Christmas movies

My two favourite Christmas movies of all time are "Love actually" and "Holiday". They are both entertaining and sweet, perfect for a cold evening.

First movie - "Love actually" tells us 10 different love stories. There's Mark who is pathetically in love with his best friend's wife, Harry who seems to be happily married but is starting to get attracted to his co-worker or Daniel who's trying to help his stepson get an attention from the most popular girl in school. As we get to know all of the characters, we can see that some of them are related to each other in some way which makes it even more interesting. This movie is about all differents kinds of love, it can make you laugh, but even tough it is a romantic comedy, some of the stories may really touch us and show us how bittersweet and complicated human relations can be.

My second favourite Christmas movie is "Holiday". Even though Christmas isn't very important topic in this movie, this is still my every year must-watch. It tells a story of two girls - Amanda and Iris, who decided to swap houses for Christmas in order to get some rest and forget about their problems. It turned out that this short change of houses helped them change their lives - of course for the better. This movie is an absolute perfection - it has great actors, sweet and funny storyline, incredible music composed by Hans Zimmer. Even backround plots such as the story of an old, legendary and eccentric scriptwriter Arthur are very memorable.

Why did you buy me that?

With Christmas approaching we are all looking for a perfect Christmas gifts for our friends and family. When I was a child, it was simple - I didn't have to buy any special presents for anybody - I was the one who received them. Now it's not that easy. As much as I love giving gifts and make others happy, very often I have absolutely no idea what to buy. Usually there are so many things in shops that I'd love to buy for me or for my family, but it seems like with the end of November everything interesting suddenly disappears. But I'm not the only one who has this problem. From time to time every one of us have a lot of troubles choosing the best present. And everybody has gotten a really bad gift at some point. There's even a site where you can submit a photo and a brief story about this kind of gift - it's called whydidyoubuymethat.com. Some of the things presented on that site are funny, some of them are just really weird, but they all show how difficult it is to buy and sometimes even to receive a gift.

It's tea o'clock

In the East Asian cultural sphere tea is very important part of people's everyday life. Making tea is considered an art and is called Tea ceremony. But it's not just about special sets of rituals and gestures - researchers are discovering many health benefits of different types of teas.

Here's a short list of some of the reasons why you shoud start drinking tea:
-black tea: may protect lungs from damage caused by exposure to cigarette smoke and reduce the risk of stroke
-green tea: helps you loose weight by boosting your metabolism, contains an antioxidant known as polyphenols which helps you fight against aging and promotes longevity
-white tea: protects against cancer, heart disease, and stroke, helps you lower your blood pressure

Brain power

As unlimited and surprising our brains can be, they still remain a great mystery for all of us. But even though we're not sure how our brains really work, we know enough to realize that we can easily boost their power. There are many ways of improving our abilities to think fast and remember a lot. I took time to try some of them and I found a few which work really well for me. First of them is eating "brain foods" - I think it should be the very first thing to do when trying to improve our brain's power. Paying attention to what we eat is extremely important cause it affects not only our brain but our body in general. Eating healthier can help us concetrate better, it gives our brain extra energy and it has a huge affect on our general mood. Sleeping well it's also very important - it gives our body time to rest, it reduces stress and gives us the energy we need. I can often observe that whenever I don't have enough sleep I can't concetrate and stay focused on anything, I'm easily irritated and I'm not capable of learning anything. Third of boosting a brain's power is solving puzzles and brainteasers - it's not only entertaining, it's also a great opportunity to use different parts of our brain and practise all different types o skills in non-tiresome way.

Growing up

Many kids look forward to being an adult. They dream about being on their own without patronizing teachers and parents who always know best. But very often the moment they enter into adulthood is the moment they realise that getting what you want always comes with strings attached. Becouse when you have to take the responsibility for all your actions, when you're forced to decide about your future on your own, is when you really start to appreciate being a child. Many teenagers or young adults don"t really know what to do with this freedom they were striving for. They feel overwhelmed and frustrated, scared that they won't live up to expectations imposed by society. Very often they're not even sure what they want to do with their life. On the other side, turning into an adult may feel like a great adventure. It's the time when we're very enthusiastic, we dream big, it seems like the sky's the limit. Nevertheless, i don't see a point in being in such a hurry to reach adulthood, I believe it takes time to grow up and there's no need to rush it.