Brighton

Last weekend, Dima and I decided to leave the dusty, grey streets of London for a day at the seaside! I can't believe I have lived in London for three years now and never been down to Brighton, it is only an hours train ride away and we paid £10 for return tickets. It also basically exudes happiness, although that might have been the sunshine!



The pier was a short walk down from the station, and we spent a long time searching for shells and tasting the local delights 




I was SO happy to be back by the ocean, with people smiling at you and saying good morning unlike in London where you get shoved as people rush past you with stressed faces. Growing up in Cyprus I lived five minutes from the beach and it was amazing.

everyone in brighton seems to have a dog. that is probably why they are all so happy and smiley - this dog played football! 

We eventually found ourselves at the world famous pier, and we were not disappointed :)




another thing about Brighton is that everything is ridiculously cheap compared to London, even the rides (above) were half the price of fairs I have been to before. We ended up spending most of our money in the arcade..... like quite a lot...

we may have over-exerted ourselves and needed a lie down - conveniently the pier had laid out deckchairs for people needing a snooze in the midday sun!

For lunch we found a restaurant hidden deep in the streets- one thing I found so cute was that basically all of the roads in Brighton share their names with London ones - which served amazing fresh fish and mussels. We spent the rest of our time wandering around the tiny streets filled to the brim with vintage shops, eloquent bakeries and countless coffee shops.

We had such an amazing time in Brighton, it is definitely worth a trip down there, especially if you live in London which can get quite dreary after a while!
xxx

Sleep, Eat, Work, Work out, Repeat

As a model, you have to be in shape. As a stressed final-year law student, you have to have energy to do the millions of pages of reading each week and essays that come hurling at you, and your only solace is chocolate. I have to get into shape very quicky for a very important and exciting job that I really, really want so I have finally got the motivation I need to eliminate junk food and work out - hard. Also exams are coming up which means I have got to stay on top of all my uni work!

The first way of doing this is go to the gym. Obviously most people don't need to lose weight quickly, but if you want it to stay off you need to do regular exercise and eat healthily (guilty). I have been doing cheerleading which is amazing for strength building (I can now beat my friends in arm wrestling competitions) but not great for actually losing weight as there is not that much cardio in it. So I have begrudingly started running for twenty minutes a day which I really hate.



The second method is to do exercise at home - over the holidays our cheerleading posted a daily conditioning challenge which takes only ten minutes and is very effective, combining 30 seconds exercise. Here it is..

Each exercise must last a minimum of 30 seconds.

All exercise sections must be performed continuously with no breaks until all exercises for that section are complete.

1) Legs
Squat jumps (must bend to 90 degrees with chest up and arms above head)
Switch lunges (lunges on alternating legs with jumps, arm above head at all times)
Rebound jumps (straight jumps with arms above your head, pushing only with your calves and keeping your legs completely straight with each rebound)
Rock backs and tuck jump (Rock backwards onto your back with your legs in the air and immediately rock forwards onto both feet, trying to stand up and once standing up tuck jump immediately)

2)Arms
Press ups (elbows next to body, chest/boobs to floor, squeeze you bum the whole time to prevent 'sagging' and push straight up. If not normal press ups then do press ups on your knees)
Press ups with wide arms (arms at 90 degrees to body, same as before)
Diamond press ups (make a diamond on the floor using your hands (index finger to index finger and thumb to thumb) and do press ups, aim to put your chest on your hands)
Dips (hands on edge of desk/chair with body facing away, start with straight arms and bend your arms until 90 degrees, repeat)

3)Abs
Dish hold (lie flat, raise shoulders and feet slightly off the floor, hold and squeeze you abs and bum)
Sit up with twists (sit up, elbow to contra-lateral knee and lie down, repeat)
Crunches
N sits (hold dish and then tuck your body, knees to chest and then go back to dish, repeat)
Scissors (lie in dish, raise and lower opposite legs)
Plank (hold this plank with your toes UNDER your feet (i.e. do not hold plank on your toes)

4)Cardio
Jogging with high knees (knees must rise above hip height otherwise it is futile)
Burpies (Hit press up position, pull legs to elbows and immediately kick back and stand up, then hit press up position etc)
Jogging with high knees again
Burpies but lie down (do not hit press up position but instead lie down and stand back up immediately, repeat)
Jogging with high knees
Tuck jumps (arms above head, chest up, jump and bring knees to chest, must do this with feet together)

This will take you approx 10mins. You can have a 30 second break in between - there is an app on iphones called 'SIT' which times thirty seconds continuously. 



The third method I am going to combine with the above two (for as long as I can manage!) is daily yoga. Lisa posted the link on her blog; Here is the challenge. Stretching is a major part of working out which is often neglected (definitely by me!)

Also I am going to attempt to drink as much water as I can, an obvious one. I wrote a healthy eating plan this morning listing my motivation, the foods that I can eat and a checklist to tick off daily (inspired by our fabulous cleaning chart which has generated world war 3 in our flat).

Hopefully by posting this I will get some further motivation/motivate others- I definitely need all the help I can get!

Cheerleading!

After two not very extra-curricular based university years, me and my best friend decided to join cheerleading this year! We thought it would be fairly easy and relaxed... no. We had to drag ourselves to practice every Friday evening and Sunday morning for weeks on end (with some extra training thrown in during the week), to do very INTENSE exercise -  throwing people up in the air, catching them/having them land on your face, learning to do backflips and frontflips (or in my case, handstands...) and the dreaded conditioning which is intense strength building exercise so that we are better equipped to do the above.

I am not a very sporty person. But our coach was so inspiring (and terrifying), and we weren't allowed to miss a single session so we fully committed and went every week and learnt to do some amazing things with some amazing people. Last weekend we had our very first competition, which was so much fun!

We had a practice run on Friday for our friends and family..

And then rested until Sunday, the real thing! We went up to Bath University which has the most amazing gym  ever, complete with olympic size swimming pool, running track, squash courts and so on! There were about 1,500 cheerleaders there which was quite surreal but nice as they were all running around excited and nervous (just like we were!). There were many divisions and our team was level two co-ed (boys and girls).

For some reason blogger won't let me upload our video, but above is our level 6 division who recently went to compete in Florida at the world championships, they are literally incredible and help us all out so much!  Here's the link to ours... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz6IcStfQFc&feature=youtu.be

Overall we were one point off first place, placing second which was absolutely amazing, after knowing how much hard work and effort we had all put into it! Our team was mostly made up of cheer-freshers so to come second out of 14 teams was amazing! It was so nice at the competition because every team got a trophy for competing, and watching the teams jump up with excitement and scream when they were called was really nice :)

Here are a few pics from the day..
 

my amazingly talented stunt group  :)

me and my best friend :) 

It was such an amazing day, I definitely recommend joining a society like cheerleading at uni because it is just basically a lot of fun with amazing people! (and also something different to put on your cv!) 

xxx

Mahiki Mondays

If there is one place that you can count on for a good night, it is Mahiki. My friends and I go there quite a lot, and Mondays are always great (yay for making Mondays in general less awful!)

It is hawaiian themed and they take this very seriously, with Honolulu girls serving you pina coladas in pineapples and sipping from treasure chests! We normally go with Central List (tip: if you say their name at the door you get free entry and drinks on their table all night!) so get a few treasure chests and mixer/cirocs, but if you feel like getting seriously drunk their cocktails are lethal. Before 9.30 they are much cheaper too!


Everytime I have a 'Zombie' cocktail (think hawaiian style absinthe) I am guaranteed to have an amazing night! This one was no exception. My friends went for the 'Mahiki' (orange). The cocktails can be pretty pricey after 9.30, ours were around £15 but definitely worth it as one is all you need!



The treasure chests are very impressive, coming out with champagne and sparklers and fruit to nibble on! They are also pretty lethal, but very nice tasting! For my birthday, Central List organised a very special night for me and sorted out this awesome drink..



Although it is quite a posh club, I would say it is one of the more laid back and chilled ones, which is probably why we keep returning!

Definitely worth checking out if you come to London, it is not at all pretentious and a LOT of fun! xxx 

Barbados 2

So we kicked off 2014 by learning how to surf... 

I stood up on the first go! however almost immediately got hit by a giant surfboard in my leg - surfing is pretty dangerous, even for me! I got back on though :) 

We went and saw some animals at the Barbados Wildlife Reserve, which was so nice as they were free to roam around a giant jungle with the benefit of being fed daily! 

ginormous tortoises!

then kicked off the boat trips... for some reason my dad decided to book two different catamaran trips! The first one was Cool Runnings - a really fun day where we swam with sea turtles, dove down to ship wrecks and watched a beautiful sunset. We ate some great food and ended with everybody dancing on the deck under the stars!

The second catamaran trip was with Calabaza (below). They were a little bit more informative and peaceful as there were less people to accommodate, and the catamaran was so luxurious! The people on the boat were really lovely and took lots of pictures (underwater too!) for us to (cry over) look at when we were back home. We did essentially the same things on this trip as the one before, but the whole experience was completely different! We were really lucky to be able to experience both! 

 

my brother feeding the fishes! 

 

Another day we went to Hunte's Gardens, down the road from our hotel. It was one of the most magical places I have ever been - built in 2 years, in a sink hole by a very eccentric man of about 70 who lives in a little hut overlooking the beauty. There was classical music playing and you could just sit and listen to the birds singing and the music, it was amazing. 

I took the opportunity to try and work out how to use the macro lens my boyfriend bought me for Christmas here - took a few goes but eventually worked out the (very) basics! 

And that concludes Barbados! Literally the best place I have ever been in my whole life, everybody was so lovely and caring and everything was so beautiful! The food and drink are all amazing - basically it is an unspoilt paradise, and I hope to go back there someday! 

Beach porn in Barbados

Happy New Year! Over the Christmas holidays I was lucky enough to be going on a family holiday to Barbados... aka PARADISE!

I used the opportunity to finally figure out how to use my Nikon D3200 so with over 2000 pictures, there may be a couple of posts!

We were staying on the East coast, in the most beautiful hotel I have ever been to, Atlantis Hotel! With only ten rooms, and a famous and well deserved reputation for food and views, it was incredible. My bedroom was a suite (they all were) and had a living room!!! I went to sleep and woke up listening to the ocean and took hundreds of pictures from the rooftop, mainly of rainbows that came and went.

On the first day we drove to the West coast and checked out their incredible beaches, with many pina coladas and flying fish sandwiches to hand...

a rope swing, trampoline and ice berg awaited us at the Boatyard

and I got to practice some cheerleading! 

Then we drove back over East through the jungle and found the most beautiful, deserted beach! There was hardly anyone on the acres of land except a couple of fishermen, with washed up coconuts lining the shore. Throw in a sunset over the mountains and some good company = paradise. 

Then it was back to the hotel for some incredible freshly caught seafood! The next day was an unusual one, my family and I spent the last day of 2013 on segways... 

moooooo-ve

insanely amazing views

We spent a lot of time exploring Barbados' beaches - there was one everywhere you looked! This was a giant lift on Crane Beach - the 6th best in the world :)

Miami Beach, more of a local than tourist haunt was also amazing, deserted and supplied with rum punch from a little van aptly named 'Mr Delicious'. 

This concludes the first couple of days in Barbados - next time there will be less beaches!