Butterfly fly away

I wanted to post this tomorrow but since I won't have time to do so I decided to do it today, one day earlier.

19.9.2014. That was the day when my whole life changed. I quit my job in Elisa, packed everything I got into one big suitcase, left my life in Finland behind me and moved to Cyprus.

I cannot believe it has already been four years. I'm so proud of my 21 year old self for being able to do something that big and life changing. Back then tho everything was so much different. I never thought my life would be like this what it is now. I was in a relationship, which I thought would last for lifetime. I was so naive and in love. I never thought four years later I would be single, living by myself with a cat. I used to hate cats and look at me now, I've turned into a cat lady.  

I'm so proud of myself tho, I have a job that I love, my studies are going rather well and hopefully in two years I will graduate, I have a nice car and good people around me. I've actually grown up and my life view has completely changed over these years. I've learnt about so many different cultures and how to deal with different kind of people.

Am I happier here than I was in Finland? Hell yeah. I cannot say I am completely happy tho. I still got lot of things I need to work on but I am slowly getting there. Hopefully. I do have days when I feel alone and sad, few times I've almost given up and though about going back home but then I've realized that I wouldn't be happier there. Yes I do miss my best friend and my family, but other than that Finland has nothing more to offer me. I am not saying I would never go back, but at this point, Cyprus is where I belong to.

During these four years I've met a lot of new people. From shy and reserved girl I've turned into social one (ok who am I kidding I am still quite shy) who don't give a sh*t what other people say or think.  I am so grateful for my friends, I don't know if I could have done all this without them. Specially my other half who completes my half Finnish half Cypriot roots, thank you so much for being always there for me, even during periods when I wasn't so lovable haha!   

I hope four years from now I have finally found my happiness. I hope have finished my studies and have a job as an accountant or auditor. I hope I will find the right person to share my life with. 

I hope this wasn't too deep again, but I thought I want to share my thoughts and feelings. Life is not always bed of roses and I don't want to pretend or say my life is.

With love,
Stella xxx

Lost Lamb

Hola blog!

Maybe I should just give up with this blog 😅 I just can't seem to get into the routine to update this regularly. I doubt that I even have any readers left anymore haha but it's cool. 

So what's been going on with me then? These past 6 months have been pretty crazy for me. I've had my family and relatives visiting me, studied loads, worked, spent some quality time with my close ones and just enjoyed life. 

I'm not gonna lie, end of winter / beginning of spring time was really hard for me, mentally. There was times when I felt like giving up on everything and going back to Finland. But thank god I have amazing people around me who helped me to get through it all. I still can't say I'm 100% okay, but I will be. I'm working hard on it. The thing is, if you try to push away all the feelings you have, at some point the reality hits you and you are forced to just stop and think about everything, you need to go through all the stuff you tried so hard not to think about. The past 2 years I've tried to convince myself everything was good, I'm happier now. And I kind of am, but then the reality hit me and I realized that I'm still broken. I am getting better tho, my self confident is finally coming back.  

First my aunt and her husband came here for one week in April. I went to Protaras to meet up with them, I honestly fell in love with that place (I will do separate post about Protaras and travelling in Cyprus I think). I honestly can't believe I've lived in Cyprus nearly 4 years and there are still so many places I need to visit. People are actually paying thousands to come here and then there's me, who has everything within 1 hour drive and I haven't taken advantage of it.  

Beginning of May my dad and brother came here as well. I can't even describe how happy I was to see them. It had been 1.5 years since I last saw my brother, so spending 10 days with him was really nice.  

My studies are going pretty good as well. I'm so proud of myself that I still have the energy and will to study. It is very stressful, and I had few breakouts before my exam on Monday, but I know that when I will finish with the ACCA it will all be worth it. I'm doing this all for me and for better future.  I still have one more class to take and then after that I can finally start doing the assignments for my bachelor!!  

Anw because I think no one even read this all the way here I will stop now. This was just kind of update how have I been lately post.   

I'm going tomorrow to try this Velasmooth treatment for cellulite. I will be doing review on this how well it works and if its worth of trying, so ladies, stay  tuned! 

- Stella xoxo 

Athens part 1

End of October me and my two friends had girls trip to Athens. That was my first holiday that wasn't to Finland or Cyprus! It was just what we needed and I had so much fun there. We were staying there for 4 nights.

We were staying in this hotel called Stanley which was located in Karaiskaki Square. The location of the hotel was actually very good even though it wasn't exactly in the city center. The metro station was right next to our hotel and it took us only few minutes to get to the city center which was decent. The metro tickets were 1.40 for one way. We ended up using taxi a lot, and the prices were not that expensive,I think.

We had breakfast included and the first day we were having our breakfast with the lower class but then we got our room upgraded, thanks to my friends, so we ended up getting upgraded breakfast too ! They got pretty large selection of everything so I would definitely recommend taking breakfast as well. The hotel had swimming pool and rooftop bar with this amazing view to Acropolis!

Our first day in Athens was very interesting. As usual, something had to go wrong! As soon as we landed, we went to this shopping village called McArthur Glen. It was very nice place but you need more than one day to see everything. They had all kind of designer outlets like Nike, Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger,  Marco Polo, Guess etc. I definitely recommend it for everyone visiting Athens! It wasn't enough that we were all dead from the trip and all that shopping, but the day we arrived in Athens happened to be the day when the Metro was out of use due to some strike. We had to take the bus and change it few times to get to Syntagma. Little did we know that the buses would be so full that you wouldn't even have enough space to breath. The bus drive took us about 4 hours and I was kind of getting a minor panic attack as people were pushing each other and no one could move. That's how crazy it was. In the end we got to Syntagma and from there we took taxi to our hotel only to find out that the room we booked was not what we had expected. That's why the next day they gave us a much better room !

On our first night I went to meet my friend who I had not seen for quite a long time. We went to this bar where you could see Acropolis and man it was amazing! He couldn't have chosen a better place to take me hahah! After that I met with the girls and we went to the Gazi to have some dinner. Honestly, I've never had better gyros than in that place! I just cant remember the name of that restaurant. 

We were so tired after all that travelling so after our dinner we head back to the hotel and went to sleep.

XoXo, Stella 

Back on track

It's been way too long since I last wrote here. I'm not even sure anymore how to start this thing.
I've missed blogging so much but I just kind of lost my motivation at one point. I had so many things going on in my life that I didn't have the time or energy to start writing. Although now that I'm thinking, maybe blogging would have helped me but anyways, I'm back ! And hopefully for long time haha.

2017 went past way too fast! It was one of the best and worst years of my life so far. I grew up so much as a person during last year and I am planning on continuing that self development even more this year. I can say I'm definitely much happier now that I was in the beginning of 2017.   I have my friends by my side, I finally found peace in my life, I have a job that I like and my studies are still going well (hopefully haha will get the results in week, eek!)

I still haven't complete decided what I will do with my blog. Maybe I will write more personal stuff here as I believe it might be helpful for people going through the same things I went trough. On the other hand I would like to make this blog fashion/beauty/travel related so we will see about that. Only time will tell haha!

That's it for now.  

XoXo, Stella 

FINLAND #throwbackthursday

Heyaa! 

Long time no see. I've been super busy with work and everything lately. I will try to post more often now tho. 

I went to Finland in January for 2 weeks holidays to see my family and friends. I had the best time there and I already miss everyone. I went with the thought of seeing if I could be able to see myself moving back to Finland, but as you can guess, that idea disappeared from my mind as fast as it got there. I love living in Cyprus, my life is here now.  Finland is a good place to go visit every now and then but living there would be so hard for me. 

I spent the whole two weeks with my best friend, I decided to stay with her. We had so much fun, when I got back to Cyprus my house was feeling so empty haha!  This was actually the first time I could go clubbing in Finland, enjoy and have fun! I basically spent my time there eating, partying and spending quality time with everyone. 

The only thing I miss about living in Finland, besides my family and friends, is having hot water during winter whenever you want it and having central heating. In Cyprus, during winters, if there is no sun you need to heat up the water which is so annoying as it takes forever. Also, houses are super cold as there is no heating whatsoever. You need to buy heater or what I do, have the air con heating my flat. 

I am lucky enough to have my good friends still there for me even though I moved countries. Being with them felt like we were never apart. You don't need to talk with them or see them every day, but when you do, you know the friendship is real. I can trust these girls with everything and I know they will always be part of my life. 

As much as I hate snow, I got to admit it looks so pretty. I was lucky that the temperature wasn't so high while I was staying there. Week before I went it was super cold, like -20 degrees, but during my stay it was only like -5 degrees which was decent. 

I am now thinking about going back in the summer for a week or so but we will see. I miss summer in Finland. Those warm, nightless nights where you don't have to worry and stress about nothing. I am not saying it wins these amazing summer nights in Cyprus where you can have beach parties and stay up all night watching the stars, but I would deffo recommend visiting Finland in the summer. It's worth it. 

Ps, Don't forget to follow me on snapchat! My username is sstellamaria  :) 

Love, 

Stella xx 

I been up all night, no sleep, cause I feel like I'm always dreaming

Whoop whoop, my exams and lessons are over for this year! I am so happy that I can finally relax a little bit, the amount of stress that I was having during exam period is crazy!  

On Friday I went out with few of my work mates and oh man, they know how to take it until morning! We started with few drinks at this really nice pub here in Limassol, Shaka Zulu, which I can recommend to everyone! After that we were thinking about going to this club (bare in mind I left my house around 11 am that morning and was dressed for my exams) but decided to go to my friends house for drinks. 

The thing I love about Cyprus is that it's mid-December and we stayed the whole night sitting on the balcony. It was a bit chilly outside but nothing we couldn't handle. I mean look at that view, it's amazing. We were drinking and laughing the whole night. The best thing was watching the sunshine. We did the same thing back in August and it was so cool to see how the sun came out from a different spot this time of the year. You can really see how earth has moved and why the days are shorter during winter time. 

I mean just look at this view! It's breathtaking ! I could go on and on about how pretty it was, this is something everyone should witness at least once in their lifetime.  I have to admit that after everything I've been through lately Friday night was definitely what  I needed to get things out of my head.  I am so grateful to have such amazing friends in my life. 

 Luckily, now I've got more time to concentrate on my blog more as I don't have to study! 

I hope you all had great weekend and relaxing Sunday!

Xoxo,

Stella

Long time no see

Hello readers (if there is any of you left there after all this time haha)
Wow. I can't believe I am actually writing here again. I had decided to leave this blog behind and concentrate on my other blog, but I kind of prefer blogger over the other one so I was thinking, what the heck, I am going to give this another chance. 
So much has changed since I last wrote here. I don't even know where to begin or if I even wanna write about all the changes here. We will see. I wanted to hide all my old posts and start fresh but decided to leave all the old posts - at least for now.

To cut short story long, here is a little recap of what has been going on with me. 
It has now been two years since I left Finland and moved to Cyprus. And yes, I am still living in here. There is no way I am going back to Finland any time soon, if ever. For holidays, yes. I can't say I will live my rest of the life here, but for now, Cyprus is the best place for me. 

Last time I wrote I was working in Mango. On February I changed jobs and that has been one of the best decisions I have ever made. I really like my job, it's something different and I find it really interesting. I have met amazing people through my work and my best friend here in Cyprus. She is amazing I don't know what I would do without her (if she is reading this, she knows who she is haha x) 

My studies are still going well. I am slowly passing my lessons and hopefully in 1.5 years I will have my Bachelors Degree and then few more years and I will finish my ACCA studies with Masters Degree.  I have 2 exams this December, hopefully will pass both of them haha! 

Hmm... what else? Well, I am just enjoying my life at the moment and trying to make best of it.

I still don't know whats going to happen with this blog, if I actually manage to keep up with posts, but I will try. I have few post ideas ready, I just need to think what kind of posts I wanna write here.
Please leave comments below if you have any post ideas or you have any questions. 
Stella xx