Aurora

After bathing at Huk today I had to run by Aurora to pick up my camera. I had a feeling that there was no way she had left the camera alone and man I was right. Thanks for the awesome and sexy photos Aurora!

Aurora has two blogs and you can find them -here- and -here-

New years bath in da Oslo fjord

A few days ago my mother had the most brilliant idea ever. Let's go bathing in the Oslo fjord! After bugging me I finally agreed. She posted it on Facebook and bam(!) my uncle and neighbour joined in. Unfortunately/luckily I got sick and couldn’t go bathing with them, but here is some photos and a -video- of it all (only for my facebook friends, sorry)

Silje and I use any excuse to work on our tan!

I’m not sure what happened to the last photo there =P

Pictures from the night out

I don't think the rest of them should be shown to the public =)

My little christmas

This Christmas has been weird. It's been different from what I expected, but still very cosy and nice. This year’s "catch" has been good as well. To be honest giving away presents is way more fun than getting them. On the 24th is when Norwegians celebrate Christmas and also when we open the presents. On the morning on the 24th Silje and I got on the train with my cousin Torbjørn and his girlfriend Sara to my aunt’s house in Drammen. I had a lot of fun with our traditional rice porridge with an almond in it. Just like when we were kids everybody got an almond and a little gift. Silje and I got a massive bag with us filled with food and presents. It was quite a hassle dragging it on the train, but it was totally worth it. We got home and Silje started making Christmas dinner for when mum, dad and Tobias would come home from the Canary Islands. I stood next to her and tried my best to look good and not do anything. at about 9ish at night the rest of my wonderful family came home. They we're disgusting and tanned. I was almost not happy to see them again. After dinner we opened our presents. Silje didn’t have time to buy gifts for mum and dad so we added her name on my presents to them. How sneaky of us. 
On the 25th Silje decided to drag me out clubbing. We ended up on Blue Note with Patrick and my old boss Trond Erik. I had a lot of fun and too much to drink. 
I suffered through a family party the next day. Naah, I had a lot of fun and family is always nice to see, just not when all you want to lie in bed and die =)
Today I spent the day with Aurora before going home and realizing I’ve left my camera at her house and Sandra came over here for a sleepover.

Mr Christmas tree

Today Silje and I bought a Christmas tree.

Lille julaften

The day is here. The day before Christmas eve! Lille julaften is what we call this awesome day in Norwegian. There are several reasons why I'm loving this day. First of all Silje is coming home today. We have so much to do like buying a Christmas three, last minute shopping and putting up all the decorations and also wrap up the last presents. Woo. It's going to be a busy day. There is also more stuff going on. Its 50 years since this awesome woman called Rutt was born. She's been rocking her way through a tough life, but has always pulled through whatever has tried to pull her down. She has given birth to 4 awesome children (one of them is slightly more awesome than the others) and is married to this really cool dude that's super tall. I like to call her Mom. So this is for her, since she's done such an amazing job at raising me (can’t say she did the same great job with my brother but still..). I love you mom and I hope you'll keep on rocking for 50 more year this you hit those awesome 3 digits!

No way, Norway

Waking up yesterday was weird. I was sure I was in Connors bed in Scotland and rolled over to cuddle before I smashed my face into the wall and was in extreme pain for 10 minutes. I had to walk out on the veranda for a while to look at the view I've looked at so many times before. It was beautiful but so cold I thought my toes were going to fall off. After breakfast Sandra and I went shopping at StorO after waking up at half past 3 in the afternoon. I'm not even sure how we slept for that long when we went to bed around 1. At StorO Sandra bought the last of her Christmas presents and I bought a new keyboard. It's not really fancy because (just like a true student) I bought the cheapest one I could find. After shopping we went to Sabine with a bottle of wine each. It was a really cosy night with lots of talking and a bit too much wine. There is basically no snow at all and I am really disappointed about that. I'm having trouble finding the Christmas spirit, but I'm sure it will come the moment I'm surrounded by family again. Today I'm going out clubbing at Club Mango and tomorrow Silje is coming home and I am so excited to see her again! =D

Home sweet home

That’s me back in Norway! It's good to be back. Plan of the night: pizza with Sandra; film with Sabine and Sandra; sleep. lots of it. There is something about travelling that just makes me exhausted. Then tomorrow it's.. ok, I haven’t made plans yet, but I think I’m gonna chill with Dharshika. Maybe also do some shopping. Most of all I’ll enjoy Norway =D 

2 days to goooo!

Today I found out that I passed my first semester at uni! I am so happy. Best feeling ever. After being excited I celebrated with Chinese take out with the girls. I just could not be bothered cooking today. Walking to placement was freezing and I pulled my scarf up. For the first time in my life a burqa seemed like a great idea! It was snowing/raining the whole way and the wind almost broke my umbrella. Damn wind. Our first patient told me a heart breaking story that's made me be all sad panda the whole day. After that my mentor drove me back to the health centre where I spent the rest of the day with a practise nurse to see how they are working. It was quite different from what I was used to, because they talked more with their patients and gave dietary advice and mostly did diabetic reviews. I feel like even though we talk and listen to the patents are more in a rush and work more physically while the practice nurses worked a bit more on the mental side of nursing. Now I only have two more days until I go on holiday and it's one week until I'm back home in Norway

Clearly not as gangster as I thought I was..

Just like Mary Poppins

To be honest it did actually feel like the wind was going to lift me off the ground Thursday morning. I cannot remember ever witnessing a wind that strong. The rain was pouring horizontally because of the wind and my umbrella did it’s best to keep me dry, but sometimes mother nature needs to show who’s the boss. Placements was a lot of fun. There were quite a few patients we could not go and see because of the wind and after one of the nurses car door almost blew off we went back to St. Ninians. At about 12 o’clock told to go home because the buses would get cancelled. After holding on to the bus shed for half an hour praying that it wouldn’t collapse a bus magically appeared and took me back to the university. I packed in a rush and tried to jump on a City Link to take e to Edinburgh, but after an hour of waiting I gave up on the bus project and tried to take a train. The website said that the UniLink wasn’t going to be running, but I’m quite happy that the bus drivers didn’t know that. At the bus station in Stirling I asked one of the employees if the City Link was running and they said that it was, but it was kind of stuck in traffic. That was because of a freaking lorry tipping over due to the wind. I didn’t leave Stirling until 4. I walked past a few trees that had been knocked over. I spent the whole day inside on Friday and I woke up today planning to go out and do some shopping, but I'm not going out in this weather. It's full of snow and my new and improved plan is to sit in front of the fire until I pass out or die

Hey, hey, hey snowflake

On Sunday Lee drove me up to Stirling and the moment we stepped out of the car I felt like Bambi on ice. I has seen the photos of snow on Facebook, but no photo can really show how slippery it is. After Connor scared the shit out of me when he was trying to give me my umbrella back I set up Anubis in my room and life was finally worth living again. I'm really happy that he did that because yesterday I was walking over to the Co-operative in the morning, where I my mentor was supposed to pick me up, and the snow was falling down like crazy. It's a shame that it's so dark in the morning because my cameras flash makes it impossible to see anything but the 4 closest snowflakes. Despite being wrapped up in scarfs, hats and coats it's freezing. The heater in my room is on full but the room is still what feels to me below zero. The week has been entertaining and exhausting with loads of bandages changed and poker faces put on to not show my disgust over some of the things I see. Tomorrow I'm going to a tissue viability class in Falkirk with one of the other students on my placement and I hope that it wont be as boring and tempting to fall asleep as the two previous times. 

Alex

I was planing to start this post by talking about my lovely time with Alex on Saturday, but I'll start writing about a dear friend of mine. Tine Barstad just won the Norwegian Big Brother! I am so happy for her. I've been doing my best to keep updated on her progress in the house, but being in Scotland I've only been able to see the highlights. Then today I found out she won! I could not be any prouder of her. I spent the day with her the day before she went into the house, but she didn’t tell me where she was going. She said somewhere in Spain so I was kind of in shock when I saw her on Big Brother.

So back to my weekend. Alexandra was here and I was so happy to see her again. When I saw her we started running. I swear that if it was a film we would be running in slow motion. We went to Fridays for Lunch/Dinner and after sitting in a queue for ages we finally got a table. After a lovely meal with a lot of talking about funny, hard and sad things and of course the good days together in Scotland in 2010. After eating so much we could barely walk we went to a lovely pub called The Blind Poet. We spent several hours there just talking about everything between the heaven and earth. It just such a shame that we live so far apart. I would love to be able to see her more often but that's just how life goes and I can't wait for the next time we meet again

We're just so sexy...

Happiness

After a long long day on my placements I finally got home and could sit down and enjoy some candy and Skype with Dad and Tobias. It was so good to see their faces again. I'm really looking forward to coming home and being able to give them a massive hug and of course kick Tobias's ass again. The weather today was awful and I had to wait for 25 minutes for my mentor to pick me up before she gave up on traffic and told me to take the bus to the health centre. A lot of roads have been flooded so the queue was awful. Even though it's been a cold, rainy and windy day I've been enjoying myself. I've watched two catheters, done a few dressings, been in a meeting with a few GPs to discuss some of our palliative care patients and also like always learned a lot of new things. Tomorrow I'm going to be in the treatment room and that's always fun. I've also gotten my midway assessment done and I think I did pretty well. I'm currently on a bubble of joy since my lovely Alexandra Hinterdobler is coming to Edinburgh this weekend. I am so excited to see her again since I haven’t seen her since Hogmanay.

My girl <3

Break time

I know I've been taking a looong break from the blog, but man it felt good! I guess I should update you on the main events. I went to see Breaking Dawn with Tasha, Ellen and Amy from halls. It was a lot of fun even though the film was kind of a disappointment. But that's to be expected with Kirsten Stewart in the main role, seriously, what the hell were they thinking? Then after quite a rough day at work on Thursday I went to Edinburgh and was on the phone with my mom for most of the bus ride because I really needed someone to talk to. After some trouble with my hard drive I got a new one and Anubis is up and running! I love my new computer and I'm bringing it up to Stirling next weekend. During the weekend I didn’t really do much at all apart from on Sunday when I went shopping with Lee. Even though I've been away from my blog for ages nothing exiting had happened. 

True love

My new computer is finally here! He is such a beauty. However I'm still waiting on the screen and one lousy little cable before we can bring him to life. I was planning for my computer to be a girl, since my laptop is a "boy" and his name is Walter. However, after looking for a good name for my computer Anubis - God of processing is what I decided on and he kind of looks more like a boy. So my computer is an awesome Egyptian God. If you're curious about the computer -this- is the sexy new computer I've bought.

More photos will come once I set him up <3

Skype lovin'

So once again it's been ages since I've blogged. There has been a lot going on, so I have my reasons. Now it's update time. My placements have been draining me of most of my energy, but I'm absolutely loving it! One again I'm going to tell you all that I'll tell you all about it later.

This weekend I was planning to stay in Stirling to do my essay. But Connor’s grandparents had their 50^th anniversary! I have to say that I’m so impressed about that. 50 years is a hell of a long time. It was my first time meeting some of his extended family and as expected they were all really nice.  

Lee, Connor's grandmother and Connor's uncle John

Connor's brother Jack, Connor's grandfather and the man himself (Connor)

Lee and John

Being surrounded by family like that made me really miss my own family and I spent the following night having nightmares about never seeing my own family again. No me gusta

I finished my essay in time, even though I have to say that was a miracle! And after my placement the following day I had an amazing Skype date with Eva, Tanni and Karianne. Morgan also joined for a few minutes and showed us his pet snake before he and his mom started talking in French and he had to go. Right now I’m on Skype with Nora topping up on gossip and tomorrow I’m off to Edinburgh =D

Working nine to five

Or 8:30 to 16:30 to be more precise. I've started my placement and I'm out and about in the community with my mentor caring for those who are to unwell to come into the GP practise. I've also been helping (aka observing since I'm not really allowed to do anything yet) one of the nurses in the treatment room. I'll tell you all about my placement some other time. Right now I'm going to tell you a little story that made my day. A while ago a French woman added my on Facebook, she's a relative of mine. Not very close as her mother was my great grandmother’s cousin. I've spoken to her a bit and she met my dad, grandfather uncle and great grandmother when my dad was about 18. Yesterday she found some photos of them when they were visiting her in France years ago and sent them to me. So here is a photo of my dad, uncle and grandfather (in that order)

 And then a photo of Claire on the left, my dad the tall one, my grandfather with the breard, my great grandmother is the old lady and my uncle is the one to the right

5th of November

So here we go again, the second 5th of November I've celebrated in my life. It's been a fun day. I went to IKEA with Connor and Dan. I needed some mirrors, a coat hanger, a laundry basket, and a new wardrobe thing for my room. I ended up getting everything apart from the wardrobe, but instead I got some new shelves. I’m planning to steal the one jack has in his room, so it’s OK. All in all I'm pretty happy with the stuff I got. Photos will come the moment I get it all set up in my room. After dinner (lee made us Norwegian meatballs =D) we went to the firework display at the Musselburgh racecourse. It's amazing how much I love shiny things that explode. The fireworks were pretty good and were accompanied by music. After (not because of my awesome coat) freezing my ass off we went home and just in time for me to see the last few acts of X-factor. I was also pretty excited when I found out that my camera has a "fireworks" mode, so the photos were really good 

Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot, I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.