Category: Monthly Wrap-Ups

10/12 of the way!

Okay, I promise I won’t start this post with “how has October come and gone already, this year is flying by so fast!” but I guess, by saying I won’t, I allowed myself to do it anyway.
October’s been a strange and busy month, with lots of traveling, a lot of assignments and uni work and thankfully, some wonderful moments with good friends.
The weather has also made it perfectly clear that we’re reaching the last months of the year now, as the winter coat has been dusted off and there are no valid reasons to not put on mittens and a hat before leaving the house. Secretly, I’m really here for it.


October has brought along:

  • Two trips back and forth between home-home and uni-home
  • My mum’s birthday and thus a lot of cake, lovely food and family time
  • Some wonderful bonding time with my little nephew
  • Oliver’s baptism – which was a fairytale in itself
  • A lovely trip to the place my sister’s husband is from and getting to know his family better
  • Learning a new craft! (It’s called Hardangersøm, a type of traditional Norwegian embroidery, and I love it!)
  • A lot of beautiful concert experiences at The Church Music Festival in the Cathedral
  • A lot of studying, assignment work and exam revision
  • Some very productive study sessions with Trine, plus a lovely weekend with her lovely family
  • Halloween spent binging Netflix-shows and eating all the sweets that no children came to collect

November, bring it on!
-Andrea

Dancing in September

You can’t not preface a September Wrap Up Post with some Earth Wind and Fire.

September’s brought along autumn weather – green leaves turning red, orange and yellows blurring into each other, the need for mittens and thicker scarves. With every year, I get more appreciative of autumn as it pops along, and this year I’m so here for crisper air and darker evenings.

September has seen:

  • The new logo that a good friend of mine has so kindly made for me and for this blog! I love it!
  • A lot of work; both cleaning, interpreting and guide work
  • Me getting back into cooking again
  • So much rain
  • Good books
  • The Downton Abbey Film premiere with lovely friends, followed by the best loaded chips I’ve ever had
  • A lot of studying
  • Handicrafts, knitting and crocheting
  • The old cosy knitwear resurfacing
  • A trip home-home, for a spontaneous autumn holiday
  • Lots of nephew cuddles and family evenings

September’s been a good one, as these months usually are.
I hope you’re having a wonderful day,
-Andrea

On the first day in August..

…I want to wake up by your side

How is it September already?
August really flew by this year, and I feel like the months just slipping through my fingers like sand in an hour glass (or something else equally poetic) has become the theme for these wrap-up posts. To be fair, come November I’ll be screaming “can’t it just be Christmas already??”, so not really sure I can be the one to talk, but right now at least, I feel like the days are passing just that bit too quickly.

August has been great though, and I’ve gotten to:

  • Start the month in France, plus stay in both a little gite + a tent in a campsite
  • Go swimming in a French lake + “float” across said lake on a homemade raft
  • Explore Tence and Chenereilles with Harvey
  • Bring Harvey back to Norway with me for three weeks, and show him my home in proper summer-gear
  • Spend more time with my nephew, plus introduce him to Harvey
  • Start my third year of uni!
  • Meet a lot of wonderful new people
  • Translate a few more services
  • Get back into my guide job and start a new part-time cleaning job on the side
  • Get some more writing done for the business
  • Receive 38 postcards through Postcrossing (!!!)
  • Spend Friday-Sunday at a hotel in a neighbouring city, basically being thrown into the deep end with student politics, at my uni’s Student Parliament’s kick off-seminar
  • Sleep in 7 different beds; in Chenereilles, at the camp site, at home-home, on an air mattress in the flat, in my own bed in my own flat, in a hotel with Harvey and in the hotel with the Student Parliament

What a month! Thanks for stopping by and having a look, and I hope you’re having a wonderful day.

-Andrea

Like some surrealist invented this Fourth of July

And there goes July. I’ve spent the last two weeks in small French mountain villages, driving along winding forest roads, swimming in a lake and eating more cheese than anyone should eat in a lifetime – let alone a summer (of course this is not true at all, if you find yourself some really good brie there is never a reason to not just eat all of it). There was not a lot of phone reception and even less internet to acquire, and so this post is a bit late. But as Harvey and I are on the train-tram-plane x2-coach journey home now, it seemed like a good time to post the July wrap-up post and video!

July’s been a good one on many accords.

I’ve gotten to:

  • Get to know, to hold and spend a lot of time with my new nephew!!
  • Work at the library
  • “Farm” radishes
  • Do a lot of baking and cooking
  • Get to know my sister’s husband’s family better as they came and stayed with us for a week
  • Fish for crabs again like we did when we were children
  • Travel to France on my own
  • Stay a night with a (lovely) family who I didn’t know at all (but who literally saved me), because Harvey’s plane (from England) got cancelled and suddenly I was stuck in Lyon all alone
  • Go to a beautiful wedding in St Segolene
  • Eat my own body weight in French brie and baguettes
  • Know and stay with Harvey’s family, which was lovely
  • Get a little bit of a tan!

So this has been my July; new nephew, work, food and France. Not a bad month summed up. And Harvey’s come back to Norway with me, and is staying for another 3 weeks, so fingers crossed August will be wonderful too.

I hope you’re having a wonderful day!
-Andrea

I can feel the scent of roses in the air, it’s June in January

Nope, it’s most definitely not January, but January might as well have been yesterday.
This year is flying by, and I’m both here for it and a little bit worried about it. June’s brought music, it’s brought people, sunny weather and moments I’ve never experienced before. I spent the beginning of June working at the cathedral, the middle of June “holidaying” at home with cups of tea and read-for-joy books, and on the last day of June, my sister had her baby boy and I got to say hello to my little nephew. He was born at 04:35 am, and we got to come meet him at 2 pm. I’ve never seen so small and “new” a baby before, but he was absolutely wonderful.
June was also the month I registered my little business, and now I’m officially self-employed in my own one-woman-company that deals with text production, copywriting and translation. What a crazy month.

So, in bullet points, June has consisted of:

  • Getting all my exam marks back
  • Having my last day before summer at the cathedral-job
  • Having my first day of summer at the library-job
  • Starting up my own little company
  • Sleepovers and lazy breakfasts with friends
  • Saying goodbye to a lot of wonderful study friends that are going away on uni exchanges next year
  • Setting up a summer reading list
  • Sending 13 postcards through PostCrossing
  • Making a lot of tea
  • Knitting!
  • Getting completely and utterly obsessed with the new Good Omens mini series
  • Meeting my nephew for the first time

I hope June’s been kind to you, and I’m excited to see what July brings! It’s going to be a good one this year, I can feel it.

-Andrea

There goes the month of Maying (A little bit late, but oh well)

May is my favourite month, and yesterday she threw her picnic blanket over her shoulders like a cape, filled up her little water bottle with raspberry squash, and off she went. Until next year.

This year, May brough with her:

  • The most intense exam period I’ve ever experienced
  • New and exciting opportunities
  • A lot of sun
  • Maybe even more rain
  • A new favourite cafe
  • Dara O’Brien live at Kilden
  • Norway’s national day
  • Green, green grass
  • A lot of take out dinners
  • Proper getting into my new job
  • Many a bus fare
  • My birthday!
  • Good friends and even better laughs

-Andrea

April, come she will

Exam season has hit my course (and me) like a freight train, and so April has passed in a daze of study group sessions, terminology revision, and general exam practice. I can’t believe we’re in May already, but May is my favourite month of the bunch, and so I’m excited about spring finally having taken a proper hold. It’s May 1st today, and some friends and I made a day of bussing out to a little water outside of town. It became the day of the first swim of 2019, of water-side food and of trying and failing to befriend a duck. A good day, in other words.

However, April waves goodbye and leaves in its wake:

  • More translation/interpretation works
  • A new job!
  • A new crochet project
  • Study groups en mass
  • Lots of new knowledge
  • A wonderful little trip home for Easter
  • Great friends
  • Some experimental dinner decisions
  • So many sunny days!

-Andrea

March Wrap Up

Hello, you!

I’m trying to come up with fancier names for these monthly wrap up posts, but for now the titles are what it says on the tin!

I know we all say this, but where did March even go? Just a minute ago I commented on how February blew past without me noticing and suddenly it’s April. I can also proudly proclaim that I only fell for one April’s Fools joke yesterday, which for ‘lil gullible me is a new record.

However, as March has waved goodbye, here’s my monthly video; little snippets and tidbits that I’m hoping to look back on one day and go “oh, I remember that!” Loved ones were hugged, many mugs of teas were drunk and new challenges were faced head on. March was a good one.

I hope you’re having a wonderful day,
-Andrea

February Wrap Up

And just like that, February wrapped itself up in its big, woolen scarf and took off. See you in a year, it said, as it tottered away.

February brought with it:

  • New and exciting job opportunities
  • Copious amounts of tea
  • A lot of Sophie
  • Midnight kitchen dancing
  • So many assignments and study groups en mass
  • 11 postcards sent and 10 received
  • New friends
  • An embroidery project that’s bigger than anything I’ve ever done before
  • Huge changes to plans I’d already made (good ones, though, so it’s okay)
  • An IKEA nightstand that needed much love and attention
  • A need to be creative again
  • One poem and one creative piece accepted for publication
  • Sun

Here’s to March being just as good, if not better than February turned out to be.

-Andrea

One month down, Eleven more to go

It’s February 1st today, and January felt like it lasted a year.

I started this month at home, with Harvey visiting from England. From then and until now, I’ve moved flats and gotten settled, started up a new semester of my BA, found out that I really really enjoy my degree, received marks and got As on all my exams (!!) and with some lovely people, I’ve done a lot of work, both at uni and outside of uni.

Last year I filmed a second everyday, from January throughout July. A lot of stuff happened during those months, and I love to look back on those clips now – to see how much can change in a short amount of time. Watching the days slip by as seconds also really do put things into perspective.

This year, I’m gonna try again, and this time I’ll see if I can do a whole year, now that I’ve proven to myself that I can do six months.

So, without further ado, here’s my January! It may not look all that eventful to you when you watch it, but it’s been a good one.

Hope this first month of 2019 has been kind to you!

Have a wonderful day,

-Andrea