Poco bambino

CONGRATULATIONS

Matt & Ciara

with their little boy

EMMETT DEAN SEMONS

This makes Jake and myself aunt and uncle.

By the way, look how much Grandpa Mark looks like Jake in this photo. Haha! Great!

Another book

Now it sounds like
A I'm really smart and read a lot of books
B I have a really, really boring vacation

I don't read THAT many books, but this one was really short.
Also only in Norwegian I'm afraid. It's called "På Vegne Av Venner" or "On Behalf Of Friends" by a guy called Krisopher Schau. He's actually a musician/comedian and I can't say I think he's very funny or plays good music. BUT this book was kinda interesting.

Kristopher Schau

Not the typical guy you usually see at random funerals.

The book is about Krisopher who in a couple of months time attends funerals that nobody goes to. Sounds wierd? This is the case:
In Norway when somebody dies and they don't have any friends and family that are close to them, the Gorvenment pays for the person's funeral. The funeral announcement in the newspaper will say "On Behalf of Friends" instead of a list of family members at the bottom of the ad. And if they don't have anybody - nobody will attend the funeral either. Only the priest, the organ player and a representative from the funeral home.

  And in this case Kristopher.

It's a pretty good book. And it made me think.
Would I be sad if...

...nobody came to my funeral?

After some debating in my own mind I found out.

No.

I wouldn't be that sad, because:

I've still lived my life and touched other peoples lives during my time.

I've met people, made impressions, laughed and cried with others.

I have shared things with other people; feelings, memories.... 

I have loved and I'm pretty sure there's at least a handful of people who loves me as well.

So even though nobody came. It's cool. I'm probably not that good company at my own funeral anyways. I've still  lived and I know no matter how my funeral turns out, my life was good and full of happy people.

I think that was what the book was trying to say too.

Wow, I wonder what other people think about this.

Just for the record. I'm not planning on going anywhere for a while.

Good funeral song:

 

Book

I just read a really good book. It's only in Norwegian I think because it's quite new.
It's called "Skynd deg å elske" - in English I bet it would be called "Love me now" or something like that. The book is about one of Norway's earlier Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs called Jan Henry T. Olsen who got Alzheimer when he was only 51. 
In the book his wife Laila Lanes talks about life with a sick husband. How the illness is affecting both of them. 

She says "I don't know if we would have loved one another the way we do if it weren't for Jan Henry's illness".   

Laila says that when you love someone who is sick and you know the time you have together is limited you love each other even more in a way. You treat each other better, do nice things for each other and tell the other person you love him/her more often. Kinda live each day as if it was your last. She says that she's hoping their relationship would have been the same way even if he wasn't sick.

I think when you have a sick spouse or even friend or family member you really learn a lot about yourself. How to be less selfish, put your own needs second, to really appreciate the good times and memories and try harder to make all memories good ones. In this book Laila is really concerned about making her husband feel good and be happy. 

Again she says: "Even though in time he'll forget everything we've done together, the good times created good feelings and I'd like to think that the good feelings will always be there even when he can't remember anymore." 

(I'm really impressed by how good she is at putting words to her feelings).


What I'm trying to say is we should all think like this even though the people around us aren't dying, you know?


I'm bad at that. When I have a bad day I let everyone and their Grandma's  know about it. I get too caught up in small details that really don't matter and sometimes treat people I care about bad just because I don't feel like being nice. 
And what's really scary is how it's so much easier to treat the people you love bad - rather than a stranger (not that that's ok either).
Wow, I sound like an awful person (Please don't hate me!).

 If you know Norwegian you should read this book:

And if you don't,

 just treat everyone nice.

I'm trying 

Home again

Guess where we went for our vacation?

Kenya

No, actually that's not true.

But we did go to the

ZOO

And it was 

awesome!

But first things first. We set off from Røldal last Sunday and from there we drove to Oslo to visit my good friend Ane who is moving to Australia for 6 months. She left on Wednesday. It was so nice to hang out with her again. She is so cute and funny. Stayed at her house for our first night.

Day 2 Jake and I went to down town Oslo to find a guitar shop. After that we decided to go swimming. The beach we went to is called Huk but I'm pretty sure half of Oslo was there, so we figured we'd call up our friend Maria and see if she was down to go swim somewhere else with us. And if not, eat sushi. Hehe.

Before we left Huk I took some  photos of the ducks and the birds there. 

Pretty birdies.

Afterwards we met up with Maria and her friend. We all went swimming in this nice little lake and Jake tried fishing a bit.

As you can see, Jake and I weren't smart enough to put on sunglasses.

No fish

Maria

The next night we slept in the back of our van close to the same lake. It was the WORST thunderstorm I've ever seen that night, and we heard on the radio the nest day that lightning hit the ground 11 000 times in the Oslo area that night. Cozy. Not.

The next day we went to Skien and visited Vetle and Birgit at Meltvedt. It was very nice to go see them and of course the HORSES again.

On Wednesday we drove to the very south of Norway to the city of Kristiansand to visit my friend Anne-Marthe (who's also studying in Australia) and to go to the Zoo!! 

(I'm very excited about our Zoo visit)

The baby giraffe was wondering where the feather came from

Wallaby

Red panda 

Oh, this little monkey was teasing the big orangutang so hard. Haha. It was hilarious. The orangutang was trying to climb inside to his house and the little one kept kicking and biting his butt!

He's probably a very nice orangutang cause he could have just killed the little man if he wanted to.

 It was really wierd to see all the animals in Norwegian scenery. But the craziest was seeing the tigers. Tigers in a Norwegian forest. Something's not quite right about this picture. But they seemed happy.

This little deer was just looking at all the people.

I got to feed the deers carrots with the kids. Haha. And Jake and I fed the giraffes branches with leaves.

Highlight of the day!

The mountain goat in the back pushed the one who's falling off the rock. Luckily it wasn't too far down and he landed on his feet, so it was kinda funny.

And then, my worst nightmare at the Zoo. My camera died on me. So I didn't get to photograph the rest of the animals!! Bummer!!

We saw wolves, crocodiles, Red Lion monkey, birds, snakes, flamingos...you name it, we saw it.

Good day! I was like a kid and Jake as a parent. Haha!

We stayed at Anne-Marthes house until Friday and then we drove to my cousin Monica and her man TJ in Stavanger. We stayed there for the weekend and shopped, hung out and met up with our friend Lotte. 

Awesome vacation! Awesome hubby! Awsome friends and family! Awsome animals! Awesome food! Awesome weather! Awesome van!

Not so awesome camera battery.

Here's a nice little summer song for ya'll!

Out of reaching area

We're in the middle of our 

Vacation

Back on Sunday

Memories of the past

Ok, I have to write about this. I just saw that my friend Pyko tried to chat with me on gmail, and I wasn't around to answer. So here's the story:

For those of you that don't know (I bet I've told almost everyone) my friend Anne-Marthe and I went to the Dominican Republic for three weeks in January 2008. We had such a good time there (except for half my vacation was spent on the loo - BAD case of food poisoning that lasted for 3 months).
Two people we met there truly made our vacation. Petar and Pyko. They moved to the DR from Serbia one year before we met them. Serbia isn't the easiest place to live in and they just wanted to get out. It's so hard to imagine how these to wonderful, welcoming and happy people had been through war in their own country. They told us about life in Belgrade, and it's just crazy.
Anyways, they showed us some really cool places, went surfing with us, we cooked food (noodles with bugs in it - not supposed to be there), hung out and watched Danish movies.
So there we were two Norwegians in the DR watching Danish movies with two people from Serbia.

Never saw that coming.

This picture is from our first night in Santo Domingo. The locals decided to throw us a party at the little hotel in the ghetto.

The next day we crossed the country and travelled to the north coast and the town Cabarete.

I got sick (food poisoned day 1) and puked as soon as we got off the bus. None of the taxi drivers wanted me as a passenger so they left me alone. I was hanging over a fence puking my brains out with all these chickens sitting on the fence watching. I would have liked to have seen it. 

Luckily Anne-Marthe drew me a picture of it later.

Local girls on the beach outside our house.

This little boy was called Christopher and his Dad worked for our surf instructor. His Mom had past away and he spent his days with his Dad while he was working. We hung out with him a lot. He always wanted to play and sit on the lap.

This is Benny. He didn't speak much English, but he knew this much:

"Family, you my sister"

So we just called him Benny Family.

Poor Benny, he sold bracelets and stuff at the beach all day and it was SO hot. He would come over to us almost every day and get a drink of water and chat a little. One day him and I made some special design gifts that I could bring home to my real family.

I saw Benny one night at a restaurant with his wife. She was a..uhm...big boned Haitian with a LOT of attitude. I saw her shouting for (or at?) another girl. She was standing there shouting in a small bright pink top and giant tatas. Pouring attitude.
Poor Benny, he was owned.

Surfing and lazy days

One day we (I might have put the pressure on) we went horseback riding in the jungle. 

This local girl called someone she knew and we had no clue how or where. We got picked up on a yellow scooter where all three of us (us two + the driver) went on a VERY bumpy ride into the jungle. How that scooter made it I will never know.

On the way we had to stop by several houses to meet the drivers family. They didn't speak a word English and we barely spoke any Spanish, so we just stood there and smiled.

When we got to our end station they wanted to give us home made local liquor called Mamajuana. We figured it would be safer to pour it on the ground when they weren't watching. So we just smiled and rubbed our bellies and said "MMmMMm".

The people were really nice tho and this sign outside their house was comforting:

As soon as we got on the horses this guy jumped on Anne-Marthes horse and he rode with her the whole time. Haha!

This is one of the houses we passed by in the jungle.

It was SO nice and green due to rain season in December.

One day Petar and Pyko took us on a moped safari. Peter rented a motorcycle and Anne-Marthe drove "The Donkey" (Peter's moped that only started when it wanted to). Pyko and I were passengers.

This is a deserted beach we went to.

This is the only picture I have of all of us together. We stopped on the way home for some ice cream. 

I'm kinda behind Pyko, but I'm there!

It was such a fun trip. 2008 was such a good year! I travelled a lot, and I met Jake.

Many new friends and many good memories.

Almost makes me forget about the one million mosquito bites I had after our jungle horseback ride.

It's a WONDERFUL world! 

....and you should listen to this song

Poco bambino

Look at this little guy, isn't he a heartbreaker?

He's my friends Olav and Ina's baby.

His name is Sverre Elias.

Such a cutie.

Oh, and if you're wondering why he's wearing a dress....

In Norway when kids are baptised they wear a baptism dress.

The coulour of the ribbon tells you if it's a boy or a girl.

Luckily, cause to me they all look the same.