Colorful Building in Amsterdam

I don’t know what is inside this awesome building that I randomly saw in Amsterdam, but it I just love how it looks 🙂

Amboseli

The national park I looked forward to seeing the most on my trip to Kenya was Amboseli, because of it’s location at the foot of Kilimanjaro and the large herds of elephants living there. As you can see on the picture we sadly didn’t get the greatest view of Kilimanjaro, but at least we saw the silhouette as we entered the park. The day after the mountain was completely hidden in the mist – I have to admit I was very disappointed after seeing pictures of how great the view can be on a clear day online. There is no way to control the weather though, so the best we could do was to make the best out of our time there with our without the view.
Every morning all of the elephants living in the park make it a habit to walk to the water, this makes it quite easy for tourists like us to get to see them all up close as they cross the road.

I was really impressed by just how big these animals can get. That guy with just half a tooth left was a giant – much larger than our safari van! After seeing the elephants cross the road, we found two lions a male and a female. At first glance it looked as if they were just relaxing in the sun, but after a little while it became pretty clear that was not what they were doing at all..

 

Apparently, lions mate for a whole week. During this time they don’t hunt or eat – they simply sleep and mate with eachother over and over again. We decied to give the lions at least a little bit of privacy (allthough several vans arrived after our guide explained the situation over his radio) and drove to a hill overlooking the park. Here we could get out of the van for a bit, stretch our legs and get a good view of the elephants once more, as they were closing in on the water.

On this gamedrive we also saw a confused hippo on land, hyenas and zebras among other things – In conclusion: the park is worth a visit in it’s own right even when you can’t see Kilimanjaro 🙂

 

Long time no posts

Hi guys, I am sorry about not blogging for a while, I have been living in an apartment without internet, and since I am only staying here in Oslo for about 3 weeks in total I haven’t bothered to fix it. My brother is moving in here now though, and today he fixed the internet so I will make a proper post or two about my time here in Oslo later today 🙂 For now,I have started on a new layout, with a Holland themed header. (as I am moving there the day after tomorrow)

More posts soon,

Niko

Quick update

Dear Nikoline,

The last few days I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the apartment, but i thought it would be nice to do a small update. This weekend the living room curtains finally arrived, so they’re hanging. On Sunday I also finished the closet holding the tv, dvd’s, books and alike. Here’s a picture of what it looks like now:

Right now there is a lot of unnecessary items in it, and it looks rather messy. But we will sort that out when you (and your things) are also here.

This evening me and a friend worked until dark to put together our wardrobe. Only the outside is completely done now, but i will start on the interior later this week. As promised 2/3 of the thing is yours, and i will use the other 3rd for my clothes. If you think you need more space for your clothes, there is room for a fourth element, so let me know 🙂

The sofa still didn’t arrive, it will most likely be delivered while we’re in Oslo, but I will figure that out later. It’s less than two weeks now until you’re homebound. I’m so excited about seeing you again, and I think everyone in Oslo (and all Europe really ;)) feels that way. I really can’t wait to meet you at the airport, just have to hold on for a little bit more. Waiting generally isn’t one the things I’m good at, but you’re someone worth waiting for.

See you soon!

Love,

Rob

Our new home, under construction!

Dearest Nikoline,

A few days ago I moved into our new home, and with a little help from my friends, it’s finally starting to look like something. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I will do my best to finish it all before you move in. I’ll use this post to show you a bit of the work that has been done already. Take in mind that none of this is in it’s final state yet, everything is still in a ‘work in progress’ state.

The first thing i did was replace the dirty, fuzzy floor in the bedroom by a wooden one. Here’s a before (left) and after (right) photo. The bedroom wall had some minor cracks in it, and quite a few bad spots, so i completely redid one of the walls, and got rid of the smaller spots with a quick brush.

Next, I took care of the bathroom and kitchen. None of the lights were working, the shower doors couldn’t close, the toilet kept flushing and there were some minor problems with the ventilation system and electrical equipment in the kitchen. All of that, combined with a much needed cleaning of both places, resulted in the following:

The livingroom still needs the most work done, also due to the fact that the couch and curtains didn’t even arrive yet, the tv closet is far from finished and many of the pictures aren’t hanging yet. But a little sneak peak won’t hurt. Also notice my Tusenfryd skycoaster diploma in the background 😉

As you can see there is a lot of work to be done, and i will show you as soon as i get to it. Unfortunately days at work can be long and stressful, so housework won’t go as fast as I’d like it to. I can’t wait to give you a tour, and throw you a big welcome party here. Looking forward to seeing you again in 20 days. It’s really close now, but sometimes still feels like an eternity 😉

Miss you,

Love,

Rob

P.s. to conclude the post, our view of the sunset isn’t bad either 🙂

Looking forward

I have been together with Rob for over half a year now, and we have decided to move in together this summer. As Rob already has a good job in the Netherlands and Im just about to finish my degree, the plan is to live there and not in Norway for now. It will be hard to be away from family and friends, but the Netherlands is a whole lot closer to Norway than China is – and I really want to take things with Rob to the next level. Rob has already found us a really nice apartment in Almere. The whole area is reclaimed land so it’s very new. Aparently their still building stuff everywhere, but we think living there will be great. Here are some pictures of the apartment:

(Livingroom)

(Hallway)

(Kitchen)

(the view from the livingroom)

 

 

 

Reason why I didn’t blog for a while

Hey people that still bother reading my blog after it’s been quiet for about a month 😛
The reason why I’ve been quiet for so long is the Great Firewall of China. I have been trying to get thorough using different software for quite some time now, but the vpn that I used earlier is down and nothing else seem to have done the trick – right now Im in Hong Kong with my family,which is why Im able to write this. It’s quite sad that I can’t blog from China as I didn’t even want to write anything negative about the country or the government – I simplywanted to share some of my good memories from there with you guys. I will try to write some entries about some of the places I’ve been travelling to with my family while Im here in HongKong and in Europe on vacation – after that Im going back to Shanghai for another semester, hopefully I will be able to blog a little bit every now and then after returning but Im guessing it will be hard. Anyways I will put a few entries about my family vacation in China and Hongkong in soon, love Niko ^^

Finally!

I am so sorry that I haven’t been able to blog lately, my internet has been fighting me on it and so has the Great Firewall of China – but I finally won and I am able to blog again.

Anyways not much new here, wanted to blog about our christmas dinner at the Pearl Tower a couple of days ago, which was actually pretty great, so here it goes.

The Oriental Pearl Tower is one of the main attractions in Shanghai, but I had actually never been  up there before, as I have been dodging the long line outside of the ticket office. People have waited for as long as 2 hours to enter the tower apparently. A few days ago, however, the whole BI class here at Fudan wen’t to the restaurant in the middle “pearl” for our christmas dinner. The view was pretty amazing and the food was alright. It was a buffét, so everyone ate a lot. They even had a chocolate fountain which was by far the best part of the buffét in my opinion. After dinner we checked out the rest of the middle pearl, including the “glass tunnel”. This is basicly a glass platform that you can stand on – looking down on Shanghai. It is pretty amazing actually, the view was awesome and as I’m not particulary afraid of heights I didn’t mind the glass floor. A lot of wind up there though so I had to hold on to my dress so it wouldn’t blow away.

Getting ready for the winter

Seems like winter is right arround the corner here in Shanghai, or at least autumn. It doesnt get very cold here, just arround 0 degrees – but because of the humidity in the air it feels as 20 minus even when its really just 0.  Isolation and heating is just not priorities here in Shanghai either, so it will probably get very cold inside. Im very happy my friend Guri gave me a winters quilt, I also got a ministove at e-mart today so that I have something in addition to the aircondition for heating.  Last night was actually pretty cold and I guess it will just get colder from now on. Hope the ministove will help, at least it looks cool ^^

Anyways I will be gone for a couple of days on a company visit to Ningbo a bit to the south of Shanghai. Going there with my classmates and the master students so we will be 60 norwegians or so – yay! 🙂

 

First day

Today was our first day studying Marketing at Fudan. Today we had the subject we are going to take together with chinese students – Chinas Financial Markets. Our teacher seems really cool, even if he also seems strict – and he knows surprisingly much about Norway and our economy – more than some of the norwegians do even. We will get to work in groups with chinese, international and ofc BI students so I hope I can get to know some chinese – will be great. Now I am going to have dinner with some friends from the language course – I really do miss my class from there already, they were all so nice.