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Norway you are very pretty but you have spent the last year kicking my arse. Maybe you can give me a break now? være så snill!

Friends

Yesterday I went back to the norwegian course and what a difference from when I first started!! I remember feeling so nervous that first day. I instantly hated the look of everyone on my course and came home announcing to Henrik, "Ugh, I hate it! I'm not going to make friends with any of these people. I shall learn norwegian and nothing else!" but yesterday I met up with all my friends/coursemates and we hugged/kissed and chatted and it felt nice to have the whole gang back together.
I have made some very nice friends at school and feel so happy to have all these people in my life now. We are all from different corners of the globe, with totally different backgrounds but I've realised that no matter where you are from, what religion you are, we are all the same. We are all struggling to find where we fit in Norway, we are all trying to integrate, we all want a job,we all miss our old lives/friends/family and we all just want to be happy.

(pics from Skagen, Denmark)

End of holidays

Summer holidays are now over for us. I'm back to school on Monday and Henrik back to work. What an amazing summer it has been. I think my best summer ever.Having the cabin to visit every weekend has been a dream come true (and I hope we can carry on visiting til at least October before the winter sets in) We just came back from Denmark last night after a lovely holiday in Skagen. Once again, I loved Denmark!
More pics tomorrow from our trip, I have a pile of washing to attack!

Trip

We have been in Wales & Liverpool visiting my mum and stepdad. I had no idea Wales was so pretty and filled with so many castles. Henrik is a total castle boffin (history in general, and of course he loves Tanks!) so we spent many hours at Conwy Castle (as long as there is a shop and a cafe I'm pretty happy to be dragged around these places!) Tomorrow we will take our last little trip of my summer holiday to Denmark (and maybe visit a castle?) before I'm back to norwegian classes on Monday. It's been a great summer....

The good life

I had a dream last night, and in that dream I was talking norwegian! Yikes! It's even infiltrating my sleep! I'm even thinking in norwegian sometimes. What about you? Do you think in your mother tongue or your adopted language?
I can feel autumn in the air and it's freaking me out as I'm loving summer so much and don't want it to end. I dread the long winter especially now I know what to expect!
Fleamarket season will start up soon,my friend Jessica arrives from England today for a visit, we are going to England on Sunday, Denmark on the following Thursday and back to school on August 22nd. Life is nice and busy. I've been here 11 months and things are good.

I can now speak norwegian. It's official! I'm not being show-offy but I have decided (Yes, me) that I'm not doing too badly! Yesterday I took two friends to the cabin for a girls day. We swam in the fjord, we bbq'd,drank coffee and gossiped a little.Nothing special there I hear you say but we actually spent 8 (yes, 8) hours speaking non-stop norwegian. We had no choice but to speak norwegian as Antonella (from Croatia) speaks no english at all so it forces Vindhya and I to speak norwegian (we normally speak english to one another cause if we are alone it feels so wrong to speak norsk!) It felt really good to speak so much and be understood (mostly) and I found it hard to switch the norsk off when I arrived home (but soon had to as Henrik was telling me all about how he had accidently blown up his remote control speedboat in the living room on my Ercol coffee table!)
Above pic of a fence made of Ski's. Those norwegians can't get enough of their ski's!

Happy weekend folks!

no rain

It was supposed to rain today and I planned to stay home all day cleaning our grubby flat but the sun is now out and its boiling hot. I should stay home and carry on with my boring cleaning plans but the weather is far too tempting. I'll save the cleaning til the next rainy day.
(above pic taken on a day when it wasn't supposed to rain so we planned a BBQ and went ahead anyway!)
Happy birthday Vindhya!!