Frost

It's pretty......pretty AWESOME:) And it sparkles! All of these were taken in the area around where I work.

Smooooke on the waaater...no, wait..?

Frosty car

Cool leaves. Get it? Cool..?:P

Yes, I have a thing for frost and water.

Frost on the kajacks and canoes.

Funny how old, rotting leaves can be so beautiful. Frost pimped you right up, leaf!

First snow

I took these about a month ago (or maybe it's more like weeks....?) when we had the first snowfall in the mountains. I got excited. Now we still haven't had a snowfall, and this stuff is still taunting us from the mountaintops, with false promises of winter wonderland. And next week is supposed to be real warm. Oh well.

Valnesfjord

Here's a youtube video made up of pictures from my little hometown, really shown from it's best side. She's a looker, she is!

Hippievikings

The Parkenfestival is a musicfestival held in Bodø every year, over two days towards the end of august/beginning of september. It was first held in 2006, and they expected around 2500 people to show up. The crowd exceeded that by about 5000 individuals on the second day, and it continues to sell around 7500 tickets every year. The festival has previously hosted international artists like Chris Cornell (he was awesome!), CunnunLynguists, The Roots, Clutch, Danko Jones, N.E.R.D, Manic Street Preachers, Kelis, The Hives and many more!
This years festival was held august 19th and 20th, and boy was I there! It was my third time attending, and it rocked some serious face!
This years list of awesomeness consisted of, among others, Lissie, Iggy Pop and Ed Kowalcyk from Live, plus a number of great norwegian and scandinavian bands. It was an amazing weekend, and I'm still coming down from the high of all that good music. Seeing Lissie and Ed from Live were just unbelievable, and if you ever get a chance to see our swedish cutie, Robyn, I strongly recommend it; she is a FIREWORK on stage! So good!! Of course I have alot of pictures, and I'll share a few with you. The videouploader is being a bitch ATM, so I'll post the videos later.

Lissie<3 Beautiful, talented, american Lissie:)

A very happy viking, watching Lissie, and obviously in need of new beer.

Look at all those people! Oh shit, am I in the way?

Eva & the heartmaker is an up and coming norwegian band that I really dig.

Drunk and happy vikings.

Foo Fighters

June 24th I went to Oslo to see the Foo Fighters live for the first time in my life. Naturally it was no less then completely epic. The whole day was about as awesome as they come; we spent all morning and early afternoon at the amusementpark I wrote about earlier, which just made me hyper and super extatic for the night to come. I was not let down. 20 000 people from all over the country showed up to see the show. Dave Grohl told us he had never played in a footballarena that hot before. It was like a sauna in there, but it all just added to the awesomeness of it all. Dave has got to be the nicest guy the music industry can offer, and they put on an amazing show. There was some trouble with the PA system; Dave goes "Excuse me? Are the Foo Fighters to loud for the PA-system?" and he just kept right on playing semi-acusticly. The highlight (oh but there were so many!) of the night, I gotta say, was when he played Wheels. I was conviced they wouldn't play it, cause it wasn't on the setlist from Stockholm, so I almost cried from joy when they did. It took WEEKS before I came down off that high, and I am DEFINITELY going to see them again.

VERY excited for the show to start!

Hell to tha yeah!

Telenor Arena before the show, not quite full yet.

Tattoooo

I finally fixed my shoulder butterfly. So happy with it, it turned out great. My tatooist is like a wizard!<3

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More airplane footage

Can never promote the view over Norway too much:)

Viking amusementpark

Tusenfryd is an amusementpark just outside of Oslo. I went there for the first time this june, and MAN ALIVE; you NEVER get too old for rides! This park has 33 attractions and over half a million visitors every year (which is alot for a country just shy of 5 million people). I can be somewhat squeemish about rides, but this park was BAD ASS. It might very well be the best day of my life so far, cause we got free tickets, there were no lines anywhere, and later that night I got to see the Foo Fighters play live! But that's a different story. Here's a videoclip from the badass over all at this park; the Spin Spider. I was all rode out, and didn't dare set my foot anywhere near it, but my friend Carien and her fellah took it, and sometimes late at night I can still hear their screams....:)

Viking migration

The only reason I am uploading this video is because I've never seen this many geese in one spot before, and I thought it looked cool. I counted 44. Neet. They are Canada Geese, so they should be quite familiar to you:)

Time for an update on my life

A recent photo. Not much has changed;)

I realize I haven't really told you guys much about what goes on in my life on a day-to-day basis since I got back from the states in december. I think it's time for an update on the awesomeness that is my life. I spent most of the winter getting a sore behind from sitting on it too much, watching Simpsons, prowling joblistings online (and, as you know, posting stuff in this blog). Not cool! From time to time I worked as a substitute teacher at the local elementary school, and at three different daycare centres. I found that I really enjoy teaching, and for some reason the real noisy and rascally kids are my favourite grades! Might be the rebel within me that sees alot of myself in them. I've also gotten alot more comfortable around small children (they've always been like an alien species to me), which I'm sure will come in handy some day;) After easter break though, I got a more permanent worksituation. I got offered a job at Valnesfjord Helsesportssenter, where I used to work before I went to the states. It's a rehabilitation institution and you can read more about it here. The rehab unit it devided between three teams that work with different diagnosis groups, and our team does what's called occupational rehab, where we help people with different health issues (physical and psychological) so that they have a better chance of staying at their job/getting back into the jobmarket and/or getting an education. I'm what we call an occupational rehab consultant, so I deal with the practical issues of our patients worklife, and help them map what options and possibilities they have concerning work, and what will be their next step. I love this job, and I'm learning so much every day! But come september I'll be going over to our research department to be a project manager for a project that roughly translates to "Activity against high school dropouts". A manager, mind you! How is it that I've been intrusted with this kind of responsibility?? I carry a Star Wars lunchbox for crying out loud!

What, I can't be a viking AND a jedi knight?
Why was I not informed of this??

Well, I got the job, and I am VERY excited for it. I think it's the first time I've been really passionate about a job, and I feel like I will help create something that others can benefit from, and finally get to practice what I was tought when I took my bachelor in Social Work. Our target group is high school kids with a disability of some kind, and/or some kind of social problem, and we'll be working towards preventing them from dropping out of school because of these problems, focusing on physical activity and contributions/awareness from/in the community around every individual. I'll be given quite a bit of freedom to shape the outlining of this project from my own thoughts and ideas and even though I know it's going to be alot of hard work with many moments of frustration, I'm really eager to get started. So that's what's been going on in my worklife. On my own time I try to be as social as I can, but living with my parents in the middle of nowhere has proved to be something of an obsticle in that area. I intend to change that though, as soon as possible. As soon as I found out more about my jobsituation I started looking for a place to live. I just started work again today, after having 3 weeks vacation, and I used alot of that free time to talk to my bank about a loan, and to look at apartments. I'm SO ready to get my own place, but I try to restrain myself so I don't end up buying some dump out of sheer impatience. I found an apartment now though, that I want to place a bid for, so keep all your american fingers crossed that I get it. I'll be moving back to Bodø, where I have the majority of my friends and network, and a bunch of the people I work with live there so the commute won't be too much of a pain (it's about a 40-50 minute drive to work, maybe an hour in wintertime). So yeah, that's where I stand right now. I'll be sure to keep you updated on the livingsituation. As soon as I start moving in somewhere I'm sure I'll post pictures like a crazy person, just out of pure extacy from finally owning my own home. Until then, big viking hugs for all of you!