Hilde

Last wednesday I brought my dear friend Bente to my cell group. She loved it so much that she joined our girls' night the evening after. I was so glad because she has been looking for a good church, and I think she will keep coming.

On thursday the girls from my cell group met to hang out, which was really nice! We were nine. It is so great that we are more girls this year. After that Bente, Inger Kari (my room mate, who also is in the same group as I) and I went down to "Ses" (a restaurant/bar) where Håvard a friend of ours was DJing. We sat there for a while playing cards and "Domino", and our friend Jon Anders turned up. After that we went and watched "Fifty first dates" at Jon Anders and Håvard's place. We had a good time, and Inger Kari and I weren't home until four in the morning.

On friday night Inger Kari and I rented "Be Cool", which was a just OK movie. After that we laughed for the rest of the evening! It's been long since I laughed that hard. I laughed until I cried. I love that:)

On saturday night Bente came over to my place and we made dinner together, had some wine and watched "Me, myself and Irene".

Yesterday I was inside just doing whatever all day. It feels so great being able to do that sometimes!

Life is fun!

As I wrote a while back, I got lucky to get to play with ”The Arnfinn’s” for once. So last night we played at Arnfinn’s stepmom’s birthday party. It was a blast. I was kind of worried ahead, because we hadn’t practised all that much, but it went well. It was fun! We were invited to the whole party by Arnfinn, and had a good time eating, chatting and dancing to typical Swedish swing dance music (that’s for those over 40) and Norwegian country music. I must laugh thinking about it. It was fun, but not really the style of music I would have chosen. Once Jens Christian, our technician, put on the good old “Foot loose”, which always gives me a kick, but that didn’t turn out as a hit among the fifty-year-olds. So after that we stuck to slow swing and yodelling Norwegian country girls. Anyway, "The Arnfinn’s" played seven songs of which two we had never even tried playing together at all before performing them there. Bård Olav, who sang made some show out of it to please the crowd, which turned out as a success. Ironically those two songs went well, while we felt we could have done a better job with some of the other songs. But that’s probably just because we know how we intended them to sound. We played a couple of songs by Sigvart Dagsland, who is a Norwegian pop artist, Bad Day by David Powter, Dancing in the Moonlight (I don’t know who wrote it.), Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ebony Eyes by Stevie Wonder and “Jag trodde englarna fanns”, a swing song to get the crowd on to the dance floor.
I wasn’t home until three in the morning. Arnfinn and I were supposed to help clearing the stage and carrying things out in the vehicle, but we suddenly found ourselves busy racing around in a wheel chair that we found in the hall…

Today, I mean yesterday (Saturday), was a really good day! I slept in, got up about 10:30 and realized the weather was beautiful and warm, but yet had that fresh and sharp air that’s typical for Norwegian fall. Since I am at home this weekend, I decided to spend some time outdoors weeding my herb bed that I haven’t worked on all summer (shame on me). It looked overgrown and messy, so I had some work to do. That’s more fun though, because then you can really tell the difference afterwards. Later I sat out in the yard behind our house with my mom and dad for a while, before going for a 6 km. walk with my mom. The rest of the day I spent goofing off and doing whatever until I left to visit Hanne, a dear friend of mine, at 6:30 p.m. We had a really good time talking and eating pizza and sweet bread rolls. (Lots of those these days…) Harald, her husband (also a good friend), came home from a gospel night in Gjerdrum around midnight. Yes-sing, my old choir, and Keryx sang there. A funk band called “Funktion” played there as well. All the band members except one go to my school, and I was kind of surprised that they were playing in Gjerdrum. I love Funktion. They’re really great. Last year when our school was in a different building with non-soundproof walls, I sometimes sat in the cafeteria listening to them practicing in the basement. I used to love it. They are so groovy! They play that Jamiroquai-style of music, only self written songs with Christian lyrics. So watch out for Funktion! Anyway, when Harald came home we started watching a Norwegian movie called “Ikke naken”. (“Not naked”) It was a family movie about a maybe eleven year old girl that decided never to get interested in guys. It was shot in Lista, an obviously very pretty town or village by the ocean in the southern part of Norway. It was a very funny movie. When the movie was over it was already about 2 a.m., and I had not got tired yet. When the clock showed almost 2:30 I figured my dear hosts might want to go to bed, so I said good night and drove home. I had a great time.