Edinburgh

This weekend I went to the capital city of Scotland, Edinburgh. The British Council invited all the Comenius Assistants for a two day long information meeting in this lovely city, and to get more out of it we decided to spend the weekend there. The meeting was actually quite useful, and it was nice to meet other people in the same situation.

Mari and I stayed together at a lovely B&B quite close to the castle. We had a huge room and the breakfast was lovely. We were quite international in our meals; we did try a full Scottish breakfast, an American breakfast with pancakes, a British pub meal (Irish stew for me), Chinese sweet and sour and Italian pasta. All of it being delicious, except for the Black pudding that came with the full Scottish..

Thursday was Bonfire Night in UK, celebrating when Guy Fawkes was caught before he managed to blow up the Parliament in 1606. Luckily they were talking about this in school the day before I left for Edinburgh, so I did know a little bit about the story before seeing the celebrations. The night was celebrated with fireworks and bonfires all over the city, both private and public. We had a great view of the fireworks from the top of Calton Hill.

After spending a few hours at the meeting Thursday and Friday, we spent Saturday walking the streets of Edinburgh, seeing the West side of the city, Leith and Broughton. The weather was lovely; sunny but cold, and it was so nice just spending the days walking around the little shops that Edinburgh have to offer.

We also found this Swedish cafe: Peter's Yard. They had real Swedish/Scandinavian food, and of course we had to try it! The smoked salmon was delicious, and so were the cinnamon buns. They had the loveliest tea pots we just had to buy, and I stacked up on "tyttebærsylte" for my home made "kjøttkaker".

Sunday I finally made it to Arthur's Seat, and the view of the city from up there was marvelous! It was a great weekend where we got to see lots of new things, as well as the familiar ones (Bank Hotel), and it was nice to meet so many new people!

Carnival

Here in the southwest of England they have a tradition for carnivals. Apparently this is something that you don't find elsewhere in Britain, and it is one of a kind! People work to get their floats ready for a year, finding a theme, making a choreography and building their floats. Then they have a parade through the town, and there is a competition where they compete to be the best float. As the parade goes through town they have penny-trucks where people throw their pennies to try to hit it, and let me tell you the pennies were flying all over the place! The children went crazy trying to pick them up from the streets to give them to the next one. The money seems to go to charity.

Here in Warminster our carnival was on the 31st of October, the night of Halloween, so people in the streets were also dressed up. It was really a fantastic show; I've never seen anything like it! There were so many lights on some of the floats, that you could actually feel the heat from them when they passed. It was quite a cold night, and the mulled wine also helped us keep nice and warm for the two-three hours we stayed outside. After the parade there was a fun fair in town, and lots of people were in the streets. A great night out!!

Exploring Wales

I've been wanting to visit Wales for a long time, and when half-term gave us 11 days off on row it was an opportunity we couldn't miss, and Mari, Gemma (Mari's room mate) and me set off to Wales. Because it was half-term we had trouble finding a place to stay in Cardiff and we had to cut down on the nights there so we only had one and half day. However, we managed to see quite a lot of the city in that time:

The Castle
- really impressive, quite big compared to other castles I've seen.




Cardiff Bay
- a beautiful area just outside of the city centre with lots of restaurants and cafes, some shops and some very interesting architecture including the Welsh Parliament and the Norwegian Church


The Welsh Parliament

Cardiff is definitely a place that is worth going back to! And it isn't really far away from Warminster at all, only 2 hours on the train and you're in the middle of the city centre.

After a couple of great days in Cardiff we went further west to Swansea where we had managed to book four nights at a lovely hotel. We had a big room and it was nice and clean (except for a GIGANTIC spider on the last day) with refills of bisquits every day, which was brilliant since having coffee and eating bisquits as we were watching Home and Away became a daily ritual! Breakfast was really good as well, with lots of choices and laaarge portions.

The first day we went to the beach in the city, and we found some beautiful appartments that I could definitely see myself living in. The view was amazing! And the area close to it was different in a way. From the beach we reached the Dylan Thomas Centre that we had set out to see, and the display was really good. Not too much information, but just enough to teach you something and trigger your enthusiasm for his writing. When we were there the Dylan Thomas Festival was on, and we got to attend a reading of his poems by Cerys Matthews, former singer in Catatonia. It was a fabulous experience, I was listening as if I was spellbound.. What a beautiful voice and such a good reader of poems!

Seeing as the majority of the group were Norwegians we obviously had to go for a hike. We chose the beautiful beaches on the Gower Peninsula and a walk that didn't seem too challenging. We had a great day out and saw beautiful beaches and landscape I have never seen the likes of. The cliffs were maybe not as impressive as in Ireland as they were not as steep, but they were beautiful in a different way. We ended up walking the whole day, crossing four beaches, and that last beach I almost thought we would never reach the end of! But when we finally got there a tasty lunch and a dark chocolate cake was waiting for us, and made the wait worth it.




The kind of English gentleman we're looking for...


This beach was voted Britain's most beautiful beach

The next day a nice Welshman took us to see another beautiful beach, Rhossilli beach. We got to see the sun set on a cloudy sky, and by the time we reached the Mumbles it was dark. But we got to see the pier and the promenade, and we were very well satisfied as this was what we had set out to see this day.



Nights were spent in restaurants enjoying delicious meals. We kept a very international diet, ranging from Italian to American to Spanish. Since we spent so much time walking we could spoil ourselves a bit, and quite a few desserts were digested as well, among them of course a couple of chocolate cakes! We didn't do very well on trying the Welsh diet, but we did manage to get a taste of the Welsh cakes on our last day there who turned out to be quite good, rather similar to some sorts of lefse, I think it's the Nordlandslefse I'm thinking off, but with raisins in it.

When we left the hotel the last day we were tempted to have spent the extra night that they thought we had booked, because we really had had a great time in Swansea. But we had other things to see and do this weekend, but when we split up we all agreed that this should be repeated at a later point! I'm looking forward to the Christmas party girls!

Visit from Norway

St John's Cathedral

The weekend 15-20 October I had visitors from Norway; my mum and my aunt. I met them in London for a couple of days in that wonderful city and to take them with me back to Warminster. In London we found time to visit St Paul's Cathedral and I finally got to see the Wall of Whispers. It was fascinating!! We made short detour into Victoria and Albert Museum, a place I'm definitely going back to see more of. The weather war really good this weekend, although a bit windy, and be there again, walking the streets of London was a good as ever. Obviously we managed to get a bit of shopping done as well, and Friday night we went to see the musical Sister's Act which was great fun!


V&A Museum

Sunday we went to visit Bath which is about 40 minutes from Warminster by train. It was a lovely city, almost a bit like York. Monday we spent in Warminster where I showed them around town; entering all the shops that we have to offer and actually they found quite a few things to buy. We also went for a walk in the part, an experience that was new to me too, and I have to say it was actually a very nice one. In the evening I invited them home to me to have Lemon Meringue pie and meet Berta, and my houseowners Al and Jane. It was lovely to have visitors! It's nice to show them where I live and what my life is like over here. They're more than welcome to come visit again!



Bath Cathedral

Wookey Hole

Today I was allowed to go on a school trip with the year 4s at St. John's. They've been learning about dinosaurs and old stuff these last few weeks, so they were really looking forward to going into the caves and seeing the dinosaur park.

Although it is more of an amusement park to children then an educating museum it was great fun! The caves were real caves, and the guide told really good stories that the children could believe in. For some it was a frightening experience, others had been there before, but it was just so nice for me to the children outside of their classroom.

In addition to the caves and dinosaurs there was also a display where the children could make paper from cotton, a video of people diving into the caves, a penny arcade and of course a gift shop. I bought a really nice (and expensive) set of letter-paper and envelopes.

For lunch the teacher got a packed school lunch which consisted of
- 1 banana
- 1 mandarin
- 1 pack of squash
- 2 baps with cheese and tomato/cucumber
- 1 bar of chocolate
- 1 pack of crisps
- 1 pack of mini chocolate digestives
- 1 pack of yoghurt flakes

A meal well composed and balanced of vitamins, protein and sugar...It lasted well into the day and even further into the weekend!

Hiking across Arn Hill

It doesn't seem as easy as I thought, getting about on the roads around Warminster; all the public footpaths seems to cross a field, and whenever I go for a afternoon ride on my bike I seem to end up doing off-road biking in the hills or fields. So when the weather turned out to be so beatiful today, and I had the day off as it is a Monday, I decided to buy a walking map for 30p and try my luck that way!

The leaflet I got from the tourist information included both a description of the way and a map, and both came in handy as the startpoint of the walk wasn't very easy to find. But once I did find the path it wasn't a very hard walk, and I managed to finish the 8km walk in just about 3hours. During this time I had a nice lunch with sandwiches and a scone bought at Morrison's, and surprisingly I got tempted into buying an ice cream on my way into town as well...Ops! So much for all the calories I burned off..

On the way across the hill I passed a golf course, a military field where they practised shooting and from the sound of it bigger things as well, a motorway, a pub, a church and I crossed a railway line. It was lovely sunshine and the temperature was so good that I, as an experienced Norwegian mountain climber had actually put on way too much clothing and missed my t-shirt that I had left at home.

A couple of pictures:

Look what they've got in England!!

These animals were found just up the road here, about 5min drive away. Apparently it is one of the biggest attractions around here, which we truly experienced as we (me and the two other Comenius assistants in Warminster) got caught in rush traffic during the safari ride and spent almost 2hours on the bus instead of 1,5. There were quite few animals of each breed, the lion flocks being the biggest, but it was good fun as we got quite close to several of them. If we wanted to know more about the life at Longleat Safari Park it apparently has been a popular BBC TV-show for years.

After the safari ride we went on all the other attractions on Lord Bath's estate, except from the house that we're saving for a more rainy day. Stories have told us that Lord Bath is one of a kind, but luckily we didn't meet him on this visit. It's evident that he likes to amuse people (or make money from them), and there were quite a few things to see and do; pet's corner, safari boats, miniature railway and Britain's largest hedge maze being a few of them; some more amusing than others. Seeing the bats and having them touch our hair as they flew by was definitely the most thrilling experience of the day, while the racing car simulator was the most nauseating one. All together, we had a great day out in lovely sunshine.


Cute meerkats


Funny-looking animal


The hedge maze

Visiting Salisbury

This weekend I spent by myself as my houseowners were taking their oldest son to university up North, and my portuguese housemate and boyfriend were visiting London to report his wallet missing. Friday night I went out for a drink with a couple of teachers, and getting up early Saturday morning I took the train to Salisbury to spend the day there.

Salisbury is a bit bigger than Warminster, about 45 000 inhabitants I think I've heard somewhere, and it is only a 20min train ride away. I'm guessing that this is the place we'll be going to if we want to shop; it had quite a lot of nice shops as well as Fat Face where I just had to buy this really nice top! And the great thing about it was that it was wool in it, because it is getting more chilly here...

As I came into town I first wandered the shops for a little bit before I went to the market place. Saturday is apparently a good day for visiting it, and there were loads of things to buy (or just look at): pastry, pasties, cheese, meat, fish, clothes, batteries and so on. After wandering around a bit I went to a tea shop for lunch and a place to sit down and warm myself up a bit.

Salisbury Cathedral is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Salisbury, so I had to visit it. It's not as big as York Minster, but it was very nice. It has got one of the tallest spires in Europe actually, but I chose not to enter the tower. As I was walking through the cathedral, listening in on the 1hr and 15min guided walk, I was thinking about my museum-loving friends (I think you know who you are) and how this would be a great experience to share with them. Even so, the guided tour was a bit long even for me, but I got some nice pictures from it and a look at an English bride (who luckily looked more happy as she came out than she did when she went in...)

Here are a few pictures from my day out:

I'm back in England!

Finally the day for my departure came last week, and here I am a week later; sitting in the kitchen of what will be my English home for the next months! I am renting a room in this red-bricked house in Warminster, a quite small town in the south-western part of England.


Vis større kart

Here I live with the houseowners Jane and Al, and a portuguese Comenius assistant. It's quite a big house which is situated a 10min walk from the main street. It's a nice neighbourhood, and one of the schools I'll be working at is only a 3-4min walk up the street. So far I've only been to this one school to observe the teaching, and it's been really good! Next week I'll be visiting the other two as well, and I'm hoping they'll turn out to be just as good.

This first week I've spent walking around in Warminster, getting to know the town and the areas around it. People are very friendly, easy to talk too and helpful if there's anything I need. Friday I went to a pub with two of the teachers which was very enjoyable. I've been home alone this weekend, which has actually been quite okey. It feels nice to have some time to myself to take it all in! There's been a lot of things happening just in these few first days.. Yesterday I spent the day in Salisbury, a bigger town 20min away by train. Today I'm hoping to go for a ride on my bike if the nice weather keeps up!

Time flies...

...apparently very fast and lots of things have happened since my last post (not surprisingly since it's more than six months ago..). The most important thing is that I have successfully finished my year of mathematics, believe it or not! I know I didn't at first, but then (luckily) people started to drink coffee in the breaks and over an unknown number of cups I have made new friends; some more interested in mathematics than others, but they will all be missed now that I have left Bergen and HiB.

Because that is what I've done! As soon as I finished my exams in the beginning of June I packed my bags, suitcases and boxes and moved! I can't believe that four years has gone by this quickly, and that I am now a fully trained teacher! It actually feels surreal, although also nice in a way. I know that I have learned a lot these years; about teaching and about myself, and they are years that I will look back on and remember as joyful and fun, although stressful at times.

It feels a bit strange then, that I am at the moment living at home with my mother and father. It felt a bit weird to stuff all my belongings into cupboards and on top of shelves in my old room, eventhough it is not permanently; in the end of September I will be going back to England to live and work as a language assistant at a small village school in Codford, Warminster in Wiltshire.




Hopefully it is a way to ease into life as a teacher, as well as it is a great opportunity to learn more about British culture and language. The village is in an area where there is lots of things to see; Bath, Stonehenge, and it is not more than an hour and a half to London by train! I will try to keep the blog running (hopefully I will have Internet connection wherever it is that I am going to live) and I will keep writing it in English to further develop my language skills.


And to those of you who are curious; I have actually managed to stick to several of my New Year's resolutions quite well, seven months into the year!

New year- new opportunities

So I'm back in Bergen; another semester (my last..!) has started and everything is in place for an exciting new year. As always I've got a bunch of resolutions that I'll try to keep, and so far it's looking good! Just to make sure that I'll keep it up I'll post them here for everyone to see and remind me when I start to forget my goals.

1. Get things done!
Don't do it tomorrow, the day after or next month. Do it today! No more
procrastination here in this house. If there's dirty dishes in the sink; do them
now, don't wait until you've had a cup of coffee.

2. Start excersising.
Or as Trine will be amused to hear me say; mosjonere. There is no need to
overdo it, but a couple of walks during a week, and maybe a dance class will be
enough.

3. Eat healthy food.
This includes making proper and healthy dinners; chocolate cakes are excluded.

4. Be a good student.
Do arithmetics, read and write. No procrastination is allowed here either..

5. Reward myself.
A movie, a trip, making a photo album... And just to make it clear; chocolate
cake!

6. Socialize.
Keep up the good trend from 2008.


I know I've had a couple of these resolutions before; some has been followed through successfully, others have failed horribly, but I've decided that it doesn't hurt to try and fullfill them! (except my pride now that I've announced them publically..)

2008 was a really good year for me. I experienced a lot of fun things; met a lot of new people; and spent many good times together with friends and family. Of course the year had its downs too..but that is just how life is supposed to be, I guess! I hope that the new year will be a good one too, and that we'll all stay healthy and well!

Happy New Year everyone!


Our Christmas tree. Looked surprisingly good even though it was decorated in the middle of the day..