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.

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.