Intermediate life stages...

Finished my master's a few months ago, after a long gestation period, and did for the next few months take extra shifts at two different jobs, while looking for work I'm actually qualified to do - all the while working on a translation project that just fell into my lap...

Yep! My life was floating around in one of those areas of life where nothing in the future is certain, and the next, unforeseeable thing that happens is around a corner and the wall is too high for me to throw a peak over the fence instead of waiting for the turn in the road...

BUT I now have a job that I love, and which is very relevant for my studies and my interests and my background...

Thank you, Lord, for providing for me in incredible ways... That turn in the road contained a better job than I dared hope for, and I am incredibly grateful for it! I am blessed with an amazing heavenly Father!

Summer evening musings...

Long summer nights call for thoughts and musings… walking home tonight from the train, through a Bergen teeming with life and happy people, with Brian Adams in my ears (oh, how I LOVE my iPod) I couldn’t help but feel almost melancholy from the beauty of it all. As I’ve moved, just a few days ago, out to one of the most charming areas of the city, to a tiny apartment that I share only with my own thoughts, I have a new path to tread on my walks home.

And it is beautiful. As I come around a big bend in the road, I get a panorama view of how the slanted rays of the evening sun turn the sea golden, and the lush greenness of summer Norway is at its most becoming. I can’t help but to think, in such moments, that if the earth can be as incredible as this, what will heaven be like? God has promised us a place where everything is made new. A place where He has removed everything that is pain, sorrow and darkness on this earth, where everything will be joy and peace, and all our thirsts will be quenched. It fills my heart with both a longing, but also with a gratitude to Him who created such beauty for us to live in and enjoy even now, before heaven! It makes me think of a few verses from the Bible, and a description of heaven:

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.


He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."


He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."


He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.”
Revelations 21, 3 – 6.

Princess (Un)Tidy?

Well, after the longest blog break ever - 6 months - I thought it was high time to update a little.. It will be brief, however, due to lazinesss and a slight lack of time.. Who can be bothered to read whole novels on other people's blogs, anyway?? I thus decided that this post would consist of mainly photos, showing a little of what the past few months have contained for me.. As most of you probably know, I spent quite a bit of time during the fall at my parents', while doing my fieldwork for my master thesis.. Staying at my parents' automatically includes walking responsibilities with our little dog, and we also got to spend some quality time in front of the fire place. Having a warm, fuzzy little dog fall asleep in your lap is an amazingly tranquil feeling!

Other than travelling back and forth between Bergen and Oslo, which is what it feels like I spent the entire fall semester doing, I did do some fun things. And this spring semester in (at the moment) cold and rainy Bergen, will be spent writing my master thesis, which means I'll basically be looking like this until the end of June.. - sigh -

I must admit that I'm longing for Bergen to look like the next couple of photos, come May and June, which are the most beautiful months of the whole year in Bergen. Although I won't have very much time to enjoy it, being stuck in front of the computer with my thesis... So, as a slight comfort and for a bit of motivation during these dreary, grey winter months, I leave you with these images of better times. These photos were taken in May last year, during an amazing walk up Fløien...

Alive and kicking!

After a major drought, this will, unfortunately, merely be a tiny drop of water in the parched landscape of my blogging life, as I still don't have the time to write very much. Nor the inclination, if the truth is to be told. This summer vacation is also a kind of a vacation from the internet, which I am finding much more pleasant than I first expected. My abstenance is self-chosen, so those who might think I am suffering from a lack of internet connection are sadly mistaken. Abstenance from the internet is not equivalent to abstenance from my computer, however. Let it suffice to say that my nerdy side is getting amply fed by hours spent in the of Age of Empires... The weather hasn't exactly allowed for too many outdoor activities. Bergen, being true to itself, lives up to its reputation of wetness.

Besides devouring Jan Guillou's spy/crime novels about Carl Hamilton, playing the Age of Empires and having occasional cousin slumber parties (and other parties) with Mari and Gunhild, my summer is work, work, work... See one of my first blog posts ever on this blog if you are curious about my thoughts concerning my job. I still work with selling souvenirs to tourists at Bryggen in Bergen. (A UN-protected World Heritage Site, as a matter of fact.) But enough with these ramblings... I am getting too tempted to write a proper (proper means long) blog post here, but my intention was to just let potentially worried readers (whether there are any at all is less important) know that I am not dead. Nor is this blog.

So long, my friends! In the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger: "I will be back!"

My sunny Sunday!

This is pretty much going to be a photo report from the simply glorious Sunday I had a couple of days ago. It was the warmest spring day of Bergen so far this year, and I feel like I did it justice!

I started the day with a hike with one of my best friends, Anette, going up to Skredderdalen - a really beautiful place, where we sat down to eat our lunch close to a little dam. We'd brought sandwiches, coffee, Oreo cookies, chocolate, apples, bananas, and Anette had even brought some Easter marsipan eggs! What a lunch for a hike! A duck couple found us quite quickly after we sat down, so we fed the female some Oreo cookies (we'd already finished our sandwiches, so the cookies were all we had left). The male wasn't too interested, perhaps he felt too proud to take charity food or something, but the female liked them very much, as she kept coming back for more after taking a little swim. I think she must've come back maybe four or five times! We also had some apples, but they didn't want those, so we ate them ourselves. Actually we shared one, and you'll see photos further down of the ingenious way Anette solved that without a knife!
One the way down we went by Fløien - (see photos from my previous posting)and the weather and the forest and everything was just incredible!

Then, as we got back down to the city, I realized I wouldn't have time to go home and freshen up, I would have to go straight to the concert held by my teacher from the folk high school I went to five years ago. And so I did, and it was great, too, seeing him and several other people from my school again - so that's what the last photo is from. We stayed to chat after the concert, too, so I wasn't home until about nine o'clock, in a very hungry state, but very happy after an amazing day!















Pretty neat, using just a Tupperware box to split an apple?!!


A very pleased Elisabeth, enjoying sunlight and fresh air, beautiful Bergen, good company and some well-earned cooffee!

See how beautiful the forest was, with the sun peaking through the tree trunks everywhere? With the greeen mossy grass covering the rocks and tree stumps, creating a very Norwegian troll fairy tale atmosphere...

And back down in the city, Anette and I walked by a tree that we just had to stop and take a closer look at. It was so beautiful and romantic, with a little bench placed right underneath the tree, and a tiny pond right next to it, filled with white flower petals floating on the surface of the water!

















Robert, and

me and a couple of school mates. It was great catching up again after a long time!

Breath-taking Bergen

Okay, so in order to end the month-long drought on my blog, I thought I'd just show you a little something from my hike up the Fløien mountain in Bergen yesterday, in the gorgeous evening sun. One of my flatmates and I decided to take an afternoon/early evening walk, and decided on Fløien as a suitable mix between a work-out and enjoying the spring sun. It was amazing! There was nothing but Kodak moments the entire way, both up and down the mountain! When descending we got to see the sunset the whole way, and it was just like a movie sunset. Regrettably, the batteries on my camera died halfway up, so I hardly got to document anything at all, but here's a little taste, anyway... Enjoy!

Princess Tidy: Ruling queen of procrastination

This is what I'm doing, (can you see the procrastination in the vacant stare in my eyes?) when I really should be a busy little beaver, typing away on my computer to finish a writing assignment which is due Monday... Monday morning. But alas. 'Tis not happening yet. I have sent a couple of long overdue e-mails to a couple of friends abroad, one in Israel and one in Ethiopia. Lucky girls out on adventures in the big world, while I'm stuck here in grey Bergen, doing school work on a Saturday. (No, whether I have myself to thank for having to spend my Saturday doing schoolwork is besides the point, it is not the issue at hand - so leave it be!)

Oh well. I suppose I should get started now. Just felt like generously pouring out some of my thoughts and frustrations into the great void of the www...

Here is what I should look like about 5 minutes into my writing assignment:

However, I expect the realistic thing will look a bit more along the lines of this: