peek-a-boo

anybody still there?
It seems I can't improve... do I have to shut down this blog...reallY? Or wait for better days...

A room with a view

When people come to our apartement, they all comment on the view. Since we moved in, it has been the daaaark times up here in the North, when there is light, we are at work, so when we come home the view is an ocean of darkness, with the green and red neon lights of the supermarket shining like a beacon in the distance, and a lightening passing fast through every half hour or so - the train.We know the view is great, cos we can see all the lights of the city. But guess what, February just came. So did the SUN. The fact is, around here, the sun is up every day. We are not living as far North that the sun is under the horizon parts of the year. Just that.. When the weather was nice, the sun shone 2 hours a day before it got dark again. Then January came, which is supposed to be snowy and cold. But this year it came with RAIN RAIN RAIN instead. We were even hoping for spring come early this year. But no. Hello February, and hello freezing temperatures again. The weird thing is that nice weather in the winter usually means MINUS degrees. This weekend we had minus 10 and below. It resulted in this weather:

This is our view. From the coach, it was too cold to go out on the veranda. Evening, sunset, LIGHT. Cold.

Right now the sun is BEAMING and I'm sitting inside in front of the TV and the fireplace, trying to decide to do something sensible with my Sunday. We all know I suck at that. First I'm going to put down the laptop and give my hard working kindergarten fingers a manicure.
Then... Take more photos of the view?

Have a lovely SUNday everyone!

Keeping up appearances

I am not an English genious so the headline might not mean what I want it to mean. I WANT it to mean....that Facebook today made me realize something (which you all already know) - it's a f..... pink cloud. Where everyone tries to make everyone else feel smaller, by updating their status. I've done it myself. Everytime I do something good, I get a need to "tell the world". How good it feels with comments comfirming how good you are. How pathetic?

At the same time you sit there yourself, reading about other people's life. How perfect they are/their husbands/wives/their exciting lives/their great careers/beautiful children etc. It can ruin your OWN life. Can't it?

I also put it there, about my great life. I might think it sucks at the moment. But making a status update about it, is out of the question. It's only positive things that come out, although reality at that moment can be quite different. At the same time I think it's pathetic with all the updates about how bad someone is feeling. I mean, "I have a headache, poor meeee" or "I'm so sick and tired of everything" or... something else you think would be best if they kept to theirselves.

Sometimes I just wanna scream it: "Fuck my life!! I hate my job/myself/husband... I feel like the most useless idiot in the world!!" We all feel that, right? But we don't tell anyone, and that's how it should be of course. But why are we so intent on tyring to make the opposite impression? That we are all living a dream life, so that everyone else can be jealous?

Today I got a crazy thought in my head. What would happen if I actually deleted myself from Facebook? Can I? Dare I? How will it feel next time I put on my pc and don't get to see what everyone else is doing or feeling? Hmm.

Bring something new in my life

This pic is from last Saturday's snowstorm. My orchid had no idea what the weather outside was like.
I got an orchid from a good friend. January 15th. I thought: Oh, shit. I'm gonna kill this nice flower really soon! I kill flowers, that's what I do. It sucks to kill nice flowers somebody gave to me. But hey, it's still alive today!

They have reported wind tomorrow too. Another Saturday inddors on the coach? Please no.
I need to see a human being who isn't my husband. Or someone I work with, although I love them. (I love my husband too, of course!).

I need a change. But I don't want things to change. Although I wanna have more friends around me, I wanna earn more money, I wanna do something more useful each day.

At the same time I like it here, I am comfortable here, I feel at home here. But when I'm 80, will I be happy with spending my life being "comfortable"?



But I haven't been HERE all my life??? I haven't been comfortable all my life. I've been uncomfortable, on the run, insecure, not knowing what happens next 3 months. I have seen crazy new things every day. Now I see the same. I have wanted this A4-life. 2 years ago I looked forward to it. I said: No more Africa every 6 months, no more new job every 6 months. I wanted to settled. Now I am settled and wondering if it is enough for me. Is it?


Bring something new in my life. Just don't know what I really want.

Baby, it's cold outside

The view from my bed Saturday morning. Blizzard. Long time since I saw that. Kinda cool. The highlight of a crappy weekend filled with vomiting and breaking the window of my sister's car.

February gotta get better.

today

Today Ghana, D.R. Congo, Afghanistan, Spain and Norway will come to my house. Right now Spain is sleeping on our couch and I don't exactly know whether to wake him or not. We have a lot of food to make! It's finally time for our housewarming party! Will be very nice to gather so many people from different places. We have done it before and it was a success! Hubby is out of town, writing yet another Norwegian exam that will qualify him to study in Norwegian universities. Stupid tests, he knows how to speak the language, it should be up to him to study or not. If he fails it's his problem, right?

But early this morning his best buddy Spain came with the train, and he is here keeping me company and helping me cook. When he wakes up that is. I am seriously sleep deprived myself cos Hubby had to get up at 5.30 and since then I was not really sleeping, just being nervous on his behalf.  I was told by Spain to take a siesta, and he was gonna relax on the couch. I went into my bed, laid there for 40 minutes, sleep never came so I got up and drank a RedBull and ate brownies... Now I'm watching the mountain of raw material waiting to be turned into delicious food, by me. Somebody give me strength!

Levanger is lovely these days, a lot of snow, not too cold, white and clear, and the daylight lasts longer and longer. I'm already satisfied with winter and would welcome spring tomorrow if possible. But it's not so let's focus on the bright side - the sun stays up longer every day.






As I see this is becoming a very informative, and not so exciting post, I'm gonna end it here, put on some music (that might "accidentally" wake Spain) and start cooking!

Have a lovely weekend y'all!

Stupid niger slut

Hell yeah. That's me. Anonymous, you got me!
So you were reading the post I wrote from when me and hubby were in Oslo last spring. And you thought you should write something to offend me?

Guess what, I don't give a f... Even if I wrote a post on it. I still don't care. But thanks, for giving me something to write a few lines about!

Peace out!

Once upon a time

Once upon a time there was a girl who blogged. She thought it was fun to blog. She used to have long and funny and weird stories from an amazing country where everything was upside down. She could write a whole page just about a taxi ride or a trip to the market. She could blog about something as mundane as dinner or what dress to wear to church. She could blog about funny misunderstandings, frustrating things that could drive her to tears, or joyful things that made her heart dance.

She could always find something cool to take a picture of and blog around it.
She got comments on her blog. People said that she was good at writing, she wrote interesting, funny stories. People complimented her. It gave her motivation and she blogged more.

Then, she went back to the country she really belongs in. The blogging slowed down. Life became SO normal. The things that happened around her didn't catch her attention. Nothing stood out in the crowd of ordinary days. She needed blog projects to even get something down on "paper". Projects that forced her to blog every day. After a few projects, even less motivation. She came to a point where she only blogged once a month or so. Her comments disappeared, obviously. Less motivation.

She doesn't want to stop. She doesn't want to delete the blog. The blog has been her companion through some of the most crazy years of her life. It has travelled far and wide with her. Giving up the blog is like leaving a part of her life behind. She will not delete it. But will she write more? How? About what? How can she learn to be amazed and inspired by the tiny little things that happen in her every day normal life in this NORMAL (for her) country? Writing was one of the things she "HAS". Something she likes, and feels she is good at. She doesn't want to lose it. Sometimes she wishes she could make her living from something like that. She has to start blogging again, about the mundane things.

Maybe it's time? Maybe it's all the other things she has to get done throughout a day? Be an employee? Be a wife? Exercise? Clean the house? Knit baby clothes for a baby not yet concieved? Watch TV? Facebook? Watch her life pass by, without blogging? What is it?


I want to get my blogging mojo back.

It's CHRISTMAS!

Oh, well. It starts tomorrow. But in the kindergarten Christmas has been on for a long long time already. Christmas music playing, singing carols (we have to practice for a long time so they all learn it in time for the annual Christmas concert), baking...making Christmas presents. Almost get tired of it. But Sunday Christmas started in OUR new apartement. I love it and I love the apartement.

Freezing skies behind our advent star in the window. We have had at least 2 weeks with below 15 minus degrees every single day. COLD.

We have inherited alot of stuff from my parents after they sold the house this spring. I got an old desk, kitchen table and chairs, bowls AND one particular thing I requested - The painting in the pic above. It comes from my grandmother's house, where my parents now live. The painting used to hang in the bedroom I always slept in when I visited my grandmother. When I got older, I decided that THIS painting was gonna hang in my "house". And now it does, and I'm so pleased. Old things make me happy...

It's been a month since I last blogged. Last year I had a blog advent calendar. I doubt it will happen this year.

I miss the days in Ghana when just taking a taxi could be worth blogging about.

One day, in Tema:
Taxi Driver: How old are you?
Me: 25.
Taxi driver: Nooo, you can't be only 25!!!
Me: Yes, I am. How old did you think I was?
Taxi driver: 50!!
Me (horrified): Whaat?? WHY?
Taxi Driver: You are SOOO fat! So very fat. But VERY beautiful.
Me: ..............

Those were the real blogging days! Fingers crossed for Ghana 2011! Unless we decide to get one of these:
My friend made this...

Heloooooo

WE have moved to a bigger apartement! We have been without internet for 2 weeks. And I haven't really missed it! At all! But now its back and I'm glued to the screen. Blah. :-)

Cake Boss

On TV there is this programme about this bakery in New York which makes amazing cakes.

So I decided to do the same. :-) My nephew turns 2 tomorrow. Terrible two's they say. I think he is adorable of course, and so smart and talkative and every day he says something new, and I'm just as shocked each time.
He lives on a farm, the father is a farmer, he is a boy and is naturally extremely interested in tractors. He knows the name of all the equipment, and his favorite thing is the machine that ...makes balls out of hay and wraps them in plastic. Hum. I'm sure those are two different machines... ANYway. I had to make a cake for his birthday party.
So I decided to go beyond my abilities. That meant spending 6-7 hours on Saturday night, baking, building, decorating. Building you say?

I'm so proud of myself. My nephew though, said "firetruck" when he saw it. Don't really know how to feel  about that... The white marshmallows are supposed to be the hay balls...by the way. He immediately reckognized those though!

Nothing but the truth

I just re-read an amazing poem my blogging friend Nana Yaw once wrote. It is as true as it can get.
It's about loving somebody.

You have to view them
Like a star on TV.
Do not examine them
Under a microscope.

Examining your lover under the microscope is what we do all the time, Searching for flaws and pointing them out. Trying to change them. How often do I come home from work, exhausted and wet from the rain that keeps pouring down, and see hubby as a STAR? What are the first words that come out of my mouth?

Odo, you are a star ♥ 
Thanks for dinner :-)

Lucky me!

I went to a dear friend and colleague last night. For some knitting lessons and some soul food. I am knitting. But I'm not really good at it. But I want to get good. Sissel helps me with that.

She is REALLY good at it! Knitting, sowing... all kinds of handcrafts. She has a whole room full of yarn, fabric, sowing machines, all kinds of scissors, needles, knifes...and a big working table. I'm so jealous of that room!

That room is also constantly full of finished products, that she gives away or sells. Yesterday she just gave away two beautiful things. Just like that. To ME!

Happy days

My blogging has been very down lately. Too much other stuff on my mind, and work feels like it takes over everything and everyday. But I am enjoying it, dont get me wrong. It's just very busy.


Now over to the good news.

We are moving. For those who have read my blog for a while knows me and Hubby have lived in a TINY, crappy, cold apartement for way too long. We have been searching high and low for a perfect apartement for ages. One that is big enough, central enough for two car-less people, and cheap enough for two cheap people :-) And finally we found it. I hope. We wanted to buy but it was too expensive and risky, and when my mom said they rented the apartement I grew up in for 10 years, (and they were in their 30s), I dont feel so un-accomplished for still renting at the age of 27. I feel it's connected with being a student, renting, but who cares... At least it's something we can live with, financially. This apartement has 2 bedrooms, recently renovated, it has a fireplace (WARMTH), electrical appliances..even furniture could the landlord get us if we needed something. And it's close to work, and close to town. Now we live in the MIDDLE of town. I will miss not having the supermarket 20 metres away, miss not having the post office right there, the train station... But where we are gonna move is actually really central, for those in Levanger who lives far from town. I feel good. Can't wait to pack!

Other good news. I have known my husband for 5 long years. On Thursday it was the anniversary for the first time we met. I'm not one of those date-freaks that remember every little detail that has happened through our relationship. The only reason we remember the day we first met, was cos it was on an information day for exchange students at the University of Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania, and I wrote about that in my Norwegian blog back then. Anyway, this is what I came home to on Thursday:

My favorite magazine, and chocolate! He knows me well. I baked him a carrot cake in return... <3
Food = love. Appearently.

Tomorrow a good friend is coming to town, and my 4 best girls will be gathered tomorrow night with red wine and good food I guess! Looking forward to it.
Tonight I had another wonderful friend over for "kveldsmat". Supper maybe is the word in English. The menu was very Norwegian. Rolls, sausage, ham, cheese, jam.. and hot chocolate. Mmm. I love my friends. She has a little bundle of joy in her stomach and I'm so excited fot IT to come out :-)

Anything else positive to write about?

As I said in the last post, it has been a tough September and now I'm writing about all the good stuff to convince my brain I am actually a very lucky and blessed person and I should focus on the good and be happy about it! LML as the teenagers appearently say!

Another thing to be happy about
<--
The world's cutest boy helping auntie bake!





Have a good weekend!

It's been a bad day, please, don't take a picture.

not a good week.

not a good month.
 

Sunday morning Sun is Shining

Guess I need a new project. After the summer my motivation has been at the bottom. Work has taken it's toll on me, I've changed group at the kindergarten, I now work with 12 babies, all born in 2009. That is work! The parents are surprised we are still smiling at the end of the day, taking care of 12, while they only have 1 to "deal with". :-) But they are so adorable and step RIGHT into your heart after a few days of knowing them. They NEED you and that really gives you something.

Well, enough about that. I never wanted my blog to be reciting my daily life. I have to write something with meaning, not just go...: Today I went to bla bla bla, and did bla bla bla. Therefore, I need projects. Give me some.

Today I'm gonna climb a mountain. I need to get something out of my weekends. Last weekend I was sick, the weekend before I was sick, yesterday I was having the worst headache of my life. Today, me and a friend are gonna climb 800 metres in sparkling September sunshine!

This is my nephew. No other reason to put his picture in this post, apart from him being the cutest being ever. ♥

mamma mia

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMY!! 

This is my mom. Tomorrow is her birthday. Yay. Here she is cleaning cloud berries my dad went to pick. My mom lives far away. Hope she comes to visit soon! :-)  ♥ ♥ ♥

Home, sweet home

Hey guys.

One week ago I came home from my lovely vacation. The first week of vacation was busy, Oslo, Germany, back to Oslo in one week. The second week was all about being home in my parents house. Although my parents house is my late grandmothers house. They sold THEIR house in April and moved into my grandmothers house, in a beautiful village outside my hometown. I am always awestruck when I come back there. The air, the nature, the tranquility, the smell of the ocean, the beauty. It's just a perfect place, and when the sun shines, it gets even better. It is a place that makes me want to take walks. Im not much of a nature girl, although being Norwegian appearently is being a nature loving tree-hugger. Well, I'm not. Nature is nice, but I don't drop everything to go be with it. But in the village, called Ekkerøy, the freedom out there really does something to me. When I'm there, I get crazy thoughts in my head to move back home ... I don't wanna go live in the North with 10 months winter, and 2 months supposed summer.
It is beautiful to come back.

I thought coming home for the first time to a different place than my childhood home, was gonna be weird. I thought I was gonna miss OUR house. I drove past it once, saw new cars outside it, a new mailbox and other things. It felt weird, wrong. And right there and then, my childhood home was gone for me. I don't think I'll be passing by many more times. I won't be walking down the street I spent my childhood and youth. Home is where the heart is. Home is where my parents are. Home is that beautiful, little white house by the beach in Ekkerøy.

My grandparents who lived in the house

My friends posing in front of the mighty ocean.

 Life on my beach.

Wish I could have stayed a month. But that dream life is already a week of reality away....

I am here.

And here.

And I sleep here. In this house. And in the top window I sit on the computer. And look out at the sea.

If you need your soul to be at peace, come to Ekkerøy.

HOLIDAY!

I have HOLIDAY! 21 glorious days! Yay me.
The first real holiday day was today. Slept in, long breakfast, went to the banks to check if I can get a loan to buy an apartement (iiih), bought a new wall clock in the second hand shop, found a new (old) coffee table in the second hand shop I'd like to get, visited my very cute, sick nephew and gave him grapes, but he only wanted ice cream, made a nice dinner, tried to do some sensible house chores (tried!!), watched senseless realities, ate ice cream, watched Alice in Wonderland with lovely hubby, and now - geek time for both of us before bed. And another holiDAY containing nothing known so far apart from a meeting with a councelor in the bank (help).

From Friday on, I'll be on the road. To Oslo, Germany and my beloved hometown, mommy and daddy!

Uncle and nephew kicking the ball around. On the beach. Summer!!

Yey for HOLIDAY!!