Check it out: The Sumba Project

This is my friend Anne-Marthe and her boyfriend Luke´s project in Sumba, Indonesia.

I think it's cool how they're doing this.
Check it out here

Stuuuuck in Munich

My story from the last week and thoughts at the moment

Thursday: I take the night bus to Oslo with Torunn

Friday: Torunn and I hang out in Oslo and meet up with my second cousin Maria

Fly out to Munich.

Our plane can't land in Munich beacuse of a thunder storm.

We have to land in Nürnberg, 2 hours from Munich.

Then we have to take a cab.

Luckily Lufthansa pays for most of it.

The taxi driver is from Croatia and his name is Josef.

He drives in 160km/h on the Autobahn.

Torunn tells him it's PRIMA DRIVING.

Anne is so scared she's almost crying.

When we get to Munich we meet up with Anna and Karianne.

Saturday: Oktoberfest. 

Went to the beer tents at 8am, but couldn't get a seat cause it was already full.
I repeat 8am. It was already full.

Got in after a while.
Anne goes to a Bayern München soccer game alone.
It takes her 20 minutes to figure out who's who and which team she's cheering for.

Found out my dear baby Stardust (the horse) died and I was super bummed for the rest of the night.

Sunday: Miss Sabine Grimm enters Munich.

No time to be sad.

We go back to the beer tents.

We meet people we know from Norway.

We get in a fight with some Italians.
Not physically. Just an argument.

The Italians calm down (according to Torunn) as soon as Sabine leaves.
Sabine and I go by car with unknown people to Stuttgart.

Sabine forgets her phone in the car.

It's the second tine Sabine looses her phone in a week.

Monday: We go to Mallorca on standby tickets that Sabine got for 40 Euros.

It's sick.

We get special treatment since Sabine works as a flight attendant for German Wings.

We take a bus into Palma, but realizes it's better to jump off since we have no clue where we're going.

We find a hotel.

Where the average age of the people in it is 65.

The hotel is cheap, but pretty nice.

We go to the beach.

We talk to an old guy with a crazy mullet. 

He turns out to be Norwegian.

We eat at a bad restaurant.
In the evening we go for a long, nice walk.
I get a mosquito bite on my arm.

Tuesday: We go horseback riding.

The lady who owns the horses came 2nd in the Mallorcan Dressage Championship.

She has a lot of nice horses.

I ride Morty and Sabine rides Nemo.

We go by bus into Palma city center in dirty horse clothes.

We go shopping.

We eat at a very good restaurant.

We share an apetizer: asparges with serrano ham and grilled parmesan cheese.

And then we eat some more.

We go back to the hotel.

I wake up in the middle of the night because I itch everywhere.

I have mosquito bites all over.

Sabine has none.

Wednesday: We wake up, eat breakfast and go tanning by the pool.

Everyone by the pool is still old.

We go to the airport to go back to Stuttgart.

Turns out the whole country of Spain is on a strike.

So our plane is cancelled.

We can get on a plane to Stuttgart at 03.55am the next morning.

But then I'll miss my flight in Munich because I have to get from Stuttgart to Munich before 9.10am.

My travel insurance decides they don't want to pay for a new ticket or a hotel.

German Wings decides on the same.

Lufthansa donesn't want to help me change my ticket from Germany to Oslo, because I got it for so cheap to start with.

We both have to buy new ticktes.

Sabine goes to Stuttgart and I go to Munich.

I decide to stay the night at the airport hotel.

The rooms turns out to be over 300 Euros for one night.

I realize I have to stay at the airport all night.

I cry a little bit.

I try to call Jake, But I figure he's in school.

I call Mama. She tells me it's gonna be alright.

It all feels better when I get some sushi and fresh orange juice in me.

 I try to get some work done online.

My mosquito bites are now aprox. one inch (2.5cm) in diameter.

You can almost see them through my pants if you look closely.

Thoughts right now

I'm mad bacause College of Southern Idaho hasn't anwered my mail.

I'm mad at Europeiske Travel insurance.

I'm mad at Lufthansa.

I'm mad at the Spanish people on strike.

I'm mad at the expencive airport hotel.

I'm mad cause the translation agency I contacted before I left hasn't answered my mail.

I'm stressed cause I have a lot of paperwork to figure out before I go to the States.

 I'm really, REALLY itchy.

I'm glad the sushi was good.

I colored my eye brows at the bathroom in the airport cause I was bored.

That was kinda fun. Good way to kill some time.

The American Embassy always answeres my e-mails.

I'm glad they're so helpful.

I'm glad I don't have much luggage.

I'm glad I got to spend some time with Sabine.

That's it for today.

Pictures will follow shortly.

Peace out.

Feel free to call all night long.

Plums in Hardanger

Plums in Hardanger is a song.

Hardanger is a fjord not too far from where I live.

Here:

Anyways.

Hardanger is very famous for their 

Plums

Apples

Pears

and

Cherries

They even have their own cherry festival in the summer, where they host the annual 

Norwegian Cherry Spitting Championship

Amazing.

 

Got a little side tracked here.

We have plums here as well.

Right outside in the yard.

A little less famous.

But still.

My aunt came over to pick some to bring to school.

She picked one and a half big buckets filled with delicious plums.

Lucky kids.

 

Lookin' good

I woke up on Wednesday morning and saw this:

That's right, a fresh sprinkle of icing sugar.

Took this photo when I was driving over the Haukeli mountain yesterday morning.

I would recomend driving over this pass in the morning. It was beautiful.

Fall's here.

Enjoy the following song.
Hopefully you'll get it out of your head before Christmas.

Our 1st anniversary

Yup, today on September 12th 2010 is our very first anniversary.

Wanna see some of the stuff we have done since that day?

We got married

The day after we got married. Not so fancy anymore.

We went fishing and Jake fell in

We went to beautiful Idaho....

....where we had an American wedding party

We went fishing in Idaho too. Mark helped me catch a fish.

(He caught it and I took credit for it)

We went to a lot of football games

I celebrated Halloween for the first time.

I was a cowgirl and Jake...I don't even know what he was supposed to be.

We went back to Norway for Christmas.

I showed Jake how to use the "spark". A high tech Norwegian winter transportation device

We went to Egypt with my family

In Egypt Jake found out that horses are pretty to look at, but not so fun to ride.

We celebrated Norway's independence day on May 17th.

Went with my Mom to an old, fancy hotel and ate dinner.

We took this old, fancy looking picture.

Our summer basically consisted of four things:

Hiking

Fishing

Working

and

Jake playing guitar

Now, Jake is in the States and I'm stuck here in Norway on our anniversary.

It's not fair.

I want to be with my hubby.

He's the best

and 

I love him.

Girls from the north country fair

Today my friend Torunn and I went to a place called Seljord in Telemark county to go to the annual fair called Dyrsku'n.

It's the biggest farm-and handcraft fair in Norway.

Even though it was pouring rain: 

I just read online that there was 21.355 paying people there today.

We didn't mind the rain. 

We just put on our GoreTex and rubber boots.

The fair has been going on since the 1860's. 

I think that's pretty cool.

Here are some pictures from back in the day

Today it pretty much looks exactly the same. Only in colors.

 

We just walked around all day and looked, bought and ate.

You can get a lot of free food samples.

And the food is gooood. Mostly really authentic Norwegian food like:

Moose sausage

Homemade organic veal hot dogs

Homemade rasberry lemonade

Pastry

Cheese with stinging nettle 

Local porridge 

MmmMMmmM....

Well, I bought this t-shirt:

It's sick.

Nynorsk is one of our official languages.

Also known as Hillbilly Norwegian.

That's how i speak.

People in the cities hate it.

And a nice artist drew my picture.

Stunning. 

When I was googleing images for Dyrsku'n i found this.

I've seen it before and I'm pretty sure it's taken in Idaho actually.

But the commet under this photo was too funny not to share.

(Sorry, English speaking friends, it's one of those things that are only funny in Norwegian)

Ein frå Burtigard Glosimot på veg heim etter å ha vore på køntrifestival, Maran Ata-stemne og Dyrskunn i 2003. Bilde er frå Dyrsku-plassen med Skorve i bakgronn. Snoen kom i september det året, og etter tradisjon i Seljord betyr tidleg sno på Skorve sein jul.

That's it.

I really, really miss this guy

I've taken some web cam photos when Jake and I have talked on Skype during our years together.

I don't think he was aware of it.

They are so funny.

I love Jake.

 

 

Here's some other happy Skypers

 

 

This is Jake's map over Europe.

He's pointing out where his ancestors came from.

Usually it's Benj who wants to talk to me on Skype with no shirt on.
He always comes over flexing when Jake and I are takling and says
"Hey Kristine, wanna see what a real man looks like?"
Haha, GO Benj, you're cool.

Once again;

I love my hubby and I miss him.

Book

I read another book.

It wasn't the best, but it was okay entertainment on the boat to Denmark.

So if anyone asks you why you haven't read it -

just tell them I said it was okay to read something else.

Momma and I in Copenhagen

I while ago I won a free trip to Denmark. 

So Momma and I took the boat down on Saturday night and spent all Sunday walking around looking at cool buildings, old castles, window shopping, Sunday shopping and eating shrimps in New Harbor.

It was a really nice trip. 

My Mom on the boat arriving Copenhagen in the morning

It was a little windy

New Harbor

This is Amalienborg Palace where Queen Margrethe lives most of the year. 

The statue is of King Frederik V - he was king of Danmark and Norway from 1746-1766.

The Marble Curch (originally called Frederiks Church) from 1749

One of the many café's and restaurants around town

Walking around in Kings Garden

Rosenborg Castle

The Botanic Garden

In Denmark people bike everywhere. The roads even have their own bike lane.

Guess I'm not the only one driving a Peugeot

Momma getting lunch

I wish Norway had a cool capital like Copenhagen.

That's all.