28 Dec 2013

Travel! England!

 Even though I will not be travelling with this train line

and there will be no passing of Lostwithiel (a romantic sounding name)

I am going to England today! (Fingers crossed against bad weather and cancelled flights). There will also be plenty of train travel, as I am going

Gatwick Airport-Bristol today
Bristol-Reading Monday
Reading-London Thursday
London-Gatwick Airport Tuesday

ANYWAY holidays in the real sense are coming up and I am excited!

27 Dec 2013

Andreas og Dina

 or Dina and Andreas

 My relatively new, tiny nephew

Spent his first Christmas being adorable in all the ways

So, I've just returned from a Christmas at my sister's house. I spent every night listening to my niece's sleep talk, and every day playing hide and seek ("auntie, you go hide in the wardrobe and I will try to find you"), eating all the food and being eaten myself by my nephew, who tries to bite everything that gets close to him.

Tomorrow I'm off on adventures!

25 Dec 2013

All the Christmas

 So here's our Christmas tree

 Decorated by yours truly

With all the decorations we've made through all our years at school, my sister, my brother and me.

24 Dec 2013

Merry Christmas

says Evil Santa Claus Decoration

and says I, to you all!

23 Dec 2013

Baking again

 No, just more photos from the same session

 And here are the kakemainna (cake men) (yet they're neither cakes nor men)

 My grandmother Ninna using her 80 + years of experience

"Now I'll make a cat" she says. "I think we need more cats."

My grandmother is brilliant, both at baking and telling stories. She tells me she used to bake two batches (and much bigger batches than the one we usually make) of these cakes, hide one box of cakes in the cellar, and give the rest to her husband and four children, because they were so fond of them and would finish them all way before Christmas. I think this method came about after some years where she had to do all the Christmas baking twice, because they'd managed to eat it all in the beginning of December.

If anyone's wondering why the text format of my blog has been looking a bit odd lately, it is because I still haven't gotten a new keyboard, and have to copypastevery letter 'e' into the text. This means copying from different fonts and sizes, and changing it afterwards and hoping Blogger will understand it, which it doesn't always do.

Also,
tonight, the 23rd of December, is "the night before the night" in Norway, as we celebrate Christmas mainly on Christmas Eve. This means that I am going home to my parents tonight, to watch this film at 9 pm (and you may ask why all of Norway is watching this film about NYE on December 23rd, to which I will only answer that we have a lot of weird Christmas telly traditions):



Snow again

 Last Saturday, I went to the top of the mountain

 Looking down at Tromsø from above

With these two lovely Guatemalans whom I was showing around

22 Dec 2013

Oslo in December

 At least on the first of December, the weather was brilliant

 I went to the market at Birkelunden, where half the wares seemed to have fallen off the backs of lorries

 Then went to a cafe with two of the girls I went to Nicaragua with

And only photographed one of them, Line, because she was sitting opposite me

I also spent a lot of time with my friend Maja, as mentioned earlier,  met another of my Nicaragua-girls, met my friend Samantha from Zimbabwe, relaxed and drank all the tea in the world.

Can you tell I've just gotten around to editing photos?

Snowstorm

The view outside my house, December 3rd

I'd left Oslo in a summery (almost) 7 degrees and sunshine, and came home to this in thevening. Full storm, although you can't really spot the wind...

20 Dec 2013

SURPRISE

Me and my little brother last night (photo: Tore Johansen)

Last night (Thursday), I was coming home (to my new house) from swimming, after a long day of work and back and forth and general stuff, when I got a message from my mum that my brother was on a surprise visit for thevening, and that I should come home (to my parents' house) as quickly as possible. You see, my littlbrother lives at Svalbard, almost two hours flight away, and will be working over Christmas, and we were prepared not to see him between November and February. 

So I packed all my things and went home and we had a tiny Christmas celebration and charades, and I said goodbye to him this morning outside my work and felt like my younger brother (of only 19, will be turning 20 by thend of January) has grown up a little.

This was the post of all the parentheses.

17 Dec 2013

Baking again

with my grandmother, who's 86 years going on 87 (photo: John Harald Johansen)

last Friday, I was baking Norwegian Christmas cookies (kakemainna) with my grandmother Ninna, something which has become quite the little tradition from the past three or four Christmases. We've become a very good team, finishing thentire operation in less than two hours, leaving us with just enough cookies to survive Christmas.

Now there is Christmas in every sentence in this blogpost, and I am happy (one week left, excited!).

9 Dec 2013

News

from the day we got internet in my house in Falmouth, October 2010

1. I have a house that I'm renting with four others, only one of which have moved in.

2. I now have internet in my house! Almost as happy as on the photo above.

3. The reason I went to Oslo was to go to the Global Dignity evaluation meeting for all the district leaders (yes, I was one of them), and after that, go to a formal(ish) dinner at the Norwegian Crown Prince's residence. Yes, I shook his hand. Yes, it was exciting and very pretty and not too lavish.

I think that's about it so far... Getting ready for Christmas now!

1 Dec 2013

Majajajaja

 Dancing a Norwegian Christmas song (På låven sitter nissen) at Christmas 2010

 Visiting the Vigeland sculpture park in summer 2009

 Housewarming our house in Falmouth, autumn 2009

Waiting for the whale meat to cook, summer 2012

I've been staying with my friend Maja this weekend, after my other friend fell ill. We've known each other since we were two of the three Norwegians starting our photography studies in Falmouth in 2008. Then we moved in together with three English people for our second year, and ended up living together those last two years of our studies. I've been seeing her more than our other housemates, since I go to Oslo now and then. Still, when we met yesterday, it had been more than a year since we saw each other last.

And yesterday we were back in the sofa, having a late Saturday breakfast, watching Friends and going back in time.