fredag 19. desember 2008

Christmas :)

Today is a great day. There's a severe "snow storm" coming up, which means we get a day off school! (A so called snow day). The ridiculous part is that the snow storm only brings like 30 cm of snow, which we get like once a week in Norway, but since they have school buses here, and the right to sue for anything, the bus drivers won't drive with snow. Even more comical is the fact that it's almost one pm, and no snow yet. So, we could've gone to school and probably gotten out fine before the snow even came!

Anyways, this morning I woke up, turned on the tv, saw that school was canceled and went back to bed. I've spent my day well; cleaned my room (man, that was necessary), prepared the garden furniture for the storm and watched tv!

Lately I've been working out a lot for track; I lifted weights four times this week, and I've been home after five every day. It's a little exhausting, but the team looks both good and is cool, so its fine. We even have the hardest practice of the year on christmas day, on the steepest hill of the town! (And just to complain some more; we even have school on the 23rd!)

I sent some stuff to Norway for christmas yesterday too, but I'm afraid it might not even arrive till New Year, unfortunately.. I hope you all have a great christmas anyways!

When it comes to my favorite town in the world, New York, I'm not allowed to go there on my own anymore, since some other students used the argument "but Laurens (aka: some other kids) went on his/their own" when they were told no. And then their parents complained to YFU northeast, and yfu northeast freaked out and my host mom figured it wasn't too clever to let me go anymore :(

Other interesting news is that Trym moved down to Connecticut, Kathy Ulm (director of YFU Northeast) accused me for being a troublemaker, my grades are still decent and yeah, that's all haha.

Oh, and our christmas tree is fake, and it's got more than a thousand lights and probably more than a hundred balls, and it's awesome! I helped decorate it myself. Also, we put lights on the sculptures of the musicians next to the tv, and then we put blinking bulbs in them so now they're being quite distracting whenever we watch tv :)

So, I whish you all a very merry christmas, and a happy new year!
thanks to everyone who sent cards! Even if you haven't heard anything yet, you're not forgotten :)

mandag 1. desember 2008

Thanksgiving, crazy christmas lights, black friday and New York (?!)

Soo, firstly and most importantly i had five days off school last week. It was awesome, I deserved it and I took a breath and relaxed for once.

Last week we had school only on Monday and Tuesday, and I had no homework (for the first time in TWO weeks i got some today). Other than that, I got my grades last week. They were ridiculous, and rather interesting.

Indoor Track has started, so now I'll no longer be home early from school.. I dont know yet what event I'm doing, but I might ask for something between 600 meters and a mile. Running today was pain after weeeks of laziness.

The main event however was thanksgiving! A lot of family came to our house, we had a load of good food and a good time! (Also, school gave us five days off for it). My favorite food was the stuffing you have in the turkey (that we didnt put inside of it, but made separately because there's some health issues with putting it in the turkey). The turkey was really good too. And we had mashed potatoes, various vegetable dishes and pies. I contributed by peeling roughly 30 potatoes that morning. Since the dinner was over and stuff cleaned up by 6, I hung out with some friends in the evening too.

The day after thanksgiving is the day the Christmas shopping starts. The day might be called Black Friday for several reasons, one Nick told me was that the store's balances finally go from red to black. Another one might be all the stress and hassle. My theory is that people call the day black because every year someone dies fighting for the "early bird" specials. They are basically unreasonably big discounts on cool stuff to attract people to the stores, which is effective since people line up from 12 at night the day before.

I did not go shopping on black Friday since I only had twenty some dollars (INCLUDING my bank account) and thought I'd save them for my New York trip.

On Friday evening I went to Hartford with Nick and his parents and watched some pretty neat christmas lights across town. On our way home we drove past "the house on windmill hill". It blew the lights in Hartford away, and since I dont feel like I could describe it that well, here's a youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVwtaZsrCDA

On Saturday I helped put up our christmas lights, and went to a bonfire with Nick.

Sunday was the day of my third NY trip! It was raining all day, but I did some good shopping, bought some records and ended up with the neat amount of 12 cents in my wallet. The goal for december is a budget surplus, which I'm pretty confident will work out, seeing I can't go LOWER than 0 in my bank account/wallet. Other than that, if possible, I'll buy myself a snowboard sometime soon.

The records I bought were awesome:
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Kings Of Leon- Only By The Night
Black Kids - Partie Traumatic

(No pictures this time, my camera is suffering from severe angst of leaving its drawer in my desk.. )

Other than that christmas presents should be on their way pretty soon.
Happy Birthday til Tine og Vilde! <3

Og tusen takk for julekalenderen mamma! Var noe rart med å stå opp første desember uten en, har nok aldri skjedd før :) Men så kom den i posten på ettermiddagen :D