God Jul!

So this is long overdue, but you can blame it on being busy with Christmas stuff.
Where to even start...how about with a belated God Jul (happy christmas) to you all!!

The perfect Christmas house, no?


Christmas is a lengthy process here. We started Christmas eve morning by meeting the family (when I say the family I mean Jan's kids and grandkids, the Norwegian family) at Adel's-Jan's first wife- grave. She died about 20 years ago from cancer. They decorate her grave with a christmas wreath and candles and wish her a happy christmas. its very sweet. After that we went to Tommy's (jan's son) for Risgrot and Glugg (rice porridge and a hot punch type drink). It was nice, but not exactly to my taste.
Then we went back to the house for a few hours before church at four. It was a nice service, but entirely in Norwegian, so I didn't understand a thing. But it was also very short, only about a half hour, so it wasn't too bad.
After church we went to Heidi's (jan's daughter) for dinner. It was us three, Heidi's family of 6 and Tommy and his son Dennis. All speaking Norwegian a mile a min and me sitting and staring at my food. I hate not being able to understand. And I always look like the grinch with no sense of humour when everybody laughs at something but me, because I have no idea what was said. Anyways, we ate a wonderful dinner of ribs and then opened gifts. It was nice, at least the part I understood.
Julinessen family

Christmas day opened with Grandma yelling at me to wake up- I remember when I used to wake up the adults, when did that switch?!? But I finally rolled outa bed and opened my stocking. She spoils me rotten, lemme tell ya. I love it.
We got dressed and ready for the day and then went to Nina's (jan's other daughter) for lunch. Basically a repeate of me staring at my food while not understanding what is said around me. Good eats though. After we left there, that was pretty much it for Christmas day. The big party was on the 26th actually, what they call "Second Christmas Day." Grandma started cooking up a storm, as everyone was coming here.

I am exhausted, so will finish this up tomorrow.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Happy shortest day of the year to you all; the sun started to set at 2pm today. Slightly depressing, but thankfully it will only get better from now on.

I am happy to report that after many weeks of awful brown grow-out, I am finally back to being a redhead again. I smell strongly of ammonia, but couldn't be happier- it's even curling nicely!!

At the moment I am sitting in Grandma and Jan's living room watching a massive snow storm outside- its beautiful! And if this keeps up, it looks like I may get my white Christmas after all.[The front of Grandma and Jan's house- though there is much more snow now!]

This afternoon I rode along with Jan and we played the Julenissen (Norwegian version of Father Christmas; basically the Christmas elf) and delivered gifts and doughnuts to Jan's two daughters and grandkids. Doughnuts are a big Christmas treat here and grandma out did herself and made them from scratch. Delicious!

The Julenissen is actually quite fascinating. Unlike Santa Clause, Julenissen can be a spiteful little bugger. He will gladly leave you a Christmas present in exchange for a nice bowl of Christmas porridge, but if the Norwegian kiddies forget to leave him some porridge, he will make their crops fail and their cattle barren. Or worse.

In Norway, you do not screw with the nissen (the Julenissen is simply one of many different kinds of nissen).Still, we should pity the little Christmas dude, because he's being pushed aside by American cultural imperialism, and is turning into the Santa Claus, who is unbearably jolly and whose most interesting sin is leaving lumps of coal lying around. One interesting fact I have learned while being here is that the Norwegian people tend to place most of the blame for Santa on the Coca-Cola company and its Christmas comercials. huh



God Jul (Happy Christmas) to all!

Prepare yourself, this one is a bit whiney

When I first planned this visit to Norway, I thought about how happy it would make my grandma to spend Christmas with her over here. She is always begging us to come visit and it just seemed like perfect timing.
But I did not realise how much it would suck not to spend the holiday at home. This will be my first xmas without my family-ever. I know I complain about them a lot, but Christmas is time for families and I really miss mine. More than I ever thought I would. And not only them, but I miss all the familiar things about home, especially now at Christmas time. I miss how beautiful my house looks all decorated and having a real christmas tree. I miss baking cookies with my mom. I miss all the familiar things and decorations that come out once a year, for all of my years.

And there is snow in the TC! It hardly ever snows in December. Not to mention the snow in Portland and Tacoma too! I hate that I am missing the washington snow. Though there is pleanty of it here, its just not the same.

So as not to finish this out with all my negative nacy-ing let me say this:
Norway is beautiful. I know how blessed I am to be here and who knows how long it will be until I come back. It is also really nice to see my grandma in her reguarl habitat and the chocoalte here is WAY better than in the US. When you see me next, ask if I have any left, I will be happy to share, though I can't promise I won't have eaten it all ;-)

While there isn't a lot of light here...

the dark can be just as beautiful. Trondheim only gets about 4 hours of daylight, since its in the northern part of Norway, but they sure do know how to light up the night.


The Christmas decorations are so pretty. Not many people put lights on the outside of their houses, but every window has a star lantern hanging in it. They are made of tin and have the most beautiful designs. And while there is a very festive tree in the photo above, tradition states that families don't put up their trees until the 23rd.

We went to this little Christmas market downtown- mostly selling food and gifts. It was a lot like the Cologne market on the South Bank.




Norway is the land of trolls. I love trolls. Most people think them ugly, but I've always been fascinated by them. While this guy was way expensive, I hope I can find a little one to bring home.
As well as trolls, Norway also boasts several different nissen, which are more like elves. The most popular is the Julenissen, or what we would call Santa Clause or Father Christmas. There is a unique distinction between a julenissen and Santa, mostly that our Santa is much nicer and if you piss off a nissen you will get what you deserve in the end.
and I dont mean a pile of coal...


More pretty pictures:





the view from my Grandma's house- you can just make out the fjord in the background. Isn't it pretty? This was taken at about 2:30pm, just before the sun started to set, which is why the mountains are a bit pinkish.

And so it ends...

I am currently sitting in the guest bedroom of my grandmother's house in Trondheim where I will be spending the next two weeks before a last night in London on my way into Seattle.
Still hard to believe I am even here. Time in London went so fast. The last 72 hours were an amazing mixture of stress (ew, finals), drinks (yay, finals are done!) and sad goodbyes to amazing people (why can't you all go to UPS?!?)
Here are some of the highlights of our goodbye party at the Rugby, nights out at the Fat Controller (our pub in Harrow) and a last dance party:















I still haven't really had time to process it all. My time in London is over. Holy crap. And i have no doubt that these next two weeks in Norway will go just as fast as the last three months did. I am still sad to be missing Christmas with my family and friends, but I am already in love with Trondheim- its just so pretty here! (not that it holds a candle to my beautiful London-I shall return!!)

More as my Norwegian adventures continue. Love and miss you all

Two exams down...

one more and a play to write.
then i pack up all my crap
then two weeks in Norway
back to the states
two weeks in the TC plus a few days in Portland
move into my apartment in Tacoma on 15 January!!!!

what a fun sexy time for us

So one of the best things about being in London is sharing it with some of the most amazing friends a girl could ask for. They are also very, very attractive. Case in point:


















But no matter how ugly we may get, I love them dearly and wouldn't want to share this with anyone else.

If you go to Oxford...

all you have to say is that you went to Oxford and people will fall all over themselves to give you a job. Or so I've been told by Kate. I am inclined to believe her.

Anyways, today Matthew, Megan, Cara, Kate and I took the bus up and spent the afternoon wandering around Oxford.
They have amazing street people in this city; like this dude ^. Yup, he is on a rope. Man, I wish I could be that cool. But I would totally fall off and break my head open, I just know it.

Our first stop was to tour Christ Church College (home of Lewis Carrol and where they film the secnes in Hogwarts' Great Hall) which was really pretty and awesome and makes UPS look like crap (but i still love it). The bits we saw were mostly student housing, oh my goodness. I would kill to live somewhere that beautiful.

We took a really pretty walk around the cathedral grounds too before it opened- cold, but lovely. We always seem to luck out with weather when we go on trips. It was so sunny today!
We met two feathered friends, who we called Frank and Lola. They were great fun.

After our lovely walk, we went back to the main campus and saw the cathedral and the bits that were in Harry Potter. It was full of tourists, of course, but on week days, students actually eat in this hall. How cool would that be?

the Cathedral and Hogwarts' great hall

After touring Christ Church, we wandered the city a bit and took in this really cool covered market. They had the most amazing cake shop. And real ice-cream milkshakes (which are freakishly hard to find in the UK)!
We tried to visit Oxford castle, but you had to pay to get in, so we said f-that and just took some pictures outside of it.

Also visited the Sheldonian Theatre- first building by Christopher Wren. There was some really pretty music coming from inside, but it was 5 pounds, so we decided to skip that and eat dinner instead. We went to a pub called The Crown where the food was cheap, but delicious. After our actual food (I had a chicken burger, it was pretty good), we got dessert and it was amazing. I had sticky toffee pudding- oh my goodness, so delicious. But Megan hit the dessert jackpot- she had two Belgan waffles, with icecream sandwitched in the middle and chocolate poured over the top. It was heaven.

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life".

well shite.
I love living in this city, that much cannot be denied.
But I am so close to going home I can taste it.
And it tastes like my moms lasagna and the Met's pasta al vodka. Like Diversion's coffee and Some Bagels.
I feel so torn between wanting to stay in this amazing city and wanting to go home so bad it physically hurts and it's all I can think about.

I also still have two papers and play to write by tomorrow morning...

Help?

Advent is here!

So in keeping with my St. Paul's theme, I went to an advent service there last night. Holy moly, if I thought the outside of that place was nice...I had seen pictures, but they didn't do it any justice. I pretty much just sat and stared with my mouth open for about a half hour before the service actually started. I got a pretty decent seat, right in front of the choir. Man, those little boys can hit notes that I could not even dream of.



It was a beautiful night, though a little darker than I would have expected for so joyful of an occasion. I love advent, it's my favourite times of the year, but I came out of there feeling less happy than I would have liked. It was a candlelight service, which was so pretty, but the music was really dark and sombre, which just kind of killed the Christmas high I was on. Oh well, the season will come despite the fact, and I promptly put on more joyous Christmas music when I was on the tube back home.

I am so glad I went and got to see the inside, as a ticket to tour the cathedral costs about 8 pound 50, which I didn't want to pay.

This is looking up into the dome of the cathedral. Pretty incredible, huh? I do not even want to think about how long this must have taken, or how hard it would be to paint on a curve like that! (I didn't take this one, I found it online. it was too dark to take a decent one last night. I barely took the one above before a porter rushed over and told me no photography)
I am so glad I went and got to see the inside, as a ticket to tour the cathedral costs about 8 pound 50, which I didn't want to pay.

Thursday is the lighting of the massive Norwegian fir in Trafalgar Square, it should be really cool. Here is a picture I found from last year's tree:



The lights have been on in the streets for about a week now, it makes London so pretty at night! Hope you all are enjoying your Christmas preparations. Happy December to all!