Oops...

Sorry about the lack of updates! Mostly I haven't been able to update because life got in the way, but that's not really a bad thing...;) I've still taken mos of the photos I planned to, but as I forgot to bring my laptop for the holidays the updating and uploading of pictures got a little more difficult... I'll try to upload before new years - but seeing that it's mostly my social life that keeps me away from my daily blog project, and it's the season for crazy amounts of socializing, I can't make any promises. Any updates will be backdated to the originally intended day of uploading.

It's Christmas Eve already! Only 7 days left of 2009! Merry Christmas!

Status Update

Sorry for the lack of updates, the Christmas Calendar Project is still on, even though I haven't been able to upload my posts at the promised rate. When they do come they will all be backdated to the day they represent.

New update when the calendar project is up to date. Cheers!

Christmas Calendar: December 11th

December 11th, 2009. Sunlight! At least the last remains of it for the day. And Christmas decorations at the town square. Moose in Sunset < Christmas Tree in Sunset.

Christmas Calendar: December 10th

December 10th, 2009. The main "Christmas Street" in town.

Christmas Calendar: December 9th

December 9th, 2009. The macabre angels at the mall. Scary and (seemingly) headless. I wonder if the artist/decoration director was aware of this or not...

Christmas Calendar: December 8th

December 8th, 2009. Christmas Workshop - Norwegin style! Norwegian and Japanese friends gathered toghether with crafting gear, Christmas music, hot chocolate and gingerbread cookies. Process, results, and good memories:)

Christmas Calendar: December 7th

December 7th, 2009: Christmas Decorations at the Student Centre. Not Impressed.

Christmas Calendar: December 6th

Temporarily Photo-Free Blog Post.

- because I forgot to bring my camera with me when I ran out the door this morning.

I know what picture I want in this post though.
I'm planning on taking a photo of a friend's christmas tree, and then write a short note about it. But writing the note, and not posting the picture at the same time, will be too much of a spoiler so you'll all just have to wait. ;)

Christmas Calendar: December 5th

December 5th, 2009. Julebord/Christmas Parties/Year-End-Parties. A friend and I were hanging out at my place and decided to go out for a drink (yes, one/1 drink... at first..). Since it turned out to be Saturday (a complete surprise to us both) and full of fun people from a Christmas Party we ended up spending the whole evening in the merry company of random fun people. It was almost like having a Christmas Party of our own;)

乾杯！

Christmas Calendar: December 4th

December 4th, 2009. Work / バイト. Christmas decorations at my part-time job. Not much more to say, it was supposedly a quiet evening, but because of the Christmas Party-season I still ran until my feet hurt, and then a little more.

I'll replace this phone-photo with a proper one when I remember to bring my camera to work.

バイトは楽しいけど、帰るまですごく疲れた。

Christmas Calendar: December 3rd

December 3rd, 2009. Christmas lights spotted on the way to a favourite café/coffee shop/kissaten. My classmates and I celebrated the end of the semester with hot chocolate and improvised a haiku for the occasion that we wrote in the café guest book:

三人が
試験を受けた
気持ち良い。

The three,
Having finished with their exams,
Feel good.

(by: AA, ABH & CK)

...and other random scribbles for future customers' reading pleasure puzzlement. :)

Christmas Calendar: December 2nd

December 2nd, 2009. A Christmas decorated pedestrian street where I live. It even has it's own Christmas tree. ♥

Today I'm adding a Japanese proverb:

猿も木からおちる。
Even monkeys fall from trees.



Mata ne!

Christmas Calendar: December 1st

December 1st, 2009.
Christmas star at my friends' place where we had a Christmas Party / Pinnekjøttkveld. Best evening in a looooooong time. Cheers!


朝四時半に一人で歩いて帰る。
イルミネション照らす道は捨てる。
ちょっとだけだけど、
今、私は照らす道がありそう。
気持ちいい。

Walking home by myself at 4:30 am.
The decorated streets are deserted.
It's just for a moment, but,
Right now it feels like the illuminated streets are just mine.
It feels nice.

Christmas is approaching, December is here

A little about my Christmas Calendar Project

Background:
In Norway it is common tradition for families to have Christmas/Advent Calendar for the children (or tweens, teens, twenty-somethings, etc.) to count down to Christmas eve. Some families make a 'gift calendar'  with 24 small items (of whatever, pencils, erasers, candy, chocolate, home made cookies, figurines, etc.) that someone, usually a parent, has collected and wrapped up, given the numbers 1-24 and arranged as a calendar in one way or another (I'm not going into detail here, comment if you're interested in examples, and I'll elaborate).

The most common Christmas Calendar, however, is the chocolate calendar, with 24 doors hiding each their piece of chocolate, one for each day of December until Christmas Eve. Chocolate calendars sometimes has a piece of a story (usually the Christmas story/stories) behind the doors. Jostein Gaarder's book Julemysteriet (The Christmas Mystery) is a good example of a Christmas story calendar. More wonderful calendar ideas over at Janne's blog (Thank you Janne! ♥).

The beginning of my project:
During my exchange studies in Japan I decided to make my own Christmas calendar project since I couldn't find any Christmas calendars there. I decided to make a photo project for my blog, taking one picture each day of something that made me happy that day. Within that framework anything was allowed - as long as I deemed it suitable for viewing on a public blog and safely show my family. ;)

The first Christmas Calendar Project came out like this:

 (click for larger view)

In 2008 I didn't make a Christmas Calendar Project, so my 2009 X-mas project will be my second. I'm
thinking of doing it approximately the same way, i.e. deciding on a concept and then try to take a concept-related picture each day until Christmas.

The 2009 X-mas Calendar Project:
I've asked several of my friends for ideas to my calendar concept, and in the end I decided to aim for "Christmas Ambience", take 24 photos and make a blog post for each of them here on my blog along with a short comment on the picture. After Christmas I'll make a collage.

It's already December 2nd, so the first two pictures will soon be posted. 

Hope you'll enjoy my X-mas Calendar Project! Comments are appreciated, especially if you identify yourself with a name or nickname:)

-Cecily

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.;) 

---

I'll add pictures tomorrow if I have time.

Cecily's February Winter Wonderland

 
When you put on wellingtons in order to reach the mail box nice and dry and you still get snow in your boots, then you know it's a lot of snow... 

 

Snow vs. Wellingtons

It started snowing before I went to Bergen for a couple of days, and it started snowing in Bergen before I returned home as well. Along the railway to Bergen there was one beautiful snowscape after another, and although it is quite a challenge to take nice pictures from a moving train with a lot of trees close along the railway, I got quite a collection of nice pictures. 

  

Prepared for travel

 

View: Snowscape 1

View: Snowscape 2

 

In Bergen I was lucky enough to only get snow during my last day, the first days being nice and dry. I enjoy seeing the gradual tranformation of 'Bustling Bubbling City' into 'Busy Snow-Clean City', but I don't like the opposite transformation of 'clean snow city' into 'grey sludge city', and I'm glad I left before the reversed transformation kicked in. (I had a blast in Bergen, loved being back, and for social reasons not that happy to leave so soon...)

I like snow, I really do, but it can be... inconvenient... at times...

Here at home again I find myself partially snowed in; there's a lot of snow making it difficult (though not impossible) to get out of the house, the household's car is out of town with my mother this weekend, and since it is weekend public transport is only accessible enough to make people exercice extreme patience in extremely boring places or cause immense frustration, or both, due to the extreme lack of correspondance between the different bus lines etc (it's so bad it feels like it has to be planned by somebody). Just as well I don't have any reason to leave the house until tomorrow.

"Snowed in"

 

For the record, it's four steps in the stairs to our front door, and the footprints/tracks to the mail box was largely snowed away 10 minutes after I took the picture.

Long time, few words.. first words of 2009

Belated welcome to 2009, Happy New Year, Happy Celebrations, and all that jazz! 

I see I haven't posted a word since late October '08, but I will try to remedy that by giving a brief update on happenings since then, and then try to update on a regular basis throughout 2009... 

2008:

My stay in India ended a week and a half after our group assignment was due. I had 4 days in Pondi before me and Lina travelled to Pune to visit a fried of Lina's. I stayed in Pune with Lina and her friends in Pune for a week before returning home to cold and snowy Norway to write my final assignment and celebrate Christmas and New Year with family and friends. 

Writing the assignment at home turned out to be quite a challenge as I had no proper workplace at home where I could concentrate. I still have to work with that, but now, 3 months later, I have adapted and adjusted potential workspaces to fit my needs a little better than they were back in November. 

In mid-December people started coming home for the holidays, Christmas and New Year came and went in a flurry of social arrangements and festivities, and then everyone left town again.

2009:

I stayed behind after the holidays, starting my jobhunting activities when everyday normalcy returned in the beginning of January. It also turned out that I lacked a course at the university to fill the requisites for my Bachelors' degree, so after some amount of bureaucracy I've acuired student status until the  end of the spring semester. Hopefully I've finished required amount of courses by the end of this semester's exams. 

And this is basically where I am now, in the middle of jobhunting and studies. As I expect the next months to be basically the same I expect to change some things in my blogging topics, rants, the nature of my writing, etc.

No way of knowing what it will turn out to become until it has become what it will be. 

Still wishing everyone a happy and prosperous 2009!