Raindrops on a sunny day

Coffee tastes a little too good recently. It seems like I'm closing in on addiction again. Perhaps I should experiment and try decaf to see if it is the taste or the caffein I'm addicting to.

Life is good nowadays (though it turned a shade of blue just now, but more about that later), I'm back in my beloved uni-town and I study fun stuff with nice people, I've got a bi-weekly part time job where it seems likely I'll get even more hours/shifts soon, and the work environment is really good. People said I did a good job on my first shift and that they liked me because I smile a lot too. (Yay!)

Also, yesterday we celebrated my friend's 25th birthday! We started out with sushi at my favourite japanese restaurant, and then moved on to another favourite spot where we stayed until closing time. We'd hired the pub's lower floor for the party (smallish pub so it was nice and cozy, not as big as it might sound otherwise), and friends and coworkers of the birthday girl came and went throughout the evening, it was great. There was an surprising amount of people I knew from some time back as well, making this evening a journey in elder and more recent social history (other possible translations: "catching up" and "gossip" ;} ), and playing with old friends and new(ish?) people. Funfun! When our pub closed we continued on to our afterpartyplace, where my main group of friends, and me and the birthday girl, stayed until 7am. Our beloved princess was quite drunk at this point and we had to convince her for about. half an hour to walk home with us, even though 85% of the party had already left, with just the creepy weirdos* remaining (Yes I dare call them 'creepy weirdos" as I severely doubt any of them read this blog. And if they do I'm not particularly bothered anyway). As we walked home to the sound of our princess rambling on about how much she loves us for loving her despite her drunken state, the morning skies were gradually lightening to a soft light blue, the streets were deserted but for us.

Life is good.
I was home and went to blissful sleep at 8am, but woke up at 10am and couldn't fall asleep again, and while surfing the net (for lack of ability to occupy myself with other activities) I  found this video: ♥

♥

Thanks to Knut who posted this (or possibly their other video) on facebook! Kawaii deshou!

...

As for the aforementioned shade of blue (the first one mentioned. I accidentlly used it as a poetic expression as well but found it too nice to delete it): I got the message that one of my grandparents died this morning. By a lucky turn I was already planning on heading for my home town tomorrow anyway, but the trip lost its recreational appeal as I got the death news.

It will be nice to be with my family for a couuple of days.

Oh dear... That was longer than expected..

The hiatus I mean...

As my previous post states, I intended to blog some more in June, but as you plainly can see I never got around to it. There are several reasons for this, even though there are things to do there isn't necessarily anything one feels worthy of reporting on. Like June for example, I hd work, but didn't do much apart from work, and blogging never felt natural and thus became forgotten. July, more of the same, but a different job and more of it, generally  a standard summer back home: same job as earlier years and the same friends home briefly and then gone away again. 

What has been happening, is the ensuing chaos regarding my education. I was expecting to get my bachelors' degree last summer, but a string of unforeseen complications came a long and after a pretty comfusing 8 months here I am, at a change of scenery, back to my "old" environment at my university again trying to sort out the chaos as best I can.  I'm back in Bergen, at a new flat with new flatmates, back at university and back at Japanese, but with new classes and new classmates. 

Being back in Bergen feels right. Although a lot of things have changed, and still it is the same. I have some peripheral friends all over town, but as I returned here I realised that only members from the core of my former social circles remain actual friends. Sad, but true. However, I'm confident I'll meet new interesting people to compensate for those that have moved on, and my new flat mates and their friends seem like a promising start. Through one of these connections I might have landed myself a bi-weekend job as well, where I can meet even more people. Fist shift next weekend, and I'll se what happens after that.

And there is still plenty of time for school, if I could just sort out my concentration and motivation  issues. I plan on reviewing a lot of material this semester, + retaking my history exam from last semester. Luckily my class is small and gives our sensei more time to adapt the classes to each of us if necessary. And, on a more personal level it is also an extra motivational factor: since my participation is 25% of the class contribution, it actually matter. The new courses bring new aspirations to meet, and althought the school situation/status is still unresolved I'm at least able to deal with it now.

There are expectations and exasperations aplenty. I've got room to move, room to think, but I'll be glad when I get some furniture and an additional lamp or two.. I won't make any promises for the next blogposts as there is enough stuff to do these days, but what happens might/might not, be worth reporting upon. 

~Cecily

warning: text under construction

Well, not this one is not the text under construction, but rather the ones I should've written alreadry for April, May and now also June... There's a lot of stuff going on in my head at the moment so I will take a little while to sort it all out, but at least I've started the process:p

Satus summary: Next texts are in progress, life is mostly good, love is not absent (e.g. family and feriends) but romance is elsewhere (and I wouldn't have time for it anyway).

well, until later..

Weather update

We've had almost two weeks of nice weather, brilliant shining sun, warm temperatures (around and up to 5 Celcius), melting snow, clear roads, singing birds, pollenating trees etc. And then, this morning I woke up to fog, strong wind, and 5 centimeter of new, wet and heavy snow. Felt kind of bad for my cats I locked out last night... They were more than happy to come in again this morning. My brother left at 7 am to get the school bus, and when I got out to get the newspaper an hour later his footprints were almost covered again. Wellingtons were doubtlessly the right choice of shoewear.

No pictures today, I had no time to take any, and they would be grey, flat and boring anyway.

A Sense of Spring

It's still a lot of snow here, and a slight risk of more of the stuff falling on our heads the next month or two, but toady there was a sense of spring (or just optimism?) in the air. The sun shone brightly, the snow was melting, most of the roads are bare of snow even if the ditches still seem to have inverted themselves lying belly-up and reflecting their white bellies of snow. It was a joy to be outdoors today. Beautiful light when I went home from work today. Took many nice pictures on my way home.

Other stuff: an update since last post seems to be in order...

I'm still job-hunting, but not as intensely as I did earlier now that schoolwork has caught up to me. 1-2 months until my final deadlines and then exams, and I have about 15-20 pages of Japanese writings to do (of various smaller stuff that is, a 15 page japanese sakubun would be a real nightmare!), a 10 page semesterassignment discussing the debate around R. Benedict's the Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and then 1500 pages of history curriculum to read, + general repetition of Japanese grammar, kanji and glossary which should be done continuously regularly...

In addition I've got a job; I'm temporarily working as an assistant (substituting a woman on extended sick leave) on a local shcool's after-class-club (or something, I have no idea how to say it in English really...).  It's not a full time position, but I having somehing to do outside the house, income, and still have time to study, it's almost perfect. I never thought I'd ever work with kids, but now I do..  And it is fun -most of the time. :)

Last week I even tried being a teacher! It's really nice to receive phone calls which go along the line of "Can you come tomorrow? We need you!" It was a different school that called me when one of their teachers was going away on a seminar, and they wanted me to fill in for him for a day. So now I've tried teaching Math, Norwegian, Religion (Buddhism) and elementary school biology to 12 year olds. I was given a prepared program for the day so I did OK even though I had no experience and I'm not majored in any of those subjects.

Now I'm off to bed, I've plenty of curriculum and fresh air waiting for me on the other side of sleep, so I'd rather get my share of it by then.;) 

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I'll add pictures tomorrow if I have time.