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.