Hilde

I've now had my first two lessons of Child and youth ministry, (I don't know if it's called child ministry in English, though...) and I am so looking forward to continuing those classes! It will be so much fun, and Steven our Teacher, seems to know what he's talking about, so hopefully I'll learn a lot. Today we had some exercises on how to be creative. We also talked about our own experiences from our own childhood and youth. Things that were good and things that weren't. It was all very interesting! So now have a long list of literature to buy. I'm really looking forward to read "Purposedriven youth ministry" by Doug Fields. (I think that's what it's called in English... I'll read it in Norwegian, so I'm not sure...)

I'm at home at my mom and dad's right now. I wasn't planning on going home for the weekend, but I was asked to play with"the Arnfinn's", because they needed a substitute pianist for a birthday party in a couple of weeks. So we have been practising today, which was a lot of fun! I don't usually play so much piano anymore, so it was great to get that opportunity again. "The Arnfinn's" is a band consisting of friends of mine from home. I believe they chose the band name bacause it's funny, since Arnfinn is the drummer, but probably also to give the impression that they're not so seriuos about it. They just play for fun. And it is a lot of fun, both for them and for us listening to them. So thanks for letting me play with you guys!

Today I had my first lesson at school. That was about time! I expected full schedule from last tuesday on... It was encouraging to finally get started. This will be so much fun! So much more playing and singing than before, I believe. My first lesson was spent sitting in groups planning what music to play every tuesday this semester. We're going to make bands. We're four people in my group. We have a bass player, drummer, guitarist/keyboardist and me as vocalist. Hopefully it will be so much fun. Finally we will have an exam in December.

I’m back in Oslo. I started school on Tuesday, which was really nice, since I got to see many of my friends again. Most of the day was spent listening to information. I think this will be a good semester.

On Tuesday night I hung out at Erlend’s place with some friends of mine from school. We watched “Ondskapen”, a Swedish movie that was really good (!!!), while eating pie! That’s not what I consider typical movie night-food… I took some pictures with my new camera, which annoyed Erlend quite a bit, I think. Haha! (evil laugh) It's Dorothy and Erlend depicted here...

But Bente didn’t seem to mind my constant shooting, so I got quite a few pics of her. Bente is great. We’ve become good friends over these last months. She is actually from Risør where my dad grew up and my grandma still lives. We hung out this summer while I was there. We went boating and swimming. It was great. Anyway, Tuesday night was great, because I hadn’t seen them in a long time, and it was good being back in Oslo. I also met Dorothy again. She is also from Risør, and I got to know her there a few years back. But we only hung out that one summer, I think, and I saw her only once after that. But now she’s come to Oslo to study, and I’ll probably get to see her every now and then since we’re both friends of Bente’s.

I’m looking forward to getting started with everything. School doesn’t start classes until Monday, so I have three more days to sleep in and be lazy.

Check out my two new photo albums "Around my neighbourhood" and "Grandma's garden". They're brand new pictures taken over the last few days with my new Canon Powershot A520. I'm a beginner at photographing, so they're not masterpieces, but you might enjoy it anyway. Please leave a comment if you feel like it!

It looks like I’m getting a bad habit of writing my blog of each day after twelve o’clock in the evening, which makes it look like I have written it for the next day according to the date. I like to stay up late, but hopefully that will come to an end when I resume my everyday life from next Tuesday on. I’m looking forward to going back to Oslo, my church there and school. I have more friends from home coming to Oslo this semester. My very good mate Bård Olav has just moved into an apartment together with Tor-Håkon, another friend of mine. He is really cool, by the way. There are also a couple of other friends of mine that have just finished high school and now come to Oslo to study. I am excited and a little anxious about how I will do at school this year. People that know me well know that I have no self-discipline. Long mornings and goofing off have ruled long enough. Haha… I’m more determined now than maybe ever before to try and work hard at school. I didn’t have problems getting thru last year, and my grades were more than acceptable, but why shouldn’t they become even better if I can do better. I know I can do better. I’ll have to be more decisive about that... I am going to enumerate everything I want to give priority this fall, and then write it down. When that’s done I will make a list of doings for each day set to a certain time. I tried this thru the last fortnight of April and all of May, and it worked as long as I made sure to make room for free time. I think I need time off. Maybe I could push myself harder than I think, but I don’t want to. It’s important to take time for friends or relaxing by myself! I think it’s necessary for my own good.
By the way, I took some pictures today with my new camera. It was mostly for the sake of practising. I tried to test different functions. Anyway, I got a picture that I thought turned out pretty cool. I don’t even remember how I did it. Haha! As I said yesterday, I’m not into photography. At least not yet. It seems like I have the aptitude for liking it, so we’ll see. It’s a four-leaf clover in a vase. I found it the other day as I was going for a walk in the neighbourhood. I brought it inside to keep it for a while, since I don’t find four-leaf clovers very often.

I really like the chorus of the song “How great thou art”. It’s an old Swedish melody, and the words go like this:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee:
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
 Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee:
 How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

He is truly the greatest! I think some of the old hymns express the way I feel or think so much better than anything I could ever write. I love the song “Blessed assurance” too:

Blessèd assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long.
Perfect submission, all is at rest
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

That’s how I would like the story of my life to be. Some day when I’ve grown old, (if I grow old, that is,) I want to be able to tell everyone that the story of my life is very simple: I’ve been praising my savior all the day long. (Of course that doesn’t mean I’ll have to walk around singing all day. I wish to honor him with my life.)

I received my new digital photo camera in the mail today! I’m so excited, because I’ve wanted a camera for quite some time now. (I’ve had to borrow a camera whenever I’ve wanted to take pictures…) I ordered it over the Internet on Friday. That’s what I call quick delivery! I’ve already taken a few pictures, mainly to test the camera, and it’s so exciting! I took a few pictures of a flower bouquet that my grandma brought the other day when she came over for dinner. It’s from her garden. (She loves gardening! Her garden is always beautiful!) I took a few pictures of the lilies. I’m not really into photography, but these look good no matter how bad a photographer I might be. 

I’ve been hanging out with my mom today. This morning we sat and talked about a book I just read. It’s a biography on Tolkien by Michael White. It was very well written, easy to read, and very interesting.
Later we went shopping and eating Chinese food, which was very nice. My mom is very generous. Almost too generous sometimes. She’s very nice. And you know what? I got her hooked on Harry Potter! That’s funny. She read the first book a few months ago, and liked it. Now she’s read the second and third book this summer, and she bought the fourth today. She’s read a couple of chapters of it already. I think that’s really cool. Haha! Here’s picture of my mom and dad, taken today in our living room. By the way, dad helped get these photographs into the computer. I’m not really into computers or other technical stuff. Good for me that dad’s good at helping. He’s always ready to help out whenever it’s needed.  

This Friday (it’s not even Friday anymore) started off by going to bed at 06:30 a.m.! I slept for a few hours before I got up at noon. The weather was much nicer than the forecast had predicted yesterday, which was good. My friend Ingrid came over at about 01 p.m. We went for a walk and picnic in the woods since the weather was all right. We didn’t bring so much food, but realized on our way that there were lots and lots of blueberry! I was delighted. After filling our mugs to the top we walked on while munching berries, and found a nice spot in the sun to sit down and relax. There we ate our rolls with egg cream and icing while talking and watching ants crawling all over the place. We talked about all kinds of things. We mentioned everything from funny looking trees, weird animals and children’s songs to movies, piercing and drinking. We sat there until the dark clouds gathered right above our heads. The thunder started just a few minutes after we came back home.
After Ingrid left, mom made a really good dinner, which I enjoyed. At this moment I was so tired that I decided on taking a nap after eating. Sleeping during daytime is wonderful! There’s something to it that is much more enjoyable than going to bed at night. I don’t know what it is. For instance, I love napping when it’s warm and sunny outside. It’s ironic, though, because that’s the time I should be wanting to be outdoors…
I was expecting visitors at 09 p.m., so I went to the grocery store to pick up some ice cream and chocolate. There I met Anette Tatjana, my best friend through grade school. We hadn’t talked in a very long time. Now we talked for more than an hour about anything and everything. It was really nice! I managed to forget my bike outside the store afterwards, so after walking home I had to go back to get the stupid bike. That made me arrive my house later than my guests. Ha ha… Elisabeth and Kari stayed for about three hours. We spent the time playing cards and eating vanilla ice cream with banana, pea nuts and chocolate sauce. We also called our friend Tone-Merete in Tromsø (a city in Northern Norway), who turned 23 today. We talked to her for a while. She was somewhere in Troms digging earth. (Big county in northern Norway.) She has just finished her bachelor degree to become an archaeologist, and will start on her master’s degree this fall. It was great talking to her. It had been a couple of months or so since last time, and ditto before that.  
It’s been a day spent with friends, old and newer ones. That’s how I like it.

Jeg var tilfeldigvis på kirkegården denne dagen, forteller fotografen. –Jeg skulle stelle graven til min avdøde bestemor. Siden jeg er en ivrig hobbyfotograf hadde jeg med meg kamera.

-Nei, jeg gjorde ikke det, men jeg sørget for å sende dem noen hånlige og drepende blikk i det jeg passerte. Jeg tenkte de kanskje ville ta hintet, men neida. De forsvant ikke før kirketjeneren dukket opp og tok dem på fersk gjerning. Ja, de fikk fart på seg da, skal jeg si deg. Det skulle egentlig bare mangle. Slaskene var jo tross alt på jobb! De hadde både gressklipper- traktor stående og kantklipper liggende rett ved siden av!Dette kan altså den forbipasserende fotografen vitne om. Vi bestemte oss for å snakke med synderne, og høre hva de sjøl hadde å si om saken. Vi ringte Svein Anders Skolt som selv er kirketjener i Furuset. Han nektet å kommentere saken. Vi hadde større hell da vi kontaktet Anders Mortensen, som det ikke var vanskelig å få på talefot. –Ja, det stemmernok det. Vi pleier å ta noen småpauser innimellom alt arbeidet, kunne han fortelle oss.

 –Å, vi spiller ikke bare Monopol. Vi har dragrace og bukkehopping også.

 Ja, og så tar vi oss en liten middagslur etter lunsj, da veit du. Det hører med.

Tja, kirkevergen og kirkevergen. Det er som oftest jeg som vinner da.

-Ja, det er jeg som vinner når vi hopper bukk også.

-Ja.

Hvordan foregår det?-Det foregår sånn at vi hopper bukk over hverandre, og så

vinner jeg. Dette kunne Anders Mortensen fortelle, til tross for at vi ikke kan se ham

hoppe bukk på noen av bildene som ble tatt.

Vi tok også en prat med Fredrik fra Hurdal, sønn av kirketjeneren i Mogreina.

-Å, han pappa syns det er bare moro sjøl, han.

-Du, det var ikke først og fremst fordi vi spilte, men fordi han mener det er synd å spille monopol.

Vi bestemte oss dermed for et intervju med kirketjeneren også;  Mener du virkelig at det er synd å spille Monopol?

-Ja, Monopol har æ aldri syntes nån ting om. Prinsippet om å sitte på rompa å tjene lettjente  penger er forkastelig. Nei, man skal arbeide med nevan og bruke kroppen.

-Å ja! Det e klart at man gjør det. I himlen skal vi alle være kirketjenere.

Tja, vi hopper litt bukk og litt hekk… og så leser vi avisa og tar en høneblund etter lunsj… og så blir det noen dopauser, så klart. Det er stort sett jeg som står for dem, da. Jeg tisser ganske ofte. Ja, jeg håper det er greit at jeg sier det, for jeg får så ofte kjeft fordi jeg forteller at jeg skal på do. Jeg tenker som så at det må jo være mye greiere for alle om jeg sier hvor jeg skal, sånn at ikke alle tror jeg bare forlater selskapet…

Ja, det er det det er. Vi har selvfølgelig ikke ordentlige hekker, så vi bruker gravstøttene. Det er jo ekstra spennende, for hvis man tryner da, så går man virkelig på trynet! Ja, skikkelig med nesa i jorda, mener jeg. Det er ikke bare bare å hekte fast foten i ei gravstøtte. 

Anders liker å innbille oss at det er han, men det er nok dessverre for ham ikke han. Og det er i alle fall ikke jeg, for jeg er stort sett på do når vi har disse hekkeløpene.

Det vel ikke Fredrik heller, tror jeg, sjølom jeg egentlig ikke kjenner Fredrik så godt at jeg kan si det sikkert, men han er en veldig ålreit kar!

Ja, det må nok være det. Det er ganske imponerende, for han kommer alltid litt for seint til starten fordi han har vært for seint oppe kvelden før.

Dere er også blitt observert sovende på gravlunden, midt på lyse dagen. Hva har du å si om det?

Mener du det hadde vært bedre om vi lå der om natta? Ærlig talt, så ser jeg ikke noe galt i det vi gjør. Her ligger det flere hundre døde mennesker twentyfour-seven, året rundt, og så bryr noen seg om at noen stakkars kirkegårdsarbeidere tar seg en halvtime etter lunsj?

-Uhell og uhell. Det blir noen knall og fall innimellom. De dagene vi ikke sover etter lunsj hender det vi sliter litt med å holde oss våkne. Spesielt Anders som trenger ti timer søvn hver natt sliter med det.

Fotografen som oppdaget disse ugagnskråkene var dessuten vitne til en tragisk krasj mellom to gressklippertraktorer. De involverte kunne bekrefte at ingen større skade hadde skjedd. Vi derimot, tviler litt på dette.