great photo…with Santa! ;)

So that’s my news so far. I hope, I didn’t forget anything…if so, I will let you know! ;)

Oh, I DID forget something. For Ahorn/TulipTV we did an interview with the producer of the documentary "Red light green light" about prostitution. Pretty interesting.

That's the trailer:

The documentary was shown in the First Baptist church in Vancouver. It looks really nice:

After the interview, we went home. Or at least we wanted. But the car of my boss didn't want to. -.- And it was cold. Arrgh.

At least, I could get some nice shots. :P And the cashier at the supermarket (got a baguette there) made up a nice short poem: "Do you need a bag or do you want to carry it like that?" (holding the baguette like a gun).

It didn't quite make up coming home at 12pm (by bus)..but it was funny at least. :P

 Ok THAT was it for now. :)

Btw our Christmas tree is up now, but I haven't taken a photo of it yet! :)
And one of my coworkers at the Giants store gave me such a nice present, I have to share it with you:

Thanks Emily! :) I love Christmas presents! :D (Who doesn't?)

See you next time..next post...hopefully I can present you links for the first and second part of our Christmas Show then! :)

Eine schoene Weihnachtszeit wuensch ich! :)