holidays

Easter vacation is the best. It comes in the middle of Christmas and summer, at a time when you really need it. The holidays never end up falling only on weekends so you miss out on any of them, like what happens during Christmas when 25th and 26th is Saturday and Sunday, as it will be in 2010 :-(

But Easter, Easter never disappoints. It's always a Thursday on Holy Thursday, it's always Friday on Holy Friday. And in Norway we work till noon on the Wedenesday, and we also have the Monday after Easter off. It is the longest vacation we have actually. And I'm liking it more and more each year. Empty days, nice weather, in my case, no pressure to travel into the mountains and stay in a cabin with a hole for a toilet and a freezing bucket of water as a shower, to ski all day. Just bliss.

I got my vacation today. I worked Monday and Tuesday but almost all the staff got to use their overtime hours to take the days off because out of 57 kids only 13 came to the kindergarten. But now I am gonna enjoy my 6 blank days, and fill them with ... nothing. As little as possible. And maybe finish a book and watch a movie or 5. And celebrate Hubby's birthday on the 1st. And decide what to do with my life. And decide what to do with 5 days in a row holiday that we are blessed with in May thanks to Ascencion and our National Day. 

And..... sleep.

Wedding bellZ

Z is a difficult letter too, but not as hard as X. Lucky for me I have a nice song I want to share with you. Zulu Wedding by Hugh Masekela. Unfortunately I can't find a video on YouTube with this song alone, so I found one with two songs by him; Send me and Zulu Wedding. So, you can either listen to both songs, OR fast forward to about 6 minutes. I want to have if not a Zulu Wedding, then a Ghanaian wedding one day too....

Yesterday

Let's face it. I don't have a song on X. So, I'm gonna jump straight to Y. I just wanna get through this music stuff, so I can start blogging about something else. Dear readers, any thoughts, ideas, wishes? Topics? :-)

I am giving you and OLD classic, today. Although today is already turning into Yesterday. And in one hour, yesterday will be two hours away because we are setting the time to summertime and turning the clock one hour forwards. Tomorrow will come one hour earlier than it did yesterday.

Enjoy Paul and the rest. Yesterday.

Wicked games

Hello. I am back home, hoorrahh!

Oslo was fun. And busy. The feel of the big city (big city being a city with about 500 000 people) is great. But the feeling of always being in line, having people front and back, left and right, crowds everywhere you wanna go, made me think a crazy thought: I am happy I live in little Levanger. Wow. It is a revelation. I like to live here in this small farmer town. Cos you can breathe freely and the lines in cafes and shops are not so long that you wanna kill the slow-mo's before you.

 Our gang

10 ladies spent the weekend shopping, eating, laughing at stand-up show, drinking, and the lady writing this was asked to go out and get some fresh air at around 1.am Sunday night. Yes, the angel when it comes to alcohol consumption, the calm and collected girl who sat properly on her seat in the bar, with a glass of water (trying to sober up before bedtime...), was asked by a Swedish bouncer if I would bother myself to go outside to have some fresh air. I did not have a black-out, it's not that I was so drunk I didn't know I needed air. NO. I was NOT in need of air. But, oh so friendly Swedish guy said: If you go and take some fresh air, I won't say anything. A silent threat, no? I went out, with my friend being asked by Swedish to accompany me. This particular friend had been drinking since 3 o'clock and had several bottles of bubbly behind her. AND a glass of beer in her hand. End of story.

Laura, here is Wicked Game. Unfortunately with Chris Isaac, not your friends' version.

forever friends

I am off to Oslo on Thursday morning, to have a girls weekend with my friends from High School. We have spread all over the country but still keep in touch. We were a very close group of friends, and meet every time we go home for Christmas and other holidays. But, we are growing up, and working so we can't always come home all the time as before. Therefore we have started a new tradition I hope will last for YEARS. It's called Gang Meet-up. We called us the Gang (in Norwegian of course), and we were quite a solid group of girls. Now we have decided to meet somewhere in Norway each year. In a big city that it is easy to get to, and where some members of our gang live who are able to host some, if not all of us.

The coming weekend it's time for the third meet-up, and the first I'm able to attend! Yippie! 10 out of 12 are attending and it's gonna be a great weekend in Oslo. It's been ages since I spent time in the BIG city of Norway (with 500 000 inhabitants...haha). Just that big city feeling.... Shopping, good food, stand-up, a party, good times with friends who REALLY know you, from kindergarten. It's so relaxing. You don't have to explain anything from before, you can just start the conversation in the moment, cause you are so updated about their life up to now. We might not talk so much during the year, but when we meet we are connected right away. I love them!! I love it, and I hope when we are 40 we will still have our yearly meet-ups.

But, before I go, there are 2 more work days, BUSY work days. The art exhibit is coming up fast, and it means a bit extra work, and overtime. Today I was at work from 6.30am to 9pm... Not just because of the exhibit though. Tomorrow it means overtime, and Wedensday it means overtime. SO. I am writing this post to say: Hi, I'll be really busy and then going to Oslo so I don't think there will be more posts this week. Sorryyyy....I am sure you are all very sad right now. Anyway, I'll come back stronger and better!

Tribute to Sweden

Hello.. I'm in bed, waiting for my hubby to get in so I can sleep. But he ain't coming. What to do? Blog.
Today we have come to the letter V. I knew we would need a Scandinavian song for this letter, and I landed on the lovely "Vill ha dig" by Drømhus (trans. "I want you" by Dream House). They are Swedish, they are late 90's? They were big and when I saw the video in YouTube right now, I really remembered the dancers in the white outfits... Ok, we are back in my youngster years, but you couldn't expect more of me on a Sunday night.
Good night!

U guessed it

eeey...eeeey..eey .. Under my umbrella, ey ey ey.. and so on. I'm gonna give you Rihanna's Umbrella for the letter U. But not her own version. I couldn't help falling for the Baseballs who have transformed lots of pop music into real 60's swing music. It's very funny. And well done.

Here you go! I've kicked Hubby out and spending the night with a girl friend and Mexican food! ♥

promises

Ok. I admit this "singing our way through the alphabet" is taking looong. Not as exciting as I had hoped for. Gotta get through it fast! Another Tracy Chapman song gets the honor today. It's a song that has been with me for a long, long time. And has been a very appropriate song when I have been missing my boyfriend when we were far, far away from eachother. The Promise. Love it.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Things take time in my world. All of a sudden Wedenesday is about to end. This week is gonna run fast. It has been running fast at work, cause we are really busy implementing a plan I had: Having an art exhibition at the kindergarten for the parents to come and see. It was my little, little idea which has now grown in to a biiig project, and we are gonna have a fancy vernissage, with canapes and sparkling drinks, classical live music and a lot of beautiful (and less beautiful) art works made by the kids. Yippie! So the days are flying by with Yngvild covered in paint, glue, glitter and plaster, and the evenings just disappear into nothing and all of a sudden I find myself tucked in and ready to sleep...

But I'm gonna share with you a song today. A very beautiful song from The Wizard of Oz, here sung by a young Norwegian talent, Nora Foss Al-Jabri. Just love her version and her voice. And I let myself be impressed by children with amazing talent. Somewhere over the rainbow.

Pimp my blog

Im playing with blogspot. HTML and stuff like that. Im not good. Anybody wanna teach me something?? I wanna pimp my blog...

Ghanaaa'ohh, Ghana!

GOD BLESS OUR HOMELAND, GHANA, AND MAKE OUR NATION PROUD AND STRONG!!

To all you Ghanaians out there, I congratulate you on your 53rd year of Independence.
The day will be celebrated in this house with emotuo and nkateenkwan (groundnut soup&rice balls), ice cream, Manchester United winning their game, and wifey overcoming her hungover from yesterdays lovely girls night/birthday party!

I've spent the day in bed... Lovely. Only interrupted by a walk downstairs to the supermarket (oh, how I love living next door to it) to get fried chicken for hubby cos he asked so nicely since it was Independence Day and all, ice cream as a substitute for not finding fresh fried chicken, only cellophane wrapped chicken. Now the room is being filled with smells of garlic, ginger and groundnuts, and when its half time, hubby will start making the rice balls. I'm one lucky gal!

I'm sharing with you today a new song I've been digging lately, along with many others I guess.
Russian Roulette with Rihanna. Can there BE more R's in that sentence? Cool girl. Cool song. Cool sound.

Happy Independence Day!

Childhood dreams

Hey guys, you are quiet these days. I dont have much to say either.
I'm crying my brave tears over my childhood home, which at this very moment can be viewed here.

My dear house is put out for sale. My parents are planning to move to my late grandmother's house, in the village where my mom grew up. A sensible thing to do of course, since they are only two people alone in a big house, and both daughters live far away and are not planning to move back home any time soon. But... all the memories of my childhood are from this house. I lived there from I was 6 till I moved out at 20. It's a quite significant amount of time. All the important things happened here, if you don't count the first steps, first words, first day without diaper etc.

Gosh I'm gonna miss it. Next time I go to my hometown, I don't have a home to go to. The only thing to hope for now, is that they get ALOT of money for it!! :-)

Since we are in the spirit of reminiscing, I'm posting a song today that will remind me of my early teenage years, when we were digging these hot guys! It's (drumroll!) the BACKSTREET BOYS, with Quit playing games with my heart.