Home again :)

My summer holiday is now officially over, and I'm back home in my apartment. The dreaded busride turned out to be quite nice this time. Not really sure what's happened, but I guess the bus routes have been changed or something, because now I only had to change buses once, and not in one of the places it used to be. And all my luggage was still with me! Yay :) Here's a better picture of all my stuff (the previous one was taken with my phone):

Because of the weight, that black bag and the big suitcase are now ready for the scrapyard... Oh, by the way, more than half of that pile is YARN! Some stuffing and finished amis as well, but mostly yarn :) I guess you can imagine Dung Beetle getting tangled up in all that, with the Velcro on her legs! She'd stick to everything and frizzle up my yarn... So I solved the problem by putting her in a plastic bag. Not the most pleasant picture! But I can assure you she survived the trip and is now happily reunited with her dung ball :)

Bollan, Glyptodon and I were all very happy to come home, but I think Piggen and the kids were just as excited! They couldn't wait to show the family pictures and tell all the stories of their summer adventures :) (I will tell you all about it in a later post, I promise!)

Yesterday I got a lot of things done, but I'm still working on my CV and I haven't applied for any jobs yet... So many details to include! I don't even have all my records of school and previous jobs, so I'm not sure what to do about that... Looked all over the apartment today, but can't find them :( But at least I got to buy math and biology books yesterday. The biology book is so cute! It has a honey bee on the cover, because the book is called Bi 1, which is short for 'biology', but it's also a pun on the Norwegian word for 'bee' ("bi", even though "bie" is most common these days), plus the ring around the '1' sort of makes it read 'bio'. Very clever on so many levels. I think if I'd been high school age I would be embarrased for the people making this book, grownups weren't supposed to have humor back then :p Almost finished reading the first chapter already, and I love it! This is definitely what I want to do :)

Tomorrow I'll go out and talk to some councellor about jobs and financial support, because I won't get payed for the last week of work until the middle of September. That's a long time without food! Well... if my blog doesn't get updated in a while (within a week or two, I think - you can survive for a long time as long as you have something to drink!), I'll propably have starved to death or something :p

Bags are packed...

And I'm sort of ready to go home to my apartment. But only sort of. I hate traveling alone, especially by bus. Have tons of luggage and I have to change buses two or three times. Always worried I won't get everything with me, or that someone else will take my bags :/ They are locked and tagged, but still... And then the buses are so crowded this time of year, all the students coming to town at the beginning of the semester. At least I'll have things to pass the time on the ten-hour bus ride. Tatting shuttles wound with thread for a new project, yarn  & stuffing to make some Bug legs, and best of all, my new laptop has batteries to last at least six hours of music and movies :D Perhaps I even get to sleep some of the way, that will shorten the trip a lot.

But, when I finally get there with my 30+ kilos of stuff, I have to drag it with me virtually uphill all the way from the bus (can't afford a taxi on a Sunday), and the forcasts say it will be 24 degrees C and bright sunshine! Whew, think I'm going to die... At least Bollan and Glyptodon are anxious to go! Wish I could be carried home in a bag, too :) (Um, you know what I mean!)

When I get home I need to put together a proper CV and start applying for jobs. Really scary stuff. Worried I can only get crappy jobs, or that I won't be able to do the ones I do get. Maybe I can't find anything at all and end up on welfare or something... I know I can probably get a job as a cleaning lady fairly easily,  but I'm not sure if I want to have that as my first option. The cleaning itself is not that bad, but I've become allergic to the gloves that are used :( I've tried wearing cottong gloves inside the latex ones, but that only helps a little... 

Plus I'm no longer a university student. Was going to take a year off anyway when I couldn't begin a Master in Arabic this fall, but now I've decided to give up on languages & linguistics pretty much for good. It's all very exciting, and I'm pretty good at learning new languages, but I've come to realize that I'll never find a job with an education like that. I wouldn't survive as a teacher, getting a PhD also includes teaching and stuff, and that's pretty much all there is as far as I can see right now...

So, I've come up with a new plan. Since I'll be working for a year now anyway, I can just as well spend the time doing something useful, like studying! :p I've decided that if I go back to the university I'll study biology. To qualify for that I need to take some math and/or biology classes at high school level. I sent in an application to a school which has adult classes in the afternoon, but they were all full, so my only option is to try doing this by myself. Signed up for an exam in math and the beginning course in biology, and we'll see how it goes. Off to buy books tomorrow, and hopefully I get to spend most of next week reading biology :) 

Well, time to have some breakfast before I go! Ugh...

My home :)

Okay, so I won't tell you the name of the place I come from, but I can show you some pictures :) (And if you are from somewhere around here, you will probably recognize the place!) This is the first view tourists get when they come to visit, in rain or sun:

They pass "the beach" fairly quickly (sorry about the blur - the picture is taken from a moving car):

Then they can stop and watch the Shelduck pair and their ten ducklings :)

Tractor eggs neatly lined up or scattered all over (many people here are farmers, or like to think they are when they find the time):

This is the part where my family comes from - practically the end of the world:

The washed up kelp rotting in the sun smells pretty awful at times...

But the birds love the stuff! At least the bugs and critters that live in it :p

A mother Mallard and her eight ducklings:

Then there's this...

The poor tourists come here to watch the birds and enjoy the scenery, but they often have a hard time getting anywhere because of flocks of sheep in the road. And they won't move until you push them with your car!

You can also meet this lovely cat:

You recognize Achilles? I know I've mentioned him before... He's not mine, but I love him! He is very cuddly and loves people, so in the summer he spends a lot of time wandering round the camping site to meet new people :)

But what the tourists really come to see is this:

The mountain and the birds that live there (well, used to live there, most of the populations are now declining rapidly due to over fishing and pollution of the birds' main feeding areas). The white stuff in the picture is not snow - it's bird poo! There are Gannets, Kittiwakes, Puffins, Cormorants, Guillemots, Razorbills and White-tailed Eagles.  Here is a pair of Kittiwakes, a colony of Gannets and a Puffin:

We can have some pretty awsome sunsets:

But this is definitely the best view of the world, from my grandmother's garden :)

Before I go...

...to visit my grandmother for the weekend (where the internet is horrible and I probably won't use it much), I thought I'd give you a little preview of some upcoming patterns :) After I got my new job yesterday I was in such a good mood that I made almost two new Dudes and started a third! Here's a mallard duck and a beaver:

I still haven't decided if they will be in the same set, so I'm not sure if a pattern will be ready over the weekend, but I'll do my best :) I'll also try to finish the next Great Big Bug for Tuesday, which will be a fly! A housefly, not a blowfly :) I think flies are fascinating, though I don't want them near my food, I love to watch them groom themselves. I have some other stuff to finish as well, plus I really want to begin my owl for The Great Owl CAL :D

Ooh, and I've also stitched up one of my many tiny cross stitch kits! It took me just a few hours to finish - instant satisfaction :D Naturally I started with one of the hedgehogs:

His nose/face is one stitch shorter than it should be, but I think that only made him cuter, so I didn't correct it :)

Well, it's past four in the afternoon, and I think my uncle will be her to pick me up soon, so I'd better finish packing. I can't believe how much stuff I have to bring just for a short weekend! A small suitcase full of yarn and WIPs, my backpack with more yarn, stuffing, a bottle of wine and my laptop, a handbag with even more yarn, a shopping bag with food, and a little laundry that I haven't had time to do... *whew* But Bollan is already packed and ready to go, and that's the most important thing :)

The beginning of my summer holiday :)

I know I've been ranting a lot about how busy I've been the past week, so I thought I'd make a little post about it :)

On Thursday last week my mother came to visit me and my boyfriend in Bergen. The next day I had my final exam in an Egyptology course. I think I did well :) Afterwards we went out to celebrate with fancy dinner at one of our favorite places.

Saturday I baked a ton of bread while my mother went shopping, and we had bread, cheese and wine while we watched the Eurovision Song Contest finale in the evening. 

Sunday we visited the botanical garden for a little while before we went to see the new Robin Hood movie. I liked it a lot. It's definitely not "men in tights", but it's also very different from the Kevin Costner version. Darker, dirtier and with more chaimail armor :)

Monday was the day we'd been waiting for. The Guns N' Roses concert in Bergen! We warmed up with lunch/dinner at the best burger place in town, and then we went to the show. The warm-up band just left the stage as we arrived, and then we waited for two hours... It was so hot in the hall that I was nearly extatic every time someone walked past me and created a little breeze! My feet and back hurt really bad, but when the band finally came on stage it was all worth it! :) 

They kept going for a little more than two hours (which was a little short compared to the other shows on this tour), but it was still great :) The show ended with fireworks, confetti, and this is how the floor looked after it was all over:

I spent most of Tuesday packing up my stuff to go home. And I have a lot of stuff! This time I only packed clothes and no books or other stuff, but I still needed to bring a lot of yarn and two bags of stuffing, since that is practically unavailable where I come from. I filled a small bag with finished amigurumis to be sold this summer, and half the rest of my luggage is just yarn! It's a little insane :)

My boyfriend stayed behind in the apartment, and my mother and I took the bus home on Wednesday morning. I slept most of the way, and didn't do half the crocheting I had planned. When we arrived home I discovered that my mother has killed my cactus! :( Poor Gustav... Another cactus, Carl, is on the floor behind the couch... (In case you wondered, they are named after the Swedish king!)

Yesterday my mother and I went to get new tattoos! Yay :) My mother got a tribal thingy on the back of her neck. I got a small one on my wrist of three Egyptian hieroglyphs meaning "Life, Prosperity, Health", and a larger one on my leg of Bollan! I thought this was a great opportunity to combine two of my favorite things, so I drew her knitting, with two balls of yarn and a crochet hook :D 

I drew Bollan myself, and the knitting and yarn I adapted from some clip-art I found online. I'm very happy with it!

I've talked to the lady who's going to be my boss this summer, and I don't have to start working until next week, so now I'm just enjoying the holiday and doing nothing except amigurumi :D

Freezing!

Got back to our apartment today, and it was just over 3 degrees Celsius inside! No time to unpack, just to turn all the heating on, and then we curled up under a pile of blankets, with hot water bottles (yes, plural!) and tea. We lit lots of candles and had a very quick dinner, and now I plan to stay in my chair until bedtime :) Poor Glyptodon had to rest on a hot water bottle, he was so cold. I still have both my alpaca hat and wristwarmers on, and I have trouble typing... It was actually warmer in the fridge! Now, a few hours later it's almost 8 degrees, practically summer :p

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, hopefully the apartment will have warmed up a bit more, and I'm going to buy lots of new school books. Always the most fun part of the semester :)

By the way, this is what it looks like when I go back from a holiday.

To start with, I pack very little yarn, a few balls only, because I know what I'll end up with... The strange thing is that I rarely need to buy colors that I know I already have, so I don't end up with several balls of colors that I use very little of. Quite practical :)

The luxury of flying...

It was going to be so quick and easy and practical... Just figure out the travel date, my mother-in-law said, she'd pay for the whole thing :) Only where I come from the bus connection sucks, so the trip to my home turned out to be only two hours shorter than it would have been if we'd taken the bus all the way (like I usually do when I'm alone), and a lot colder and more expensive..

Now, that was going from our apartment and home to my mother. Going from there to where my boyfriend's home is, is another thing. It's almost twice the distance, making the bus totally impractical. It would take something like fifteen hours, and we would still have to be picked up for an hour drive home. So plane it was. After taking the bus for an hour, a boat, and then another bus, we got to the airport, checked in our luggage and had dinner in the cafeteria. Our plane would be half an hour late, but that wasn't a big problem. We were supposed to land in another airport and get on a second plane home, but we'd have enough time there to catch it even with the delay. We thought. The plane was in the air for half an hour longer than planned because of fog and snow (remind me never to wish for a white Christmas again..), so when we landed we were ten minutes late for the next plane. Which of course was about the only plane leaving the airport on time. So we stormed out onto the runway in 13 degrees freezing, into the terminal hall and ran for at least half a mile to get to the right gate (on the other end of the airport, of course). Painful, and not very good for my asthma/bronchitis-thing. I'm still a bit wheezy today :/ When we finally landed, about 45 minutes late, our luggage didn't. We were told that it would most likely arrive with the next plane, which would be about two hours late. We were tired and cold, so we just reported our bags missing, bought new toothbrushes and went home. We had most of what we needed anyway, and our luggage would be delivered to our house the next morning. (And it did :) Yay!)

When we eventually got home, the mother (what I call my mother-in-law) felt sorry for us and made milk and honey, and then we got presents :) (The ones that weren't mailed to us because we would have to bring them with us here anyway..) I think I'll make another post about this year's presents. Anyway, I don't blame the airline for losing our bags, I think the luggage people were actually more in a hurry than we were. They had to get all the bags out of the plane, drive for half a mile, and then load them into the next plane. We just had to run.

 

Today we'll have some friends over for some roleplaying (Warhammer, in case that sounded totally weird), but I'm not feeling very good, so we'll see how long they can stay. Anyway, we'll spend the evening sitting down, and I can crochet some more mushrooms :)  The patterns will naturally be posted when they are done.

Home, sweet home :)

Home, at last :D Up way too early today, at 06.00! Had to catch a flight at nine, landed at 10.50 (about 30 minutes late), waited at the airport (the tiniest airport I've ever seen!) for almost an hour, then took the bus home (changed buses several times, too). The whole trip took about seven and a half hours. That's too long... It was insanely cold waiting outside for the bus, and it wasn't even below freezing. But now we're finally home, and relaxing in front of the TV with a glass of red wine :)

Of course the whole Boll family came with us on holiday, here they are anxious to go:

It was Glyptodon's first time on a plane, and he enjoyed the view a lot:

(The red light is because of the sunrise on the other side of the plane)

All together in my mother's livingroom:

We're going to stay here with my mother until the weekend, I think, then we'll go to stay with my grandmother. We will be there the rest of the holiday, until we go to my boyfriend's parents, where we will celebrate New Year's Eve. At my grandmother's I have a very poor internet access (33k modem, I think), so my blog probably won't be updated very often, at least not with pictures (which take several minutes to upload).

Apologies...

Just wanted to let you know that my Advent calendar won't be updated for a few days :( I will be busy packing and cleaning out the apartment before going home for the holidays on Tuesday, so I won't much have time to finish my latest projects. Plus, I have a few Christmas presents that must be prioritized, because they have to be mailed to my boyfriend's family on Wednesday at the latest. After that I'll have time to catch up, and the rest of the calendar will hopefully continue to be updated daily as planned :)

Dinosaurs & cupcakes :)

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to see the Walking with Dinosaurs "live" show based on the book and the TV series with the same name. I have seen the TV series and own the book, so I just couldn't miss this. We arrived way too early in the morning (around 7 am), so we had almost 12 hours of waiting before the show started. We spent a few hours at the Museum of Natural History (just to get to see even more dinosaurs!), where I bought myself a very cute souvenir.

It's a plush Glyptodon, a very well-armored, prehistoric relative of the modern armadillo. Of course, Bollan has now adopted him as her newest friend and uncle for her kids :) I just need to come up with a good name for him.. Suggestions, anyone? :)

After the museum we sat a cafe for hours, while I tried to do some homework. That didn't work out too well, I had hardly slept on the train, so I was too tired to do anything productive.. I did, however, manage to crochet a little, and the result is this: a bunch of half-finished new cupcakes. When I'm done at school tomorrow I will try to finish a couple of the cakes and take some decent pictures, and the pattern will of course be posted on my blog :)

Anyway, when the time finally came and the show started, I couldn't stop smiling. I just sat there through the whole thing (including the break) with a great big grin on my face. Me and all the other kids and their parents. I count my relatively uninterested boyfriend as a "parent" here, but everybody seemed to be fascinated when it all started. The beasts were great, the animatronics were great, the sounds (which were obviously inspired by Jurassic Park) were great and the music was great :) The animals in the show are all life-size, which means they range from 50 centimeters in length (one of the baby Plateosaurs) to more than 10 meters in height (the adult Brachiosaurus). In one word: awesome!

Plateosaur babies

Brachiosaurus

I would go to see the show several more times if it hadn't been so expensive (which it was, for a student, anyway). Luckily we were allowed to take pictures, but not with flash, so most of the pictures are very blurry. Still, the important thing is to know that I've been there, and at least I know what's in those pictures :p I'm really happy that I took the opportunity to see the dinosaurs, I doubt they will ever be in Norway again.

Sadly I didn't get to buy any souvenirs from the show, because they were quite expensive. Mostly it was kids-stuff anyway, but I really wanted a T-shirt... Instead I got a plastic bag. You know, the kind you get your shopping in. It's not much, but it has the show's name and logo on it, and it was free :D

More photos from the show and the museum will be uploaded tonight, after dinner and homework :)

Shopping with the in-laws :)

There hasn't been much time for crafting this weekend, as we have been visited by my boyfriend's parents, and we've been out and about every day since Friday. Did a lot of shopping for our apartment, such as glass jars for my baking stuff and a dishwashing machine. I've never had a dishwasher before, so I'm very much looking forward to not doing the dishes by hand :) We haven't installed the thing yet, because we need to get some extensions for the water tubes (or whatever you call those things)..

Even though we've been busy, I have managed to make a couple of new cupcakes, which I'll post pictures of in a few days (and patterns, of course). Tomorrow night we're taking the night train to the capital again, to see the Walking with Dinosaurs show :) So exited I can hardly wait, dinosaurs have been one of my main interests as long as I can remember. I'm definately going to buy some souvenirs! Anyway, when we get back from the show I'll try to post pictures and pattern and stuff as soon as I can :)

The weekend

This weekend my boyfriend and I were invited to my grandmother to celebrate her 85th birthday, and since it's a long trip, we decided to make it a long weekend. On Thursday we traveled north by Hurtigruten (great big ships that continually go up and down the West coast of Norway), which is the most comfortable way of getting home to my place. We travel at night, so we usually sleep most of the time. This time we got a cabin because it didn't cost extra, and I thought the night would fly by in a good bed and with a private bathroom and everything, but I hadn't accounted for the weather. Since this was one of the smaller ships ("Vesterålen"), it rolled quite heavily. I almost fell out of bed once.. So, of course I got sea sick and didn't get more than a couple hours of sleep :/ I didn't throw up or anything, so I guess that was good, but I hate not being able to sleep.

Eventually we got home to my grandmother, and spent Friday sleeping and not doing anything specific. On Saturday the rest of the family arrived, and we had dinner at a very fancy restaurant. The bill was more than 5000 NOK, which is a lot of money, but not really that bad for dinner, drinks and dessert for ten people. After dinner we went home and had cake. Well, we were supposed to have cake, anyway. Everyone were so full the cakes were hardly touched. I now have lots of leftover cake in the freezer :)

Yesterday it was back to Bergen, because I had school today. Man, the computer linguistics course is boring! *sigh* Just hope I pass the final exam so I don't have to do it all over again...

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I met this gorgeous cat when I was home :) It belongs to a neighbor of my grandmother. His name is Achilles, and he's really sweet and cuddly and fond of people. I met him once before when I was home this summer, and I like to think he remembered me :) The first time he came up to me and rubbed against my legs until I sat down and petted him, but this time he came running and practically jumped up on me. According to the owner he refuses to sit on anyone's lap, but that's not the case with me :) I'm so proud! Now, I have mentioned that I am extremely allergic to anything with fur, and especially cats, so this really should have knocked me out. But Achilles is a Siberian, a breed that is suitable for people with allergies. He scratched me a little on my thigh and waved his tail in my face several times, and I didn't even sneeze! I so have to get a cat like this :)