Today my baby brother turns 20, and what hits me is that I can remember when he was born, which means that we are both quite old. My brother lives far away, at Svalbard, so maybe we can celebrate our birthdays together sometime in March! Anyway. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TORE!
I've told you before how much I like visiting cemeteries in different countries,
And now I got to see a new one in London
With all the crawling ivy, fallen gravestones, and narrow paths through the woods that I could wish for
I was very happy about going to Abney Park Cemetery. I'm still interested in the gravestone at the top, seeing that the man had two wives, and that the second wife wasn't buried anywhere near that I could see. I will probably drag my mum and sister back there when we go to London again in May (yes, yes, yes).
Then I had a Norweg meetup with Tora (who now lives in London) and Maja
Before Maja left, and Tora came with me and Kayung to Brick Lane
Or, really, to this tea shop in Bacon Street (yes, really) which has the best chocolate cake and a badly trained dog which will eat said cake if you're not aware.
Oh, and in real time, I finished a very busy week with the film festival and work, and then continued with the work, and if all goes well I shall be flying off to Oslo today for a weekend of Red Cross Youth Instructor training.
As you can tell, there were card games. There was drinking. There was dancing. There was hugging, probably some singing, eating of roast and drinking of Aquavit, and a little bit of fireworks seen at a distance. What really mattered was being back with my Falmouth crowd again, and it mattered so much to all of us that we arranged to meet up in London as well come weekend after... More to come!
I have been taking very few portraits of the people I've been with, and far more of food and games and ginger beers - all nice things but sadly not as interesting in hindsight...
After the M Shed, we went walking a bit in town, eyeing up this big silver ball
Then went for tea with the Emma and the Lucy (here: Emma)
Had tea from multifloral cups and pots
Had dinner, went to a pub quiz, came in second and got mulled cider for our 2nd price voucher
And then... we went home, packed, and left for Reading the following day. More to come!
(In realtime, I'm back in Tromsø, working daycare and volunteering at the Tromsø International Film Festival and watching films) (Also, I've spent too much time on this blog post because of our bad internet, so my excuses if there is some time before the rest of the photos from my holiday come up)
and my Norwegian mind was mystified by all the sunshine
so we went inside to the M Shed, a museum about Bristol, here represented by milk bottles
and a guillotine hand-crafted by a French prisoner after the French revolution
but also Wallace and Gromit, who are apparently Bristolian (this doesn't come through in the Norwegian versions)
Real props from the Were-Rabbit, I was probably too excited about this
Maja and I stayed with Emma and Lucy, who have recently moved there, two nights before going to Reading and Karla and New Year Fun Times. More photos to come!
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.
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 copypaste every 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):
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?
I'd left Oslo in a summery (almost) 7 degrees and sunshine, and came home to this in the evening. Full storm, although you can't really spot the wind...
