I had three job interviews last week and got two rejections and one place is going to let me know next week. I also got two small jobs (2 x 3h/week) teaching/tutoring Polish. I'm really excited about that, because there are few things I'm as passionate about as Polish language (and culture). So that's going to be a lot of fun and some money. Ironically more than I make now, working ~25h a week.
Olek has exams in February (keep your fingers crosses for him) and when he's done, we're finally going to do something about our bare walls and (still) soulless apartment. I really want to get this or alternatively two of these four our hall. We have nowhere to sit down now and apparently I'm secretly 80 years old and hate putting on my shoes standing up or sitting on the floor. I also want to paint some of the walls more interesting colours than white and we'd love to get a moose and cow moose wall tattoo thing above our bed
Kinda like these, but ideally with a moose cow as well. We're considering painting the heating pipes in the kitchen/dining area red, because the kitchen itself is also read, but leave the wall behind it white. We've seen something similar on a TV show (bad photo, the one I loved had green pipes and radiator) and fell in love with it. Here's another example but with weird colours. I think it would be a good way to take up the colour of the kitchen, which is open to the dining area (divided by a bar-thingie), without overdoing the red. Seeing as the pipes are on the opposite wall, I want to get a picture of red pepper or chillis. Examples 1 2
Ok, that were a lot of links. I'm going to add one more: Here is the floor plan of our apartment. Our kitchen is closed to the hallway and we have the dining table where the corner sofa is in the floor plan. The pipes are in the corner (behind the sofa)
I should also go back to my university city, ideally in February still, and hand in the topic for my thesis so I can really be done with everything by the end of September. Strangely enough, after I've mostly worked for almost a year now, I'm kinda looking forward to having more time to write now. I hope I can keep up that motivation and actually enjoy working on my thesis.
I've been thinking some more about the fake-wedding thing (ok, I know,). I do really see why you can consider a "second ceremony" fake, because you can't have a ceremony to become something you already are. I really do understand that. But when you think about it some more... Olek and I are married in front of the law. We could have the same last name and we can file taxes together, and so on. But we are not married in the eyes of the Catholic Church (to pick an example relevant to at least one of us). Us having sex is still considered a sin, theoretically Olek isn't allowed to recieve Communion because he can't get absolution, because he's living with me and therefore exposing himself to temptation (or something to that effect). We could get divorced and Olek could get married to someone else in the church. If we ever want to have a Catholic religious ceremony, we'd still have to attend a marriage preparation course. If we had a child now, there would be some priests who would refuse to baptise it because to them, it was born out of wedlock.
So if we ever have a religious ceremony, it would make us married in the eyes and "law" of the CC. That would be very real.
That said... I'm not religious at all and while Olek is somewhat Catholic, it's more out of tradition than actual regard for all the outdated rules.
A girl I went to school with got married to her (now) ex in his mosque, but they never had it legalised. If they had gotten married legally, I wouldn't consider either wedding fake. Speaking of which, I'm wondering if there is some kind of islamic divorce thing or if they just broke up and stopped being married without a divorce. (23 would probably know this. Maybe you can enlighten me here?)
Ok, I guess that was it for today. This week will be my last week at the internship and I'm planning on making High Hat Cupcakes for everyone. I've never made them before, so I hope it won't be a total disaster.
I will say that people's perspectives on 'fake marriages' are very dependent on your upbringing/location. I also agree with you completely.
About the Islamic marriage thing:
I can only speak from my experience living in a predominantly muslim country. There are two phases to a marriage here: the "Fatiha" (Fatiha being the very first chapter of the Qur'an), also called "Nikah" (but that's a terrible word that we don't use over here because although it comes from the Qur'an, it basically means fucking :S ) which is the religious wedding ceremony, which can take place either at a mosque or at the bride's parents home. It's just the gathering of men from both families (and close male friends) at which an imam is present, and he explains to the attendees what marriage basically is (although the bride is never present, nor is any woman, so good job, imam) and then they read the Fatiha verse. And just like that, you are considered man and wife in the eyes of God.
The civil marriage (which takes place at city hall) is just as important to the marriage process. In countries like mine it's actually the most important part. You can be married through the Fatiha but you're not really recognized as such by the law of the land. I'm really glad that it's the case as it proves that we do have some secular roots to our society.
Anyway, the main difference between the two marriages is that once you get married at city hall, you have to get a divorce to break it off. If you are just married by imam it's much easier: you gather a few men (always men
So I'm thinking that's what happened to your friends. Since they never bothered with getting a legal court-house wedding, it's likely they wanted to live together but couldn't since the guy is muslim, so they did the "nikah" thing symbolically and then when it didn't work out, they broke it off.