Like a Rolling Stone

Why does it always rain on me?

2012-02-02T19:57:00.004+01:00

So.. I've left Chile and I've finally arrived in Buenos Aires. Chile was a lot of fun, and by visiting 3 cities, meeting a lo of great people, seeing so many interesting places and even managing to get sick, it sure doesn't feel like it's been only 2 weeks. It was definitely sad to leave Chile, but now that I've arrived in Buenos Aires, I'm very happy that this is where I'm going to spend the next months. Tomorrow night I'm meeting up with these guys again, and I cannot wait:

Ori, Lu and Pato

Yesterday was my first full day in BsAs, and as naive as I can be, I ran out the door without a map of the city - only my address to get back home again. I justified taking a cab with the fact that it was my first day here, and then I went to the microcentro - the only part of the city that I'm more or less familiar with. Everything was as expected, and it was amazing wandering around in the same streets as before. What I didn't expect, though, was that the rain would follow me all over the world - from Norway to the desert in Chile to Buenos Aires…! It started pouring like I've only seen in Bergen (and in Atacama), and the streets were flooding with water. So after standing under the roof for about an hour, I decided to just get a taxi back home - but that was a mission pretty impossible. So without speaking much spanish, not having a map or not knowing where to go, I ended up trying to find the closest metro. The positive thing about pouring rain is that you can only reach a certain limit of wetness, and I definitely reached it. Looking like a drowned Kat, there was no use of trying to avoid the rain anymore (just the crazy lightning), and I finally found the metro station after at least an hour walking. Unfortunately metros in BsAs don't do well with rain storms, so it was closed. Then it was only the bus-option left, and I jumped on the next one passing - hoping that it would take me somewhat close to my place. To make an even longer story short: 2 hrs later I was finally home, and I've learnt never to leave the map at home again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwh3FmpZ7kg

Chillin' in Chile

2012-01-20T22:41:00.013+01:00

So, as quite a few of you already know, I've decided to go to South America to work on my master thesis. Since I'll probably experience quite a few freezing cold winters in Oslo, I figured it was time to skip one and head over to the other side of the world for a bit. The plan is to rent an apartment in Buenos Aires for a few months while finishing my thesis, and hopefully I'll have time to enjoy the city as well. However, at the moment I'm in Chile to see the Atacama desert, Santiago and Valparaiso, and I'm staying here a couple of weeks before heading over the border to Argentina. I landed in Santiago 2 days ago, and have been exploring the city a bit on my own, so today is my first full day of studying.

So far I have:

been to the Mercado Central, a big seafood market in Santiago

walked around the city, enjoying summer

Seen a giraffe that didn't see me

Taken the funicular up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal, to get a full 360 degree view of Santiago

Where I met this little fellow

Having a mean bedbug attack in my hostel, where the they had to dress like this to disinfect the rooms

(this one's got the posing moves right!)

After staying in Santiago for 2 nights, I took the bus to Valparaíso. The plan is to stay here for 3 nights, to get some studying done. Here's some pics I've taken so far:

Valparaíso

A trip down memory lane

2011-08-10T15:00:00.013+02:00

Selv om sommeren bestod av både tur til Italia og til Polen er det uten tvil altfor lenge siden jeg har vært på en skikkelig langtur. Reisebasillen har med andre ord bitt meg igjen, og siden jeg ikke har planlagt noen turer fremover har jeg heller sett på noen av høydepunktene fra de siste årene.

Jeg vil uten tvil anbefale....

Å utfordre skjebnen i Queenstown, New Zealand

Konsert på Viper Room på Sunset Blvd. i Hollywood, USA

Dykking rundt omkring Great Barrier Reef i Cairns, Australia

Kultur og sightseeing i Roma, Italia

Surfing på stranda i Byron Bay, Australia

Å vandre rundt Soløya i Bolivia

Å hoppe i fallskjerm i Cairns, Australia

Å ta trikken opp og ned bakkene i San Francisco, USA

Å være omringet av salt i Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

X-treme rafting sammen med noen krokodiller for mye i Australia

Å se på folkelivet i Krakows gater, Polen

Nyte utsikten ved the Peninsula i Victoria, Melbourne

Se kokende gjørme og ekte geysirer i Rotorua, New Zealand

Å svømme med delfiner i Mexicogulfen, USA

Å se et landskap som dette mens gradestokken er på 30 grader i Queenstown, New Zealand

Å vandre i små og bortgjemte gater i Napoli, Italia

Å starte vinteren under palmene i Miami, USA

Å gå på oppdagelsesferd i Melbourne, Australia

Å henge rundt omkring på Machu Piccu, Peru

Å se solnedgangen på Waikiki Beach, USA

Å teste ut nye kulinariske spesialiteter på nattmarkedet i Beijing, Kina

(Det var iallefall første gang vi spiste skorpion og stekt sauepenis..)

Å få nye venner fra andre steder i verden

Å gå kilometer på kilometer på den kinesiske mur, Kina

Nyte en båttur i Sommerpalasset i Beijing, Kina

Se en mor- og babykenguru spise sammen

Å ligge på stranden og få besøk av en gjeng kameler i Airlie Beach, Australia

Å få en privat omsvisning på House of Blues i Hollywood, USA

Å kle seg ut og svelge stoltheten sin på Waikiki Beach, USA

Stå opp kl 04.00 om morgenen for å se soloppgangen på Fraser Island, Australia

Å oppleve noen av verdens vakreste steder, Yasawa-øyene, Fiji

Å finne Nemo, Fiji

Å hoppe rundt på stranden der "Baywatch" ble filmet i Malibu, USA

Å bare nyte sola og livet blant hyggelige folk, Fiji

Å sykle verdens farligste vei og overleve, Bolivia

Å drikke morgenkaffien på en bro i Chicago, USA

Å slappe av sammen med gode venninner på Ihla Grande, Brasil

Slike uvurderlige øyeblikk, Sucre, Bolivia

Å kle seg ut og dra ut og henge med lamaer i ødemarka, Bolivia

Å være turist i eget land og se hvor nydelig naturen er, Norge

What happens in Vegas...

2010-04-22T01:19:00.007+02:00

stays in Vegas! But I'll still give you some of the juicy details...

Californian Spring Break '10, and Alicia, Teresa, Melissa, Liv-Marie and I were ready for our big road trip to Vegas! Alicia had her Vegas-playlists ready on the iPod speakers and we were soon rolling through the desert! After one speeding-fine too many we finally arrived the Strip - where our awesome hotel was located! Planet Hollywood! Being checked in as only two people, we managed to get the five of us a pretty good deal - and two crowded beds!

The five of us ready to hit town

First night definitely met our expectations and we even ended up getting ourselves a bodyguard - Ryan! Cute guy from Florida who didn't mind paying for our drinks... Not that it as necessary, though, cause after arriving Caesars Palace we were invited into the VIP Lounge where free Crystal Champagne was flowing. No wonder the people inviting us over had a sixty grand beer tab! Anyways, after having a couple of glasses we decided that it would be smart to have a change of scene, so we went down to the gambling area and had a bit of a look around before we continued down the Strip to have a better look at the night life.

Outside Caesar's Palace

Enjoying the VIP Lounge

Second day wasn't too bad either! Our evening started out with a free dinner at the restaurant where Ray-J - Brandy's brother - was starring in a movie, and we got personally invited to his after-party after our dinner. Pretty fun, but we forgot our free entry passes and weren't bothered joining all the screaming girls in line, so we decided to hit another place instead! Ray-J's wasn't the only after-party we got invited to, though! Saturday we got on the guest list for Jay-Z's party, but we figured it would be pretty crowded and too long of a wait, so we went to this awesome place with a bar where you had the full view of Vegas by night instead! Can't complain!

well, had to have a picture...

Meli and Alicia got their drinks in New York New York

Then it was Sunday and time to pack up and go back to LA! Liv-Marie had to go back to San Francisco the same night, while I had a few more nights in LA! They were wisely used on hanging out with Alicia, Melissa and Teresa, and hanging out in Hollywood, Beverly Hills and getting cupcakes at Sprinkles! Yum!

Saying goodbye to Alicia a second time was really sad and I don't think I looked very smart walking around teary-eyed by myself at the gate, but soon I was on my way back home! After too many flight-hours it was time to get on the overnight-bus from Oslo to Volda, but I got to try the new milk chocolate with biscuit and sea salt in, so I was happy!! After almost a year abroad I was finally back in Norway!

Back in the USA

2010-03-22T08:41:00.005+01:00

After soaking up the sun in Fiji it was time for a new continent, and by mid-February I found myself at the beach - again - but this time in Hawaii!

Liv-Marie met me at the airport, and by the end of the 10 days we had there, we had already gotten well acquainted with Waikiki Beach, the pleasure of getting free testers of cookies and fro-yo around every corner, sneaking in to super expensive resorts to try and get a taste of the high-standard life (as a change to the sleeping-in-big-dorms-every-night life) and ...tsunami-warnings!! - which really was truly dramatic to begin with, but that ended up as a big tsunami-party in some random Hawaiian peoples' house with brekky and champagne...

After parting ways with Livy in Hawaii, I flew to Arizona to spend a few hours in Phoenix before I ended up in LA! Alicia came and picked me up at the airport and we hung around in Hollywood for the day! Checking out the wax museum and doing a bit of shopping for Vegas..

Alicia at the wax museum

I didn't spend more than a day in LA this time, though, cause I took the (extremely sketchy) Greyhound bus up to San Francisco to meet up with Liv-Marie again! I stayed at her place in Berkeley for about a week! Really cool, but I'm definitely not used to cold weather anymore...!!

Livy imprisoned at Alcatraz

We demonstrated with the Cali-students against the high school-fees

Gotta love the tram!!

Berkeley was full of people living on the street - some wealthier than others..

Jessica - Liv-Marie's roomie - and I performed at Open Mic night at Berkeley

Then it was time to move on again, and now we were going to North Carolina to see Amy!!! Her family is the definition of southern hospitality, and we could just forget about starting our new and healthy lives... First thing we saw when we came in to the kitchen was this:

They'd made us a welcome-cake!! (which tasted way to good....)

Back with Amy! =)

Although we spent the majority of the time in North Carolina, we couldn't miss going to see The Peach in South Carolina... Haha...

Now we're in Chicago, where we've spent the last 5 days, and I've seen snow for the first time in over a year!! Tomorrow we're leaving for Los Angeles, where I hope the weather will be a bit better! Gotta enjoy the sun as much as possible before I'm back home in Norway!

Kiwi, kiwi, kiwi

2010-02-15T07:06:00.009+01:00

After 7 months in Australia it was eventually time to move on and start my long journey back home to Norway - starting in New Zealand. Wellington was the first stop, and at the national museum, Te Papa, it was possible to see one of the world's largest squids(!!)

wouldn't wanna meet this one alive...

After Wellington, Queenstown was the next destination, and with it's reputation for being THE place to be in NZ, it sure didn't disappoint me.

the Shotover Jet

I left Wellington with only one promise to myself - to not do a bungy... Didn't work!

Me jumping off the Kawarau Bridge..

Luging is also fun, especially with 4 Englishmen and some free entertainment (read: Andrew unwillingly doing a salto with his car in one of the corners...)

Luging from the top of the Gondola in Queenstown

Then it was again time to get moving, and after too much car trouble and enough hours in the car, we ended up in Christchurch. Where we had dinner with Simon's ex's uncle and aunt (!!) before driving to the airport and sleeping there..

Road trip!

After spending some time down in Queenstown, it was time to experience what the north had to offer, and first stop was Rotorua! One of the highlights there was to check out the geysirs, hot pools and the boiling mud... yeah.. the smell wasn't the best ever...

One of the many tree carvings in the city

Zach in a Maori hut

mud...

by the hot pools

Geysir!! Yayy!

Also went to a Maori show. Pretty cool!

The Waitomo Caves was the next stop after Rotorua. I had signed myself up for black-water rafting to check the caves out up-close and see some of the famous glowworms.

After jumping backwards down on the water in a tube

glowworms!!

Now I'm currently hanging out in Auckland by myself, being a bit bored because if the bad weather and super tight budget.

Auckland's not too bad, though, but tomorrow I'm off to Fiji to spend a few days island-hopping before meeting up with Livy-girl in Hawaii! Yeah, I know... Life's a beach...!

Lazy December Days

2009-12-07T02:36:00.009+01:00

Back home in Melbourne again and it feels gooood!! Yet there's not much to do here. Struggling a bit with getting work, but if the plans work, I might get some guitar students soon. Hope so, cause Australia ain't cheap!

Finally the summer's in Melbourne as well, and last week there was a pool party where I live, at the village. What we didn't see was that one of the most poisonous spiders in the world was sitting on the bench with us, where we'd been sitting for the last few hours. Apparently the 40% of the population who's allergic to the spider would have to cut off their limb if they got bitten. Didn't feel like testing out if I was allergic or not.....

Bez decided it would be a good idea to chase away the white-tailed spider...

On Lauren's last day we went for a walk up in Lygon street. She treated us with a cup of hot chocolate each at Koko Black - the same place as we went for hot chocolate when we first got to know each other. How nostalgic ;)

Lauren at Koko Black

After coming back to Melbourne I've been hanging more out with Bez and he made me a cake:

The cat-carrot cake

And we made a hammock on my balcony from the extra sheet Amy left me

Stella and I went down to Degraves Street for tea, coffee and a chat

Later the same week we went to Brunswick Street in Fitzroy to hang out there. Brunswick Street is the perfect place for finding treasures! The street is packed with second-hand shops, and although I can't really afford to shop anything anymore, it's fun to spend time just looking at all the weird and cool findings.

A bit of Brunswick Street

Both Bez and I wanted to have an easy saturday night. Me - because I'm pretty much broke, he - because he spent the first part of the day in the hospital's emergency room.. Fractured arms are apparently not very fun! So we started out the evening with a choc lick from MB before chasing after a severely drunk asian woman trying to help her to a taxi - with no luck. Instead we got to enjoy the view of people strolling the streets in mankinis (not recommended) before we headed down to the Yarra River to hang upside-down and to play hopscotch. I won!! Yay! We tried to celebrate my hopscotch-victory by jumping on an (almost) abandoned trampoline. Bad idea if you don't like grumpy security guards! So we spent the rest of the night walking around and play at a really fun (yep, it was!) playground nearby Fed Square.

What? Which sign?

So apart from hanging around, trying not to spend money, I've spent time completely obsessing over the music to Bon Iver! I absolutely love the songs Flume, re:stacks and Skinny Love, so I think he deserves a picture at my blog!

I've also just finished the book "The Power of One" - which is very recommended!

So now I've started on the book I got for my b-day from my lovely roomie; A shart history of nearly everything.

Last weeks travelling the east coast

2009-12-06T16:56:00.004+01:00

Fraser Island was overwith, we were back in Hervey Bay, and it was time to say goodbye to Alicia and Toby. We spent our last day together just walking around in the town centre and having a last dinner together.

It took me a while before I managed to get out of Hervey Bay, but when I finally did, the next stop was Noosa. Originally I'd planned to stay there for just a couple of days, but I ended up staying for almost a week. Partly because Noosa was beautiful and partly because I wanted to catch up with Allyson and Elizabeth, who I met on Fraser.

Noosa

I saw a wild koala in the Noosa National Park

and another (less wild) one in Australia Zoo!!

Australia Zoo was one of the big things I'd really looked forward to on my trip around Oz. It's the Steve Irwin Zoo and it's supposed to take very good care of the animals. I went there with Elizabeth & Allyson and we had a really good day - despite the fact that it reached 42 degrees. Of course my bank card decided to go on strike that exact day, so drinking water was a luxury, but after a few really thirsty hours my card and I became friends again!

After Noosa I took the Greyhound straight down to Surfer's paradise. Apparently I could've saved around 40 bucks if I took the train instead (very annoying to get to know after purchasing the bus ticket), but it was entertaining enough being the only passanger all the way down to Brisbane. In Surfer's Paradise, Sara - whom I met on the Clipper in the Whitsundays - and her flatmate, Nuri, came and picked me up at the bus station. I stayed with Sara for a week, and on the first day we drove down to New South Wales to climb Mount Warning..

Nuri, me and Sara

Ready to start walking

Emily also wanted to join, but Sara had to carry her a bit. Since she's so small, it got a bit exhausting for her

The latter part of the mountain walk was so steep that we had to climb

So after a week filled with fun, surfing, broken lamps, accidental flashing, schoolies and a lot more, I had to say bye to Sara to get to Brisbane. I hadn't yet booked a hostel, so I was just really really lucky to find a cheap place to stay for the night, hence the Pearl Jam concert the same night.

In Brisbane I got to catch up with Daz for a few hours. Hadn't seen Daz since South America, so was a lot of fun to see him again. We went to a traveller's café where we had a beer and some food. Yum! Then I was off to the Ben Harper and Pearl Jam concert!

Ben Harper

Eddie <3>

Fraser Island

2009-11-14T07:10:00.015+01:00

One car, one itinerary, one map and ten random people = self-drive camping in Fraser Island

Monday November 9th I arrived in hervey Bay and checked into my hostel - Palace. It didn't really resemble much of a palace, but a clean hostel with a fan is always nice! Since I had post-poned all the things on my to-do list till the last minute - and unfortunately had way too many goodbyes to say - I had to pull an all-nighter, so the first hours in Hervey Bay were wisely used sleeping.

Alicia and Toby were joining me on the camping trip and stayed at the hostel next door. The Friendly Hostel - a nice hostel with basically unfriendly guests - apart from Alicia and Toby of course. They invited me over for homecooked dinner, which I can honestly say was the best meal I've had in a loong time. Being a backpacker and a student isn't very luxurious when it comes to dinners (especially not when visits to Max B and Mahoni's demand a fair bit of cash home in Melbourne). They'd even gotten me a chocolate mud cake birthday cake with imaginary candles!!

Toby & Alicia with the amazing dinner

Cake.. mm...!

Then it was time for camping and we started out on tuesday the 10th. Besides me, Alicia & Toby, the group consisted of Janske & Ronny from Holland, Allyson & Elizabeth from Canada, Stav from Israel, Aaron from Australia and Francesca from Ecuador. According to ourselves, this was probably the best camping group in history and the long car drives were spent flying and paddling out the windows.

Not even driving in Guatemala can be compared to driving in Fraser Island and driving over the sand dunes made me feel like the test-driver of a six-hour long rollercoaster - not good! After a few wrong turns here and there, getting bogged once and seeing Eurong without planning to, we finally ended up at East Beach where we camped for the night. We had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Happy, aka "Tall Friendly Englishman" (according to himself), who helped us with our tents and mixed our food scraps into a not-so-very-tempting dinner for himself.

The girls cooking spaghetti

We were all incredibly tired after the long drive and spent the evening playing fun games neither of us (not counting the canadians) had played in at least ten years. I also ended up playing guitar by the imaginary bonfire.

Alicia and I lost the game where we were supposed to get up without using our hands

The second day we were woken up early by dingos joining our camp, and at around 6am we were all back in the car. The drive on the flat beach was much more comfy than the previous one and we made it up to Indian Heads within a few hours.

one of the dingos sneaking outside our tent

The view from Indian Heads

Our fab group

Allyson and Alicia

After sightseeing at Indian Heads we went to the champagne pools - the only place on the island where we could actually swim in salt water without being afraid of losing an arm or a leg to hungry sharks. The reason of the name is the cool foamy bubbles that splashed in from the ocean. After a few hours there, we drove back to get to Eli Creek, the place with the famous shipwreck.

Eli Creek

After getting all our pictures taken, we drove the few K's back to the camping ground in Eli Creek and set up the tents again for our second night. We had a barbecue and spent the day chilling and making sand castles.

Having lunch

Diswashing wasn't too easy when we had to save water, but we managed

Our sweet canadians preparing dinner

ELizabeth & Allyson's sand-turtle

The AWESOME sandcastle Alicia & I made! (It even had it's own built-in river)

The evening was spent hanging out with other campers, listening to some random person's iPod and watching the stars. We saw about 3 or 4 shooting star and a big meteor!

Our tents, Alicia, Toby and I had the one to the left

When camping on the beach there's no reason to sleep in when you can wake up and see the sunrise! Alicia, Toby and I got up at 4.30 to have tea and watch the sunrise.

Alicia & me jumping around at the beach

Sunrise, sunrise :)

Toby making us morning tea

Later, after packing all our stuff back to the car again, we headed back in to drive on the sand dunes and eventually get to Lake Wabby - the place we never made it to the first day. After looking around for a bit we drove down to the beautiful Lake McKenzie to spend the rest of the day there.

Charlie's Angels at Lake Wabby

Hanging around at Lake McKenzie

So I found that camping in Australia is heaps of fun and not scary at all. Eventually you get used to have a bunch of insects crawling around, and sleeping on the biggest sand island in the world is definitely worth it!

Sweet Saturday

2009-11-08T00:39:00.008+01:00

The first week of November continued and it was eventually time to say goodbye to everyone.. Anna, Lina, Plamena and I went to MAX BRENNER again!! And after writing so much about my favourite cafe, I have to upload some pics as well..

Lina & Anna with a Tutti Frutti Waffle. Yum!

For some weird reason, the three of us ended up at poetry night at the drunken poet. And how could Anna & I let this opportunity get away? We had to get up there to show off our poetic sides...

Look at our enthusiastic audience

Marie, my fab frenchie, and I had a great day walking around in the city last saturday. She invited me up to Lygon street to go to Brunetti's for a delayed birthday breakfast. So my amazing breakfast was nutella chocolate cake and chocolate milkshake

Me and Marie posing with our munchies

Later we had a walk around to look at the xmas decorations (that arrived WAY to early)

Bourke st.

The horrible plastic tree nearby Flinders

By some famous status nearby the Yarra River

Later I bumped into Bez & Josh on their way to 7eleven. It was Free Slurpee Day at 7 eleven, and since 7 eleven had run out of cups, they'd gotten their own bowl... I just had to take a picture of that..

Slurpees really don't taste good, so this wouldn't be me...

So I helped splashing it all over Bez. Yay!

More xmas decorations..

Later the same day, I met up with Jon! He was in Melbourne for only a day and we had a few hours together.

Jon isn't the best poser, but he's still cute!

Melbourne Cup Day!

2009-11-03T15:16:00.005+01:00

The day was finally here!! First tuesday of November means horce race and Melbourne Cup!! We'd all gotten our tickets for the races and were ready to show off our new hats, dresses and suits. The morning started with breakfast down at Amy's room in the village. We brought champagne and had mimosas with our muffins, bread, fruit and tea. Despite that the weather forecast had predicted rain, it was sunny and warm and we could hang out on the balcony. What more can you wish for?

I'm ready!!

Anna, James & Lina on Amy's balcony

The girls all pretty and lined up! Pauline, Lina, Anna, Marie, me, Amy & Plamena

Getting there reasonably early, we managed to find a good spot on the grass!

Cup Day! Yay!

Olivia Newton-John came over to sing a bit..

I bet on Roman Emperor and View'd, but ended up losing all the money... (6 bucks...)

And the race begins..

Random guy that really wanted to pose with Amy on his way back

So that was the Melbourne Cup Day! Such a great day, but I'm really starting to realize that this is the last week where I have all of my friends here in Melbourne. Next week I'm off to Queensland again, and when I'm back, most of my friends are either gone home or out travelling too. Melbourne is a great city, but it's the people that make it! And all I can say is that I've been extremely lucky to find such great friends here!

Happy Birthday to me!!

2009-11-03T14:26:00.009+01:00

Since Kenny, Lina & I all had our birthday around the same time, we decided to throw a big birthday party to celebrate, and our lovely Anna hosted it in her apartment in Brunswick.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtels

Attacking the 50's waitress

Scotty & Kseniya were 80's kids

Our adorable french angels, Marie & Pauline

In one sentence: Best Halloween Party ever! ;)

And, then Sunday arrived and I got up as early as I could to start enjoying my day. That means around 10-11. Lynn & Brian, Alex's parents, had invited me for birthday lunch in St. Kilda, and Amy joined me down to meet them. We had a lot of trouble to get there because of bad traffic and trams that stopped running, but eventually we got there.

Amy and me at the entrance of Luna Park

Lynn & Brian

So after having champagne breakfast/ lunch in St. Kilda, we took the tram back up to Melbourne CBD. Lina and Lauren came and joined us for dessert at Max Brenner. Happiness!

Later on all of us + Stella, Kenny, Josh and Brendan went to Taco Bill for some mexican food! I got the mandatory free ice cream, but the funniest thing was that the waitress dropped it on the way over, in the middle of the birthday song. Poor thing! So I ended up getting a new dessert in a take-away box! Haha...

Stella, me & Lina

Brendan, Lauren & Josh

Amy & Kenny

I got a sombrero! Yay!

And what I cannot forget to mention is that my awesome friends, Lene, Målfrid & Liv-Marie sent me a birthday present!! Have never been more excited about finding a greasy brown cheese! Cause cheese isn't supposed to be mailed, but I'm thrilled!! Finally some Norwegian food for me =)

They also sent me letters and chocolate! How I love my girls!! :)

So I had a really great birthday! I also got "A Short History of Nearly Everything" of Lauren, which I can't wait to read! Just have to finish up "The Power of One" first, which is definitely gonna take some time!

On monday, Anna & Lina came over to my room for brekky. It was supposed to be early morning, but they ended up having to give me a wake-up call around 11.30, cause typically, I was still asleep. I managed to get up, though, and we had a good breakfast at the balcony. Then we ended up playing guitar for a while, and my clever guitar students ended up teching each other guitar! Yay!

Clever girls!

Later, Lina and I went in to the city and couldn't pass Mahoni's without getting some frozen yoghurt! Yum, wildberry!

And in the evening, we ended up at Bimbo's in Brunswick Street for some cheap dinner. Who can resist 4 dollar pizza? Not us...

Amy (who generally looks a lot better than in this picture), Josh, James, Lina & Plamena

Concertness..

2009-10-30T04:49:00.004+01:00

So... 29th of October finally came and Lauren and I were off to see Josh Pyke live! Yay! It was really cool and I was extatic when they played my favourite song - Middle of the Hill! That made my day for sure!

Josh Pyke :)

So, basically, this is what you guys missed out on:

Apart from that, I spent yesterday down in St. Kilda with Lina and her brother. It was her birthday, so we had lunch nearby the beach. The sun has finally arrived in Melbourne as well, and it feels like summer! Makes me happy!

Today I've not really done much. Had a bit of a jam with Scotty before Anna, Amy, Lina and I went to rent a movie nearby QV Market. We ended up with the weirdest movie ever, which was definitely not worth the forever-taking prosess of getting a video-card. Anyways, we had a great night, but tomorrow wil hopefully be even better! Halloween :)

Escaping Melbourne

2009-10-29T16:23:00.004+01:00

School's over for me, but everyone else is still studying for their exams.. So what to do? Lynn & Brian, Alex's parents, called and invited me to stay with them for a week in Palm Beach, Gold Coast.. I sure wasn't hard to ask!

Yep, we stayed here!

It was sure nice to have a week off and do family-things with Alex's parents. So I spent my days at the beach or discovering the coast..

We went to a parrot-feeding, which was really fun, but two parrots ended up fighting on top of my head...

What to do??

After hanging around in Palm Beach for a while, I took the Greyhound down to Byron Bay and stayed in a surf shack in the Arts Factory Lodge. A real hippie hostel in the hippie town.

Had a morning walk at the beach

Different pictures from the Art Factory hostel. You see.. In that hostel, a few plants gathered together is a garden of joy... And a tipi means a place to do healing and experimental stuff. No need to say that I got a bit affected by all of this.. By the end of my stay I'd ended up with a book about meditation and a photograph of my own aura....

Healing-time

The surf shack where I stayed

Since I was in Byron Bay, basically doing nothing, I signed up for surf-lessons. That was a lot of fun, and I actually did managed to get up on the board on my first go. Yay!

But after four days in Byron, I was very happy to go back home to my room home in Melbourne and all my friends. I really got to realize how much I love the city, but it's still the people that make the whole difference!

A bit of randomness

2009-10-18T14:43:00.006+02:00

Having finished up my schoolwork, I'm currently just walking around wherever the wind blows me.. So here's some random photos from the last couple of weeks

Walking around by myself in Chinatown

Apparently a cigarette shop had a parrot as their pet...

Cute enough if you ask me!

We celebrated our last "Introduction to Australian Society"-class at Spaghetti Factory in Lygon Street

before we headed off to Brunswick Street for drinks and dancing

(to hilarious 80s music)

We found another cute cupcakeria

Amy with our cuties!

Just FYI, we're not ALWAYS eating although there's always pics of food here... ;)

On the wall in a public toilet

Saw......

Lauren, Alicia, Amy and I went to Lygon street for Sunday morning breakfast. Ending up in Brunetti's, it was rather a breakfeast! (I know.. my puns are so funny!)

It's not always about the look...

Some of my work....

2009-10-14T01:14:00.006+02:00

So... after taking photography for a semester now, here are some of my recent pics:

Making an "imaginary landscape" for my Language of Color class

And some natural ones for the other class...

At the uni of Melbourne

By the Mornington Peninsula

Exhibition at ACMI

Saturday in the city

2009-10-05T08:27:00.011+02:00

Saturday! Melbourne! Finally some sun! Time for more city-exploring....

Which really meant that I dragged Amy around the entire city of Melbourne to help me take photos for my photo classes. Instead I ended up taking lots of silly photos... And photos of posters that showed me that apparently I'm not the only one in Australia who thinks about Sia.

This cannot reeally be used either, but when it comes to tourist photos and serious school photos, the tourist photos will always win. And I just LOVE how the vintage stores in Melbourne are painted!

We also ended up passing by the free Mad Hatter festival at Fed Square. We passed by it quite quickly, though, since the music wasn't much to brag about...

So we decided to go somewhere to buy tickets for the Melbourne Cup instead. Since we had absolutely no clue where the ticketmaster office was, we just went into a museum (with this lovely horse outside of it) to ask. It appeared that ticketmaster had their office IN the museum... What a luck!

We also found more of the flowers that don't really look like flowers

As usually we "accidentally" passed by Chocolaite, where we got amazing frozen shakes
It's a reason I signed myself up for the terribly early boot camp...!!!

After a full day with doing nothing more than just walking around the city and take pictures... what's a better end to it than going back to the city to walk around and take more pictures?

Downtown at night....

Taking more silly pictures

The beautiful cityscape

The Arts Centre

We already had tickets for the Salvador Dalí exhibition, so at the 24-hour thing, we managed to get by this queue

and this one...

phew!
Not that we really felt like going to the exhibition a second time, but when you can manage to pass right by a queue like this, you've just gotta enjoy it...!!

And of course... Gotta have som random food pics as usual:

After getting the most random comments all night (one: can I touch your dress?), we managed to escape our crowd of fans by going to SubWay...

And for anyone that loves plastic-tasting cake with buttery ice-cream, we found the perfect place!!

This smile didn't last for too long, though....

A bit about everything

2009-10-02T19:54:00.003+02:00

So... home in Melbourne and back to the everyday life... Since I don't have anything especially cool to update on, I'll just have to write about my current everyday-life...

I've started boot camp with Lauren, so at 6.30 three mornings a week, this is us:

But if you thought that was enough exercise to kill my work-out spirit... Think again! So when I'm not running around trying not to die at the boot camp, I'm swimming in the City Bath with Stella

I'm also having a really hard time putting down the book I'm reading! Soo good!!

And I've just finished these two:

I've also discovered the AMAZING Boost Juice:

Whatever makes you happy, right? :)

Nauseating Classics...

2009-09-22T16:20:00.001+02:00

I've just watched A Clockwork Orange with Sanna and am officially feeling disturbed!! Just had to vent...

Hangin' around

2009-09-20T20:36:00.006+02:00

It's soon October and it's actually less than a month left until I'm graduating and finishing my Bachelor degree! After returning from my holiday up in Queensland I've mainly just been catching up on lost time with my dear friends here in Melbourne. Although I don't think it's too healthy, I'm very content with all the yummy traditions we've started.. So currently this is the beginning of the week:

Monday: Yum brekkie
Tuesday: Dinner somewhere
Wednesday: Frozen Yoghurt at Mahoni's

This week Bridie, whom I met while rafting in Cairns, has visited me in Melbourne. I've showed her around the city, and of course...

Going to Max Brenner is mandatory!
Amy, James, Bridie and I had our share of chocolate for the day...

And cultural as we are, we went to the ACMI museum
...on the only day it was closed!!!
So here's a picture from one of the "sculpture" outside

But who needs museums when we have St. Kilda?

And good friends

After wondering why EVRYBODY in this city eat sushi,
I had to give it a second try myself.

So here's my picks from the sushi train....
From now on, people can't call me picky anymore! It's not everyday I have raw fish with cheese and fisheggs....

Lauren & Amy by the sushi train

We also had a night at the Japanese Restaurant!
Tried out Japanese curry, octopus, plum wine and formed a new, interesting club!

Chilling at the Beer Garden in Brunsiwick

What I really love about Melbourne is all the laneways that are hidden around in the city. However, I hadn't expected to find this one:

AC/DC Lane

Me & Bridie

And then came saturday night...

Impressing how many people that can fit in Lina's bed

No doubt I have gotten a few unhealthy habits in the food capitol of Australia. So in a few hours is the start of my new and healthy lifestyle... It's 6 am in the morning, and after a lazy Sunday I just never got back to sleep, so I figured I could just stay up. I'll meet up with Lina for a jog in a few hours, before I'll make brekky for us and Marié. Then I'll meet Stella for a swim, so guess I'll better get some caffeine before I fall asleep...

Spring Break!

2009-09-09T12:07:00.007+02:00

So, I've had Spring Break! My first, and probably last, spring break ever in August - so I thought I'd better make it a good one!

After skydiving and rafting in Cairns, I decided to go scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef! It was amazing and I couldn't stop diving, so I managed to do three in one day.

That's where I met this fellow!

Me, trying to pose underwater!
I figured that posing was overrated....

Pretty!

After doing so many activities, my budget was pretty tight, so I decided to just have a few chilled out days to enjoy the warm weather before continuing down the east coast. Alicia came to Cairns on the thursday, so we were hanging out at the lagoon and taking advantage of the great backpacker deals you found in every pub around the city. 10 dollar dinners are pretty good for Oz. After a week in Cairns I had to say goodbye to those, though. I went with the Greyhound down to Airlie Beach and checked in at Magnums Hostel - a hostel that reminded me more of the bamboo cabins in Panama than an actual hostel, but I survived.

So in Airlie... Sailing in the Whitsundays is a must, so my next three days were spent sailing with the Atlantic Clipper from beach to beach.

The view from the lookout

The Amazing Whitehaven Beach

Getting tanned

Another sailboat

Whitehaven Beach - apparently the second best beach in the world - was my number one!

The overview over our sailing trip...

The crew were so cool that Jimmy was stuck with me afterwards as well.

Another thing I've learnt is that in Australia, random things can happen anytime.. Like here: I was sitting on the beach, reading my book and admiring the view now and then. Suddenly a whole bunch of camels appeared, a few meters away from me... But if the rumours are true; then Australia is the country with the most camels in the world.

You never know what's around the corner, man...

River Deep, Mountain High

2009-08-25T14:32:00.006+02:00

I've only been in Cairns for about four days, but still I've managed to do quite a few things. Celebrating Lauren's birthday on friday before I left, I ended up with a severe lack of sleep before I left (relatively speaking). But there hasn't been too much sleep here in Cairns either.. On the first day I went to the rainforest, where we got to cruise down a river filled with crocodiles (much more relaxing than rafting with them, though). The scenery was great and we saw quite a few different animals around. Some snakes hanging from the trees here and there, but I managed to survive. What I didn't expect to survive, though, was my 14000 feet skydive that I did the day after...

Yep, the fear in my eyes is pretty obvious

And when this is just a few thousand feet above the ground,

it might be easy to understand why...

This was definitely not the best part..
Jumping out..

But I made it!!

So then, today, I was up for another experience. Feeling pretty brave, I ended up signing up for Xtreme white-water rafting. Kinda regretted that when I found out that it implied rafting in a river full of crocodiles. And jumping down from seriously high cliffs. But it was a lot of fun!!

This was basically what we did for five hours...

My group

It kinda felt like we were drowning a few times...

Didn't stay to dry, to put it that way!

More rafting...

And tomorrow I'm off to the Great Barrier Reef, so wish me good luck! :)

Camping in the cold!

2009-08-19T17:49:00.002+02:00

It's 1.30 in the morning, I have class tomorrow and at least three assignments due before I leave the city saturday. Plans tomorrow night and friday, so basically I cannot go to sleep before I finish up my work tonight. So what to do? Blog about my camping trip to the Grampians, of course....

So.. Since my school decided to shut down the class I came to Australia to do - creative writing - I had to change it to another one.. So I'm currently enrolled in Introduction to Australian Society... Sounds pretty dull, but it's the opposite (in general). So first week we went camping in the Grampians.. Living among these weird creatures:

The backyard of the camp

Like at any other school trip with respect for themselves, we had to share the room with all the strangers in our class.. That we of course got to know pretty well after getting used to their sleeping habits..

The mandatory group picture where everybody smiles politely

What wasn't that much fun was that every nationality had to go and sing their national anthem in front of everyone.. So sometimes it sucks to be the only one from Norway...

So I tried to talk my way out of it by persuading people to get
up on stage and dance instead..
...didn't work!

But we got didgeridoo-lessons

..and we weren't too bad...
(my subjective opinion)

So basically I did a lot of the stuff I probably never would do if I had to do it myself...

Like visiting a sheep farm

Go to the art museum in Hamilton and see that Australian Rules Football really is the Aussies' religion

Go to a café to drink Red Bull to avoid falling asleep

Check out how mouldy the roof of a winery can get

And visit the winery's wedding chapel...

So.. if you ever attend RMIT Australian Society Course, this is what to expect... Guess I'll better start working on my class presentation for tomorrow, although it wouldn't surprise me if I figured out something else I just HAVE to do....

It's raining... rain!

2009-08-13T08:28:00.008+02:00

But I wouldn't mind something else falling down from the sky...

It's weird how wet it can get in a city that has been declared a drought! It's actually been raining so much that I'm now stuck at home with the flu! Notice how I didn't mention any animal before flu, though. No birds, no swines, just flu - but it's still freakin boring! So I'm afraid I would have to disappoint all of you who wanted to read what new, exciting things I'm up to... (Don't you always?)

So here's just some random photos from what I've been up to the last week...

I went to the Salvador Dali exhibition: Liquid Desire
Note to self: Never ever go to an exhibit again on a sunday afternoon!

I'm still amazed by how many sushi places that can survive in this city!

Went to a traffic light party at the Turf, with Maríe, Lina, Kseniya and Scotty

(I'm not Scotty, he just wasn't in the picture....)

Lauren and I went to see Buckley Ward up in Lygon Street! Good music!

I managed to catch a free concert with Bonjah in Bourke street early saturday morning (which really means late in the afternoon).

One of the audience got a bit too excited over the music, though...

Alicia and I made sure that we got our daily dose of calories...

Max Brenner, man!

Like I didn't know that!!!

The swine flu is making people so paranoid, and posters like these are hanging all over uni!

And despite all the rain..
Still living in a city with a drought, so this is not an uncommon type of sign...

So currently I'm just staying at home, trying to recover so that I can get all my schoolwork done before spring break! And since I know that you're all just waiting for my address so that you can send me letters, it is: RMIT Village Old Melbourne, 5 - 17 Flemington Road, North Melbourne, VIC 3051 Now you don't have an excuse......;)

In a nutshell...

2009-08-07T20:25:00.002+02:00

School: Photographing, writing reviews and visiting tourist attractions

I met this guy today! He was in my class, and we started talking. It appeared that he never had been out of Melbourne! Scary ...but fascinating!

I have been camping in Australia! I was prepared to stand up to what's currently my biggest fear - snakes and spiders! Did I see any? ...No!

Chocolate Cafés... Melbourne's really got me!

Eating soup and porridge to save money, but I'm going to Queensland and the great barrier reef!

I love spending too much time wandering inside the huge Australian bookshops!

...and yes, I also miss my sweet friends!

10 tips that you probably don't need!

2009-07-28T18:00:00.008+02:00

Summer, sun, surfing, skating, swimming... nah! Not yet, cause in Melbourne it's still pretty cold!! But cold is... ehm.. cool!! Logically enough, so let me introduce you to my little world...

Yes, we do have a swimming pool!! And.. this is the view from my balcony

My bedrom, the "kitchen" and the sliding wall between Lauren's and my room

So.. if the weather's not the best and the city is infected with swine flu... what to do??

Tips 1)Even Australians don't need sun when they have Tim Tams!

Tips 2)
Go to Queen Vic Market and get all your food half-priced.

(yeah, I do realize that I'm probably the only one of my blog-readers who actually needs tips for stuff to do in Melbourne... But it's more fun than just writing down all the stuff I do... )

Tips 3)

Take the tram down to St.Kilda to take pictures of random dogs ascending the palm trees

Tips 4)

Meet up with friends to look at maps at Starbucks

Tips 5)

Check out some of the street art

Tips 6)

Paarty!

We had RE-O-Week at RMIT Village (where I live), and cowboy & indian party it was...

Tips 7)

Go watch a footy game

We went to see Hawthorn Hawks (Yeah!) vs. Geelong Cats
(and no, I don't want to talk about the results!)

Quite a few people had the same idea as we....

Tips 8)

Be amazed over how many cakes it's possible to place in a window

But don't go inside!!!

Tips 9)

Try to find your way out of Woolworths - one of the supermarkets...
And try and see if you can find just regular milk.. Not low-fat milk, goat milk, low-fat goat milk, ecological low-fat coat milk, ecological premium milk.. and so on...

Tips 10)

Go down to St.Kilda beach and do nothing...

but watching the ocean and the... penguins!!

Yeah, it's the smallest penguin in the world!
And I've seen it!!

Moving to Melbourne

2009-07-20T02:23:00.005+02:00

Finally, after almost a month with travelling, I arrived in Melbourne. Lynn and Brian - Alex's parents - picked me up at the airport, and we drove down to their holiday house in Lorne, close to the Great Ocean Road.

Spending the first weekend at Morphetville

Lynn and I had a walk on the beach

It was really nice just walking around at Lorne

On sunday we drove back to Frankston, Alex's hometown, where I stayed until I got my own place in the city later the same week.

Which is a lot closer to this!

So now I live at the RMIT Village, right by the Queen Victoria Market in the city. It's a big student house with people mainly from my uni and the uni of Melbourne, and there's always something going on (which is the main reason for my lack of creativity right now).

Lauren, my australian-canadian room mate, and I discovered a chocoalte cafe in the city...

And I finally got to taste some Vegemite (yeast extract) on toast - which I'm definitely never eating again!!

On the other side of the world

2009-07-16T06:22:00.012+02:00

10 more hours on the plane, this time all alone, and I'm finally in Australia! In Sydney to be exact, and although it is mid-winter, the weather is gooood! (But not for too long, though). Jon - whom I travelled with in South America - shares a flat in central Sydney with some friends, and invited me to stay at their place, so no need for rushing around to find accommodation.

First impression of Sydney was great! The atmosphere was calming (especially compared to Shanghai), people were nice, and even King's Cross felt like the safest place on earth when I wandered around the streets, looking for a place to have breakfast. Between all the shady night clubs and adult shops I ended up in a nice café, where the kiwi-guy (NZ) who worked there gave me the most expensive sandwich for the lowest price. Pretty good deal for me, and the first of many. During my stay in Sydney I actually ended up getting free chocolate, lollies and Internet connection. But sometimes t it can be too much of a good thing - especially when you get stuck in a ferris wheel because the owner insists on giving you many free rides....

Later the same day I met one of Jon's flatmates, Drew, and we went out for dinner. Refusing to eat any Asian food in at least a day, I got to taste some real aussie-food - which means the Barramundi fish - before we went home. It didn't take long before I felt like home, though! Tucked in blankets on the couch, watching The Ashes (I'm not even bothered to explain the huge importance of cricket in this country) with Drew, I decided that sightseeing could always wait for a day. I had seen the roof of the opera house from far away, and King's Cross' Coke sign, so then the rest could wait!

I spent day two walking around the city and having a tour inside the opera house, before I met up with Jon and Drew for some Japanese food later on.

Inside the opera house

and outside

Jon and Drew. (Drew with the half-wrecked surfing-thing he found tossed away on the way from the japanese place)

I decided to take the ferry to Manly the day after, and I met up with Lu - a chinese girl I got to know at the opera house tour. We checked out a few spots at Manly together before we split up, and I went to Palm Beach to see the place where ...uhm.. Home & Away was set...

"Summer Bay"

The Surf Club

My "polite pose" to the random people who took my picture

The surf club again...

Enjoying the waves

Palm Beach aka Summer Bay wasn't the only great waste time, though, and the next day, Bondi was up!

Usually more crowded, I guess,
but I still wasn't the only one checking out the beach

Happy!

Then it was time to check out the Sydney wildlife park. I thought I had reached the ultimate limit of arachnophobia, but I've certainly reached a higher level now! (Which obviously means that I'm currently located at the wrong continent).

I'm not looking forward too meet one of these...

But I got to see koalas!!!

isn't this the best sign ever??

and kangaroos!!

And I got a pretty up-close meeting with one of the parrots...

I can definitely say that this won't be my last visit to Sydney! It's one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen (and I would claim that I've seen a few...), and I almost can't wait to experience it in the summer.

Besides sightseeing, Jon and I went to see the new Transformers movie on Imax (world's biggest, actually), and wandering around at Darling Harbour was also very nice.

Darling Harbour

The harbour from the ferris wheel I got stuck in...

However, just being able to relax after China and spend time with with the guys was great!

Watching... guess what... The Ashes!

Shanghaaai!

2009-07-12T11:19:00.006+02:00

f you thought it was hard to find a needle in a haystack... try to hail a cab late at night in Shanghai!

Shanghai is big, Shanghai is polluted and Shanghai is... crowded! But Shanghai is also a lot of fun!

After stressing around and almost missing the train from Beijing, we finally made to get on the overnight train that would take us to the city with the skyscrapers - thanks to a chinese man that did a huge effort to get us on the train. Looking forward to finally get some sleep, we weren't overly pleased with the chinese operasongs that constantly were played on the TV - which they'd decided to have on all night. But if you're tired, you're tired, and you'll find sleep wherever...

I certainly did!

Eventually we made it to the city, and since we couldn't check in till later, we decided to start right on the sightseeing. First stop, Pearl Tower

The Pearl Tower from outside

...and inside

In Beijing, we'd been quite familiar with the phenomenon of people constantly coming over to us with the purpose of standing beside us while someone would take a photo with their camera. What we didn't expect was that we actually would have people line up in front of us everywhere in Shanghai...

People lined up, and lined up...

I managed to slide away and into the photographing crowd while Liv-Marie had to do the work alone....

Besides finding taxis, finding food wasn't too easy in this town either... We thought we'd managed to order pasta, but instead we got some unidentified meat or fish that we were quite hesitant to eat..

Our chopstick skills improved

but we were not too pleased with the fishy meat..

What was very easy, though, was to find great places to shop... So it didn't take many days - or hours - before I was way beyond my planned budget... In general, things had a reasonable price, but even in the malls you had to bargain (most places, but you never knew which ones....), and in the shops they always tried to take advantage of the fact that we were blonde tourists. Getting a bit tired of this, and of all the attention, I found that it was worth spending some money on an asian wig. That made quite a difference, and I almost ended up feeling invisible when walking around with dark hair and glasses...

Not planning on changing my hair color permanently...

Besides that, we've been to the zoo to see pandas (Yep, Liv-Marie was very, very, very happy! ...and so was I).

We also went to an amusent park where I forced myself into a way too big rollercoaster for Liv-Marie's sake, and we've had a trip outside of Shanghai to try and see what the life outside of the big city is like. Too my surprise, we could see shops all around this town as well. Seems to me like commercialism is everywhere!

The town was surrounded by a river

and the food was very interesting here as well!

Did anyone say chinese medicine...?

2009-07-06T08:45:00.003+02:00

When you've done the obvious tourist attractions, gotten to know the city well enough, eaten penises and been on the great wall, what more can you do? Well... for some reason Liv-Marie and I were convinced that to try chinese cupping was a great idea! We didn't know very much about it, though, apart from the fact that it's a way to detox the body and better the blood circulation. What we didn't know was how our backs were going to look like afterwards... Poor Farzane was the first one out, and then it was me and Livvygirl...

This was pretty scary

It felt just as bad as it looks

And I ended up looking like this for a week!

So my advice here is... do some research before you throw yourself onto the cupping-board to try out chinese medicine...

Destination Beijing

2009-07-06T08:19:00.003+02:00

After a few hours of looking around in the huge airport in Beijing, I finally found Liv-Marie. I also got to meet Farzane, our new fellow traveller that we ended up sharing the twin-room with. I never got that extra sleep, though, cause sleep is not prioritated when there's so much to do....

Just imagine this... it's your first days in China, you've never been to Asia before, and you have a vague feeling that there's more to this intriguing continent than what you've picked up from all the Jet Lee movies you were forced to watch in South America. You stroll down the streets of Beijing, pretty exhausted thanks to the lack of sleep, but still happy! It's a relief that despite the fact that you know almost nothing about this country, at least you know what to expect when it comes to eating - after all, there are chinese restaurants in Norway as well! You walk around looking for a place to eat, and it gets more and more confusing when you realize that chinese people actually don't eat chinese food! Instead, they're obviously fond of weird-looking seafood and animal body parts that you would never see served on a plate back home.

So how on earth was I supposed to get nutririon? Searching for a snack among the huge piles of vacuum-packed meat-lollies and chicken-sweets, I decided that I just had to start eating scary-looking food once and for all! So why not start with sheep penis on a stick? It was definitely not the best thing I've ever tasted, but it's preferred well fried with lots of spice! Just in case you need a recipe...

So once we're at it, why not dig into my biggest fear besides spiders? Scorpions...

Farzane treated herself with some candy at the end of the day, and had one of the very tempting eggs boiled in tea-water.

Mmmmm....

After trying out some of the culinary that China had to offer (eating cheese ice cream and unidentified objects was now just as common for us as having a bar of milk chocolate back home), it was time for testing out the chinese markets! Everybody know that you are supposed to bargain in Asia, but why hasn't anyone explained the difficulty of this!

Again, picture yourself walking into a market ten times the size of a normal shopping mall from back home. You want to check out what it's like and maybe buy a top or two, so you enter one of the shops and start looking around! The saleslady immediately picks up your quick glance at a coat hanging on the wall. She takes it down for you, and you try it on just to be polite (really, you just looked at the coat because you thought it looked a bit odd...). The saleslady starts talking about how great it looks on you, how beautiful you are, and that since you're the first (or last - can vary from time to time) customer of the day, you will get a really cheap price. Staring in the mirror, feeling slightly embarrassed about wearing a coat that's bright blue with yellow pattern, you do the fatal - I repeat, fatal - mistake of asking about the price in an attempt to politely reject the offer. The code question "how much" is now asked, and the lady quickly brings out her calculator to dial a ridiculously high price. If this is where you think you can get out of the tricky situation, then think again...

The lady then asks you to come up with a price yourself, and there's litterary no way out, cause she is now standing in the door opening, preventing you from going anywhere, yelling "chippa fo yoh!" You decide to say a low price so that she'll finally let you out of there. Wrong! This is not recommended if you don't like people shouting "crazy lady, crazy lady" after you. You then come up with a more reasonable price to shut her up, and before you know it, you've agreed about an okay price for the hideous coat. The lady starts packing the coat into a bag for you, while you're trying to explain that you don't really want it! Obviously it's a severe insult to bargain over things you really don't want, and this can result in the saleslady stealing your purse to keep it as a hostage until you've paid for the jacket! That's when it's good to have a friend nearby that can help you stealing the purse back before you run out of the shop. Relieved to finally be out of there and inside another shop, you rest your eyes on a nice looking blue dress. An arm reaches for the dress, gives it to you, and you can hear the sentence "Yoh a my first castama today, so I give yoh good price-eh!"....

Silk Street - one of the big clothing markets

London Calling!

2009-07-06T07:23:00.003+02:00

It's finally mid-June, and I'm on my way again! While Liv-Marie is travelling through Russia on her way to China, I went through London, so I decided to extend my stay for two days. Then I could catch up with two of my very best friends - Liam and Alex.

Since I've been in London two times before, I didn't bother with any tourist attractions. So Alex and I had a pretty laidback day, just chilling out in Hyde Park and walking around in the city. We went up to Camden to get something to drink and to try out a couple of pints of ale. We found a pretty cool, alternative bar - but with no british drinks. But french beer isn't too bad either, so we survived.

In Hyde Park

I stayed at a hostel nearby Bayswater in central London, and despite the fact that I had to share the kitchen with a few rats, it was really good for only six pounds per night. Alex booked a bed as well, and he really made me feel like home in London. That means... running around and trying to fix work, and maximize my stress level. But it's just good to know that Alex is always going to remain Alex;) We had lots of fun, though, and I got plenty of time to relax on my 1 1/2h trainride to Cambridge, where I met up with Liam. Obviously I'm not changing much either After pouring half a glass of water all over myself - because I forgot to put the glass to my mouth before drinking from it - I realized that I can travel as much as I want to, but I'll never be able to escape from my clumsyness.

I'm now in China, sitting on a café i Beijing and waiting for Liv-Marie's plane to arrive. After a maximum of fifteen hours of sleep since monday (now it's friday), and missing a whole night's sleep because of the time difference, I'm currently concidering to go against my principles and try and start to drink coffee again. All I know is that after meeting up with Livvy, I'm going to get some serious sleep before we're hitting the streets of Beijing!

Skippertak

2009-06-04T18:57:00.007+02:00

Her går det meste i skippertak... Skippertaksjobbing, skippertakslesing og skippertaksblogging... Men sånn er det visst i min lille verden..

Selv om eksamensstresset definitivt har satt sine spor, har jeg hatt en utrolig koselig vår - med MYE besøk!

Påsken var forsåvidt så som så... Planen var å få besøk av Liam, men med dyre billetter og mye jobbing ble det ingenting av. I stedet ble det en ganske dramatisk påskeaften på Fjellhaug med knivstikking og mye blod i gangen.. Ikke bra! Men alle overlevde heldigvis, og jeg hadde pene Lene å henge med. Hadde også et superfint påskeegg som Liv-Marie hadde laget til meg før hun dro til Bergen

Se, så fiiiint!

Skjærtorsdag kom Synnøve en tur til Oslo, til Målfrid og min sin store glede!

Vi måtte feire med champagne (som smakte heller merkelig)

så milkshaken på Rye's falt litt mer i smak...

Therese Marie fant heldigvis litt senere ut at hun måtte følge Synnøve-pusen sitt gode eksempel, og tok turen til oss noen uker senere. Så lesingen ble byttet ut med noen fine dager i TM's vakre nærvær:)

I Slottsparken en fin vårdag

Vi oppdaget Ben & Jerry's på nytt....

Peppe's

Lene... hmm....

Ellers har også Lisa vært på besøk med meg! Fantastisk jente:)

I Frognerparken

Så kom mai, og etter en særdeles innbringende konfirmasjon, fant også lillebroren min, Ruben André, ut at han skulle komme på besøk

new best friends

Og så kom 17. Mai...

Meg og Målfrid på grilling i Torshovparken

Og til min store overraskelse holdt faktisk Alex/ Morph/ Alexis/ SuperAlex - u name him, løftet sitt om å komme tilbake til Norge for å feire nasjonaldagen!

Lite visste jeg at han også hadde tenkt å flytte inn på rommet mitt... men det er alltid koselig med en Alex i nærheten!

Liam og Alex på bursdagsfeiring ved Sognsvann

Også Liam holdt løftet sitt og kom omsider til Oslo! Enda en helg med nydelig vær og enda flere parkbesøk!

Utenfor Slottet

Vi ble flittige gjester på Cocoa on the gogo

Og Liv-Marie kom og joina oss for en liten piknik på Operataket

Ellers har livet generelt vært bra i vår! Har kanskje brukt litt for få timer på skolen, men til gjengeld hengt mye sammen med de nydelige vennene mine i Oslo

Endelig fikk Lene og jeg lagd den mye omtalte lasagnaen vår.

Og utrolig nok kom Livikken og jeg oss til den kinesiske ambassaden for å fikse visum til Kina! (Bortsett fra at dette er feil ambassade, så gikk det til slutt)

Around the world

2009-03-08T13:54:00.000+01:00

China here I come!!=)

Closest Thing to Heaven

2008-12-11T23:16:00.002+01:00

Ferdig med eksamen!! Trenge ej sei meir? Ei veke til på jobb no, so e det FERIE!!

Sing For the Moment

2008-12-08T00:06:00.004+01:00

Kanskje på tide med ei lita oppdatering..?

Etter et halvår i Norge e det vel lurt å skifte over til norsk også.. Språkforvirringa e nemlig ikkje så langt unna for tida. Spesielt ikkje no når spanskeksamen nærmar sej. Noke som mest sannsynlig e hovedgrunnen til at ej begynne å blogge litt igjen). Eksamenstida e som kjent den mest produktive tida - når det gjelde ALT anna enn eksamenslesing og pensum. Men nok om eksamen...

Sida sist he ej begynt å jobbe på Joker...

Laga musikkvideoar med A.J retard-Molf og hyper-Liv Dalton

og hengt rundt omkring og begynt å planlegge backpacking i Asia.. Dessverre e det foreløpig langt fra planlegging til realitet, men det e vel lov å drømme...?

Dancing in the backyard

2008-09-02T00:35:00.006+02:00

Doing the "Bear Dance" is now the most common way to see Livvy and me moving around... Probably not the best sight, but whatever makes you happy, right? Living in Oslo is definitely making me happy, so I'm having second thoughts about moving to England, but I guess it'll be cool wherever..

Moving by bus is not recommended...

I thought I'd left the rain in Bergen..
It appears that the only thing missing was my umbrella...

But my mood got better when Livvy woke me up to clean my room
Yeayy.. room service!

Paola came to visit us!!

We found the worst looking dress ever in a second-hand shop
at Grünerløkka..

And we tried to be tourists...

On Sunday, Liv-Marie and I went to Vigelandsparken for a piknik

**

Sinnataggen.. yeayy

Ooh.. two..

**

I'm trying to blend in...

And.. somebody loves me!

This weekend Alex, an Aussie guy that also just moved here, stayed at my place for a few days, and we went swimming in the freezing (!!) cold water at Sognsvann

Alex being brave

afterwards we went back to make pizza

So when do I study...?
Well.. there's always plenty of time.. Right??

On The Road Again..

2008-08-10T00:56:00.008+02:00

This week I've been in Bergen to pick up as much of my belongings as possible. I got a ride down with Solbjørg, and I stayed at Liv-Marie's place in Askøy. Poor girl, I really started to feel like home there! But despite all the packing I had to do, it was really fun being back in the city of my heart! Correction... one of the cities...

The lovely driver... With.. milk chocolate!

And when back in the city with too much to do and too many temptations, you kind of need a to-do list...

And here's mine...

1) Number one was definitely to see my dear travel mates again!

Meeting up with LM, E & TM again! Almost like being back on SubWay...

Driving around...

Although she didn't join us, Målfrid is still our travel mate!

2) Then I had to start doing the boring stuff... Packing

Liv-Marie helped me fix my enormous dream-closet!

Who needs a man..? ;p

Especially when we got a cat to cuddle with! "Taggeline" joined us while working...

3) Hang around, doing nothing with good friends

Back with the chicas! Again!

4) Hot Chocolate at the Little Coffee Company...

defintion of love...

5) Spoil myself just a little... or a lot...

Calories..? Never heard of...

6) Make weird food at Liv-Marie's place...

She finally got me to taste something that looked weird!

7) Meet up with family

Silje-Marie & Henning were in the city at the same time as I. I stayed overnight with them on the coach in their friends house. The pizza we got for dinner had a pretty weird shape... Of course we had to take a picture of that... (I didn't let them look happy either.. Poor guys).

8) Party!

No, you're not getting any photos.. Haha...

And now I'm back home, doing the same thing as I feel like I've done forever... Which means that I'm still.. packing!! Need to get my necessities to Oslo as well! Looking forward to moving, though!

Summertime..

2008-07-26T18:06:00.007+02:00

...and the livin' is supposed to be easy...

Instead I'm back into reality! Life is no longer a Beatles musical, though it's still a bunch of different melodies! I guess I just like travelling a lot more than I like working..

But there's no reason to complain! Despite spending a lot of time working, I've had lots of fun these sweet summerdays as well! And although the weather has been pretty bad for some time, the sun is taking revenge, giving us a real summer with hot days and late, sunny nights!

Spending time with my sweet Sia!

Yesterday Marie, Kamilla, Jorun and I visited Ingrid in Austefjorden. We had a bbq down by the seaside, ate too much of Jorun's candy and decided to take a swim with the boat.

Ingrid

Kamilla & Jorun bbqing

Lovely portrait of me and the nature

Taking the boat out

Ingrid in the water

Some weeks ago Liv-marie came to visit me, and she finally got a look at how it is to live in a real smalltown. "Rånar" (people using LOTS of time driving around in their cars) became a new word in her vocabulary, and spending too much time driving around the gas station in Ørsta, she kind of got a hang of it.

Vassendgutane... hehe...

Chocolate melted in the microwave! One of the many things we missed doing when in Bolivia!

"Sightseeing" in Ørsta

The usual jumping-pictures...

I've started to really apprecciate Norway! Especially the nature! So I spend much hanging around outside, just looking at the mountains and surroundings. It might sound boring, but I think it's amazing! I'm soon moving to Oslo to start studying spanish and greek, so I need to enjoy it while I can;)

I've just seen a face

2008-06-15T00:13:00.002+02:00

One of the best things about being out traveling is to come back home and see the people that you love. Yesterday I finally got to see Sia again!:) And I've almost never been so surprised as when I came back home and discovered that my seven years old younger little brother had grown several inches and is now higher than me. I love hanging out with him again, although I'm probably a pretty boring sister at the moment. I've got a pretty bad jetlag, so it's impossible even trying to talk to me before 3 p.m. So the coming days I'm only planning on getting back to normal and finally get all of my stuff out of my backpack - without having to repack it! Everybody that's been living in a backpack for a longer period of time know what I'm talking about. One of the most satisfying feelings in the world....!!

Well, back to the trip...

We didn't make it to Canada, so we spent all of the last ten days in New York. We had a great time, but it was extremely hot the last few days. With a temperature on around 36 degrees Celcius, we decided that indoor was the best place to be. Even sunbathing in Central Park got too hot some of the days. But (unfortunately) the inside the shops in NY isn't the worst place to be.. We got from relatively broke to completely broke, but hey - it's NY...! Besides the shopping we went to the museum of natural history, checked out what the different parts of Manhattan had to offer, enjoyed each others company (when we didn' want to kill each other because of the heat) and went to the Late Show with David Letterman. We managed to get tickets for tuesday's show, where among others, Mark Wahlberg and Alanis Morisette were guests. It was a lot of fun! Although the extremely loud laughter of the girl in the seat next to me almost freaked me out. (Watch the show, and you'll definitely hear what I'm talking about!).

The flights back home all went well, but it's really weird to have split up with the girls that I have spent almost everyday with the last five months. But the feeling of having my own room and not having to share my bed either is pretty good to. At least for a couple of weeks! Guess we're all going to get a bit bored back home after being used to travel around so much. Anyway.. Guess this is the end of my blogging, but I always get a lot of questions about where to go and what to see in the Latin, so I'll try to come up with some recommendations later.

***

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me.

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

***

It won't be long

2008-06-05T03:42:00.003+02:00

Five months have past, and the trip is going to an end. There's no doubt that this is the end of an era, cause the five of us have developed a strong and good friendship, but at the same time I think all of us are excited to go back home as well. If we decide not to go to Canada, which our budget might not allow, this is our last destination. New York.

It was fun meeting up with Elise, Synnøve and TM again, but since I haven't been able to blog in a while, I choose to focus on Liv-Marie and my trip to California..

We started out in San Francisco where we did the main attractions as Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Wharf and seeing Alcatraz (from far away, though), and enjoyed being back in an English speaking country. With good ice cream and chocolate!;)

The Golden Gate Bridge, and Liv-Marie with San Francisco in the background

***

Taking the San Francisco tram

We also went to Berkeley to have a look and spent some time in Washington Park reading and pikniking, but the place we fell in love with was Height & Ashbury! Also known as the hippie- and gay area of San Francisco. We met a lot of interesting people and went shopping in the weird and cheap shops. We stayed in a 12-bed dorm and got to know a group of guys from England and Australia that we hung out with. We also went to a very good concert with a musician we lived with, before Livvy and I tried out different clubs afterwards. In my opinion, Beauty Bar is definitely worth a visit if you're going to San Francisco! It's an old beauty salon redone to a club, and they only played rock and indie-rock. We also went to Zeitgeist which was pretty cool, but the atmosphere reminded us more of a nowegian festival than a club, so we didn't stay for too long.

After four days we traveled to Los Angeles, where we stayed for a week and had so much fun! We had a lot of new and interesting experiences...

We stayed at two different hostels at Venice Beach, a place where all the people that didn't fit into the fancy side of LA stayed. It meant that we had to spend a lot of time on the bus again, since the distances are so big in LA, but we're definitely used to bus now, so that turned out well. We played a lot of Yanif;)

The usual sights in Venice Beach

In Los Angeles we did a lot of the typical tourist-things to do. Hung out in Santa Monica Beach, Malibu and Beverly Hills, but we spent most of the time in Hollywood.

Santa Monica

Me outside George Harrison's house.
Stalker, me..?

At Zuma Beach in Malibu
Where Baywatched was filmed

We also went to the Universal Studios where I was sure I was going to die because of Liv-Marie's eager to do the scary rollercoasters, but when we went on the rides, it wasn't hard to see that LM was a bit disappointed. I only felt relief, though! But it was very cool to take the studio tour.

Krustyland!!! in Universal

Wisteria Lane

We managed to reach one of our main goals in Hollywood.. getting discovered by a "music manager". On the bus from Malibu to Venice we met this junkie-guy that really wanted us to make a girl band and publish his music. Not our big dream, but he didn't seem to care too much about that, so we spent the next half hour talking to him. He told us he had this famous manager friend with a big studio and so on, and he gave us his number. We just had to make sure we made the music before we hooked up with him! Haha.. and he was serious, that's the scary part!;)

We also got invited to this posh party in Sunset, but after we arrived we found out that the place was just too fancy for us. It was located in SkyBar, where celebs use to go, but we felt kind of diplaced in this huge bar with a swimmingpool, couches everywhere and too "beautiful" girls with almost no clothes on, so we went to the Viper Room instead. The bar that Johnny Depp used to own, and where River Phoenix died. That was a good choice, cause we got to see a really good concert there!

At the Viper Room

Afterwards we tried to get back to Venice by bus, since we only had 20 dollars, but that was impossible, so a very nice taxi driver offered to drive us instead. He had seen that we were talking to this guy at the Sunset Strip that got arrested, so he found that he better drive us home. The original price to Venice by taxi is about 50 - 60 dollars, so we was pretty lucky. We felt kind of bad when we turned him down when he asked us out afterwards, though..

Anyway.. we met this guy at Sunset that wanted us to hit him because he was so depressed. He was crying because he had lost his job, and we did our best to comfort the poor guy. But suddenly the police showed up while we were talking to him and handcuffed him. They asked us if we were with him, but they got it when we explained that we'd only been talking to him. So fortunately they didn't question us any further.

Another thing we managed to do was getting stalked by paparazzi photographers in the park. We were walking around in Beverly Hills with sunglasses and a hat, and were sitting behind a tree to drink juice, and suddenly this photographer started stalking us and driving around with his car taking lots of pictures of us. Pretty weird, but really just funny.

We also got our private tour in the House of Blues...

The Main Stage

...and backstage

Now, as mentioned before, we're in New York and slowing things down. Maybe not the right city to chill out in, but we've been travelling so much lately that it's nice just to walk around in the different parts of Manhattan, hanging around at Starbucks or go to the cinema. We're having a good time, but there's no doubt that we're all starting to get pretty eager to go back home to see our friends and families again!:)

Magical Mystery Tour

2008-05-20T05:05:00.005+02:00

It hasn't been much more than a week that Livvy and I have been travelling around ourselves, but the trip has become quite magical and mysterious already!

After visiting Uyuni, we went to La Paz where we stayed for two nights, and we rode down the 63 km on the death road with a mountain bike. It was one of the best trips I've ever been to, but a little scary as well. It's the most dangerous road in the world, and only since January there's been 45 people that have died on that road. The past few two weeks it's been as much as ten people. We were a group with eight people. Two aussies that we joined to Titicaca later on, two girls from switzerland, a frenchie, a guy from netherland and ourselves. We had some almost-accidents, but we all made the whole trip! It was really amazing! The fact that we were riding about 3000 m. downhill made us see, and definitely feel, the changes in climate. On the top of the hill it was freezing. We had to wear lots of clothes and double pair of gloves and it was snowing, windy and ice on the road. Pretty scary to be honest, but that's part of the experience in doing the death road. It had been raining for two days, so further down, on the second and largest part, where the road is at the smallest, it was all muddy and slippery. The guides told us that it was really dangerous in that kind of weather, but everybody made it to the end.

The Death Road from far away

Livvy ready to roll

Somewhere on the road

As mentioned, the weather wasn't too good. Pretty foggy!

Afterwards we had planned to go directly from La Paz to Cusco, but when Jon and Drew, our new Australian friends, asked us if we wanted to join to Copacabana and Lake Titicaca first, they were too charming not to join, so Titicaca it was. We stayed at a hostel down by the lake, and enjoyed the nice atmosphere in the small city.

Jon, Livvy & Drew

Up in the hills at Isla del Sol

We all wanted to go to Peru the next day, but unfortunately for us the bus companies went on strike, so we all got stuck in Copacabana the next three days. We spent the days relaxing, enjoying the nature and going to Isla del Sol. Friday evening we arrived in Cusco, and we split up with the guys. Pretty anxious about not getting tickets till Machu Picchu, we still managed to get train tickets from our new friend Cesar.

Machu Picchu was amazing! Magical and mysterious at once, and we had fun walking around in the labyrints, having our usual photoshoots. Liv-Marie wasn't too excited about me running towards all the cliffs to enjoy the view, but in the end she joined me and laid down on a big rock on the cliff.

Look at that view!

Running around, freaking out Liv-Marie...

There's nothing else to say other than that there definitely is a reson why Machu Picchu is one of the seventh wonders of the world. We went there on the 17 of May, which is the national day of Norway. Fortunately we got hold of a red pen in Aguas Calientes, and we managed to draw a norwegian flag that we brought to the top. Definitely the best celebration ever. Though the celebration dinner was rather depressing. In Cusco, my credit card decided to go on a strike as well, and we only had enough money to Machu Picchu and nothing else. We were prepared to spend the night in the hostel lobby since we didn't have more money for sleeping, which also meant that dinner of the day was doomed to be a Twix chocolate bar to share between us. But it sure was the best Twix bar we've ever had!!

"Direkte inne fra Machu Picchu! Det er 17. Mai, og her ser vi hva barna har laget"
Liv-Marie pretending to be on national TV with the norwegian flag we made

Back in Aguas Calientes we had to wait between three or four hours before the train left for Cusco. We used some of our last soles to buy a pack of crackers and sat on a bench. Two elderly ladies joined our company, and we had a good chat. They'd been traveling all over the world and had a lot to tell us. We didn't tell them anything about our money problems, but out of nowhere they gave us twenty dollars and told us to go buy some food. Guardian angels for sure! So we got to buy some bread and managed to pay for another night of accomodation. The next day my card started working again, so it wasn't crisis after all, and we've decided to pay the money forward instead, since we can't pay it back.

We've had so much fun these days, but there sure hasn't been lack of stress either! When we came back to Cusco after Machu Picchu at 2 am, we couldn't find the note with the address of our hostel, and we had to call poor Cesar who knew. He was out partying, so the police came and had to talk to him to understand his drunk spanish, and we got a police escort back home. But that wasn far from the most stressful! Cesar helped us out with changing our bus tickets to Lima, but on sunday morning there'd been a big misunderstanding, and Cesar didn't show up with the tickets. We had an extremely tight time limit to get to Lima because of our flight, and we didn't reach Cesar on the phone before twenty minutes after eight, when the bus had already gone. He caught us a cab and we managed to catch up with the bus with the speed of 130 km/h. When we finally got into the bus, the busdriver literally threw us out of the bus again and tried to drive away with our luggage. We had to jump back on the bus in speed and force them to stop and give us back our luggage. It appeared that Yolis, another guy, was the one that had our tickets, and he hadn't showed up yet. So the bus drove away without us, but at least we got our luggage back. We started to feel the panic building up, and Cesar even started to cry because he felt so guilty. Terrible! But although we had to buy new tickets to Lima, we were lucky enough to catch another bus a few hours later!

Now we're in Lima in a very cheap hotel with... hot showers!!!! Really saved the day! So today we're just going to relax and enjoy the last full day in South America... Most likely with watching Narnia and going to the casino to use our new skills in blackjack;)

The Fool On The Hill

2008-05-11T22:39:00.003+02:00

No, we're not sane! Being stuck in Uyuni - where there's nothing else to do than visiting the saltdesert, makes you do the weirdest things...

Liv-Marie on the hill

Me with Santini/ Evo/ Maribell - Liv-Marie's guitar that keep on changing it's name. And I'm looking stunning as always ;p

Well, yeah..

We were running after the poor llamas. But look how adorable they are!!

Livvy-girl

Ticket To Ride

2008-05-10T23:35:00.005+02:00

Me in Salar de Uyuni

I didn't imagine it would be this hard to get tickets to wherever. Liv-Marie and I are travelling by ourself now, and we're currently stuck in Uyuni. The plan was to go either to La Paz, Ororu or to Chile, but that's pretty hard without tickets. The bus was full both to La Paz and to Ororu, and the bus to Chile goes only one day a week (so typical bolivian), so we're still in Uyuni. It's so extremely cold here, so we've had to buy a lot of bolivian clothes to keep us warm - that doesn't look very good - and share the bed. It's like being back in Norway, but that's because it's so high here. It'll probably get better wherever we're going next. We don't know where that is going to be yet, but probably Cusco since it's so hard to get tickets to Macchu Picchu. We'll see..

We did have a really great day yesterday at the Salar. Since we're used to always be the center of attention when we're five girls togethr, it was a different experience to just be the two of us. But indeed very fun. We got ourselves three new best friends. Dan the man from England and two Argie-guys. We also shared the car with two women from Argentina.

Our new best friends

family dinner with the others from the car
We had to eat llama-meat...

It was pretty amazing to see a desert of salt, and Liv-Marie and I had our usual photoshoot. On the bus to Uyuni LM's camera got robbed, and mine is already stolen, so we had to buy a new camera. Pretty cheap and crappy, but we can't go to Peru without a camera.

We went to a hotel made only of salt, drove far into the desert, and to a cactus island. Except from the fact that we had to eat lama, it was a really good trip. We also went to the train-cemetary, where we saw (and climbed into) the first trains of Boliva. It wasn't the coolest thing ever, but we had a lot of fun. Maybe too much, because Ariel, one of the Argentinian guys, managed to seriously ask us if we were friends or partners... Hilarious!

Inside the hotel. The walls and the sculptures are all made of salt

Livvy on the cactus island

At the train cemetary

Today we tried to make the best out of being stuck in Uyuni. We decided that going for a llama-hunt would be the perfect thing to do. We dressed into our backpacker clothes since we were going to the countryside, and caught a cab. The poor taxi driver had to drive around to find the llamas, and he ended up being our personal photographer. Well, we just wanted to discover his hidden talents...

I don't think he thought we were sane, though. We brought Liv-Marie's guitar and some bolivian instruments and had fun running around and playing in the countryside. Then we changed into dresses and had a small photoshoot. Poor, poor driver! (He actually asked us if we were lovers as well. What are we doing wrong??) But we had a pretty good day!

I should have known better

2008-05-05T01:16:00.003+02:00

Yeah, I really should have known better than laying Prudence all by herself in the luggage shelf on the bus to Asuncion. My dear Prudence, the beautiful blue guitar with such a wonderful personality, is very much missed! Yeah, she had her beauty flaws with her old strings, being sandy and bled on. She liked to make herself out of tune, but she was still my Prudence! Now she's with some stranger somewhere in Paraguay, while I ended up with too much time to write on my blog instead.

And I should have known better than planning too many things for these last weeks in Bolivia. It's weird how different they ended up to be compared to my expectations. I thought I would be all healthy and back to normal again after returning from the hospital, but I turned out to be wrong. I'd been looking forward to do more stuff this week than i usually do in one month. First of all I was supposed to finish my bachelor assignment, (which I don't get to finish this semester after all) and then I would spend time with the girls from the orphanage.

I just love those girls! I've especially gotten to know Louisa, Eva, Josephine and Volvina. Eva is a really smart girl. She gets the logic in games really fast and is always happy and laughing. Volvina is thirteen, and a bit more shy than the other girls. She's such a lovely girl, though! Josephine is the one that needs the most attention. She's always running around and wants you to talk to her all the time. Louisa is the small, shy girl that's absolutely a heartbreaker. She's such a sensitive girl that might go away by herself just to stare into the air, but has a strong need for people to hug or touch her. I really wish I had more time and strength to hang out with the girls.

I'd also planned to work on my spanish, but talking with the doctors is enough practise for a long time. That's a good thing about me getting sick, though - being forced to speak and understand spanish. And it seems like I might have to skip the paragliding. But I'll focus on the positive things instead.. I get to eat lots of healthy food! Vegetable soup, tomato soup, chicken soup, noodle soup.. I can use a lot of time writing on my blog - though I'll write about things I won't do instead of things I'm doing;) I get to listen to a lot of new music, and I can finally do what you're supposed to do when you're travelling... connect with your inner self.. Haha..

But.. I've actually managed to do some touristy things this week! Elise, Liv-Marie and I went to see the dinosaur footprints. It was cool to see a theme parkish thing here in Sucre. It wasn't very big, though, but it was fun to see Sucre´s big pride.

The cracks are supposed to be footprints from the dinosaurs

Elise, Liv-Marie and the neck of the biggest dinosaur

At the moment I'm spending most of the time by myself, because the other girls are studying for their exam, and it's starting to get a bit boring. I'm looking forward to start traveling again, but I hate the fact that Liv-Marie and I are splitting up from the group. After being five girls for such a long time, It'll be very weird to be just the two of us backpacking in Chile and Peru.

***

Some pictures from my very eventful days at the hospital

Liv-Marie was my very own nurse.

She was staying with me in the hospital to take care of me:)

A picture says more than a thousand words, huh?

Me sick, tired and longing for freedom!

After a few days with hospital food and too little sleep, Liv-Marie started to look like the sick one...

Something

2008-04-28T00:18:00.003+02:00

I can't explain what, but there's just something about Sucre. Something that doesn't make you want to leave without being sure that you'll return someday in the near future.

Before I arrived I didn't know very much about this country in the far south. The fact that Bolivia is the poorest country in South America was both challenging and interesting. How would it be for me, a norwegian girl, to move to Bolivia and face poverty in the eye?

Living in Sucre makes you concerned about the politics whether you like it or not. I don’t think that the troubles in Bolivia is well known outside of SA, but at this time, there's a lot of conflicts inside the country. There's disagreements about whether Sucre should remain the capitol city of Bolivia or not, and there's a lot of issues concerning Evo Morales, the president. In general it's not dangerous to visit Sucre, but it's impossible not to feel the tension that's building up. Before christmas there was a huge riot that caused the death of three young bolivian men. The police let all of the prisoners free, while escaping from Sucre to Potosi themselves. Now the situation has calmed down, but the political situation is far from good.

A small riot in March

***

One of the protest marches - a pretty usual sight nowadays

So with all these troubles, what is this something that makes you love Sucre so much?

Despite the political problems, Sucre has got this warm, friendly atmosphere that makes you want to hug the small, white brickhouses that's surrounding the city. It's easy to make friends here, and you’ll learn a lot by talking to the people. Of course, you don't get very far without knowing some spanish, but that's part of the experience. As far as I've experienced it, it's impossible to sit alone at the plaza (the center of the city) without having at least three kids coming over to have a chat.

***

One of the girls joining me at the Plaza

One of the things I like the most is just to walk in the big markets. In Mercado Negro and Mercado Campesino. In the markets, people are sitting on the side of the street selling vegetables, old women are gossiping and mothers look after their kids while working in the market. It's not how I would wanted Norway to be, though, but it's freeing to see how happy they can be despite the hard work, poverty and conflicts. Yeah, it's a cliché, but it's true.

Another something, which I'm not too proud of, that also make me love Sucre so much is the wealthy situation we're able to be in as norwegians. When living in Bolivia, we certainly have to make many sacrifices concerning luxury we're used to back home, but at the same time we don't have too many worries. We don't have to worry about not having enough money for the rent - cause it's not very much compared to home. We're able to travel and eat well, and in many cases we can live a better life than at home. But on the other hand, by being in a wealthy situation, you're also able to make an effort in helping people. By being up close to poverty and problems, you won't forget about others. This is what I love about Sucre. Being in this nice city, surrounded by sweet people, while at the same time I'm forced to challenge myself, my opinions and take a look outside of the box.

Yesterday

2008-04-27T23:12:00.001+02:00

All my troubles seemed so far away, but now it looks like I am here to stay - at Santa Barbara hospital in Sucre.

While writing this, I'm currently boring my ass of at the hospital, trying to make time go faster by writing or watching TV. Though I must say, I'm very impressed by the bolivian hospital. I've got my very own room with TV, bathroom and a view, and people taking care of me constantly. And yeah, this is what happened: Yesterday I suddenly got very ill and ended up becoming a vegetable that neither could talk or walk, so I got carried to the hospital and ended up staying here for the night - and most likely I'm going to stay here at least one more night. After getting medicine, I'm now pretty much back to normal. Though I guess I have to adjust my plans a bit, cause they found out that I had gotten a severe infection. But as long as I don't have to stay here for more than one more night, I'm all happy.

It's kind of nice being taken care of, thogh. Having doctors and nurses running in and out of the room all the time, and being visited by TM, Elise & Synnøve. They even brought me a flower:) And Liv-Marie is staying with me at the hospital, fulfilling every little wish I might have. Couldn't be more thankful for having such great friends! Enough about the hospital anyway..

Sadly, this is the last two weeks the five of us are together before we're splitting up for three whole weeks. None of us is looking forward to it, but with different wishes, we have to go different ways. Synnøve, Elise and TM want to spend more time here in Sucre, while Liv-Marie and I want to go to California. Which means that we also have to split up for Chile and Peru. We're all going to Arica in Chile and Cuzco, Macchu Piccu and Lima, but since we're leaving Bolivia at different times, we also have to visit Chile and Peru at different times. But then we'll enjoy these last two weeks even more.

Don't know what I'm able to join in to after this infection, but these are our plans for the next two weeks:
- go paragliding (Nothing's going to stop me from doing that)
- visit the seven waterfalls
- see the dinosaur footprints
- take the Che-walk
Liv-M and I are also visting Salar de Uyuni (the saltdesert) one of the upcoming days.

Enough of the writing anyway. Need some sleep!

By the way... ended up staying there for four days, but now I'm finally out!=)

Good Day Sunshine

2008-04-24T02:29:00.002+02:00

At Punto Del Este i Uruguay. Supposed to be one of the best beaches in South-America. Not sure about that, after all the beaches we've seen, but it was really a beauty!

Haha.. what to say..?
Liv-Marie had to lotion Mr. Macho's tattoos!
Lucky girl, eay?!

Just gotta love Ihla Grande!

6 in the morning.. TM, Liv-M and I ended up at a party in Flamengo in Rio.
Beautiful view, though! The Sugarloaf in the background.

The Long And Winding Road

2008-04-21T19:21:00.003+02:00

Too long, way too winding, and it didn´t lead me to my home. Only to Santa Cruz...

What the fuck is wrong with the buses in South America? They're either too hot or too cold, and in most cases just freezing. If there's one hard lesson that I've learned by busing my way through South America, it is that aircondition definitely is a bad word. After splitting up with the other girls in Argentina, I decided to make my way back to Bolivia through Paraguay. I spent about a day in Asuncion, the capitol city of Paraguay, and the city lived up to it's expectations. Which is not a good thing... Because I was by myself in Asuncion on election day, I decided to check myself into a hotel instead of a hostel. After being spoiled with good breakfast in Sao Paolo, I went happily downstairs to receive some hotel-breakfast the next morning. Well.. The fact that the staff had decorated the breakfast-table with plastic fruit to make it look better speaks for itself.. More funny than annoying anyway..

After spending the whole day searching for my dear Prudence, my guitar which brutally was taken away from my on the way to Asuncion, I went looking for a bus to Bolivia. Trying to be smart, I bought a ticket from the only bus company that didn't have aircondition in their buses. Although I knew that it probably would mean low standard, I would risk whatever it took to get a warmer journey to Santa Cruz. Anyway.. what I hadn't counted on was that the lack of aircondition made the bus staff open all of the windows. So there I was, wishing for aircon istead...

And no, you don't get the great importance of aircon before you try the buses in Latin-America!

Finally we're all together in Sucre again. We've had a really cool time travelling around, and there's no doubt that Argentina is the country closest to my heart!

The top things that I can remember at the moment:
- Buenos Aires!! Just all of it!
- Partying in Rio
- Morningswimming at Copacabana
- Staying at the weirdest hotel in Montevideo
- Happy days in the sun at Ilha Grande
- Seeing (and definitely feeling) the Iguazu Falls back in Argentina

Here, There And Everywhere...

2008-04-14T19:48:00.003+02:00

Yeah, I've realized that I'm horrible at updating this blog. Probably a good sign though, that we're not using too much time on the internet, but here's a short update..

We've done a lot of travelling the last few weeks. Our first destination from Boliva was Buenos Aires. The busdrive from Sucre to BA was more or less 50 hours, but we finally made it to Argentina. BA was fantastic. We probably spent too much time in the shops, though, cause suddenly our backpacks were quite heavy again.

Afterwards we went to Uruguay and stayed at Hotel Montevideo. It was the coolest hotel we've ever been to! Probably because it was really big, and we were the only guests in the hotel. And the staff were so sweet. Anyway, Montevideo was more relaxing than partying, but we had a good time.

Now we're in Sao Paolo in Brazil, soon going to Paraguay and Iguazu Falls. Looking forward to that! We've been in Rio and Ihla Grande, where we enjoyed some hot days in the soon. At least in Ihla Grande!

A Day In The Life

2008-02-26T23:06:00.004+01:00

I've realized that I really don't get to write very much on this trip, cuz we've always got too much to do! Well, maybe not too much, but being five girls, we always have a lot of fun!

This is how a typical day in Sucre is:
- breakfast
- homework or spanish lessons
- spa, sunbathing or just hanging around chatting
- dinner
- partying or a movie
- sleep

S at Mirador, with the famous Jugo mixto seis

TM and S all dressed up for the surprise-party that LM and I made for our beloved friends <3

At JoyRide

we've finally moved from Grand Hotel, where we've been living the past few weeks, to a real apartment. It's good to finally have a kitchen and a place that's ours. We share it with five other girls and a guy, but I think that's going to work out fine!

Sucre is a really nice city, and though we're looking forward to doing some more travelling, we really don't want to leave Sucre. So we have no idea when to start travelling again. And where to go, but that's part of the fun.

Across The Universe

2008-02-10T18:51:00.004+01:00

Now we`re finally reached our main destination - Bolivia!

The last month has been just amazing! The five of us are still getting perfectly along, which may be a miracle itself! After Florida, we spent a week in Guatemala. We met so many nice and definitely interesting people there!

Guatemala has got a beauty of it's own

In Antigua we went to the vulcanoe La Pacaya. We brought marsmellows to bbq, but we managed to forget bringing sticks. The vulcanoe was definitely hot enough for bbqing, though!

Liv-Marie hiking

Yeah, the vulcanoe was very much alive!

After a few days we went to San Pedro and discovered the night-life there. Indeed interesting! It´s hard to find any place similar to Freedom Bar, though it really wasn`t my type of place to be!

One week later we went to Costa Rica and took the bus from San Jose to Puerto Viejo, a small town on the carribbean coast! It was so relaxing to be there, and the beaches was just stunning! Liv-Marie, Synnoeve and I rented bikes and went to Cockles to swim, while T.M. and Elise went to Black Beach instead.

With our pink and green bicycles

In Costa Rica and Guatemala we met a lot of people who recommended Bocas Del Toro in Panama, so we decided to cross the border to Panama. Panama was great too, though we got into some more trouble than before. Synnoeves backpack got stolen, so we had to spend most of our second day at the police station.

Bocas del Dragon in Panama

Though it´s been incredibly fun to travel around, it´s kind of nice to be able to relax in Sucre for a while! I´ll try to find the time to write more interesting stuff later. And I cannot forget to mention... Liv-Marie and I have finally bought guitars!!!! Beautiful blue guitars! Prudence (mine) and Evo Moralez (Liv-M´s)

Here Comes The Sun

2008-01-20T17:11:00.005+01:00

At South Beach

This is our 8th day in Florida, and the time has been amazing. We started out in Miami, where we stayed at South Beach hostel. It was right by the beach and ocean drive, and we had a great time. It's weird to think about the fact that we don't have any real places to live anymore, but it's fun to have the opportunity to go anywhere we'd like! Some days ago we rented a car - a nice, kind of girlie-looking Chrysler. It's been a few roadtrips, and we've visited Biscayne Bay, Grassy Keys and Key West. At Grassy Keys we went to the Dolphin Research Center and Elise, Liv-Marie and I went swimming with the dolphhins. We had a great time, and it was fun to do tricks and swim with the baby-dolphin too. Economically we're on a very tight budget, so we rented a room for three people where the five of us slept. That worked out fine after all, and we continued the same thing in Orlando.

<3>

(yeah, I'm allowed to be as girlie and hearty as I want to when it comes to Santini)

We also went to Key West where we went snorkelling, and Liv-Marie and I went parasailing also. It was a lot of fun. Though it felt like it was some sport for people above 50, cause we were the only young people on board. It was really cool anyway. It didn't go very well in the next boat, though, cause the parasailing-thing got teared apart, but nobody got hurt! Today we've only been driving all day. Elise has been the one driving, and now we're in Orlando. It's colder, but here's a lot of fun things to do. I'm looking forward to go back to South Beach in Miami, though, cause that place really is awesome!

Our beloved car!