Weekend in Utrecht

Last weekend was a rather social one for Rob and me. Friday we had dinner with Rob’s family before playing boardgame with his sister Charlotte and some friends. Saturday Rob and I both got a haircut, because this month I finally got a paycheck too, meaning we have a bit more money to spend 🙂

As it was a beautiful day, Rob and I decided to drive to the Goois nature reserve. This small park is absolutely beautiful, and they even have a really good restaurant where we had lunch. After walking around for a while we ran into this guy:

Now that’s a pretty basass version of a cow, hehe.

In the evening we headed to Utrecht and played some pool, before we met up with Rob’s friends and went to the movies. “Ted” turned out to be rather funny actually, and it is definitely worth seeing. Sunday was rather calm, and I spent it watching shows and studying for a test I took today at work. It is rather sad that the weekend is over, but then again without the work week, weekends would just be random days 🙂

JJ in Holland

After my parents and sister left, I had another visitor from Norway: Jeanette Josephine or just JJ 🙂 (and she brought my favorite candy too – SCORE!). Her visit was a short one, but we did have a lot of fun. Rob and I live very close to this pink building in the picture, Klokhuis from dutch children television. Seeing this house up close was the absolute highlight of the trip for JJ, and she now wants to live there.  We also had a lot of fun in Amsterdam, where we managed to visit the Heineken museum, the sex museum and take a canale cruise all in one day.

We did want to stay in the city longer, but in the early evening it all of a sudden started to rain so heavily that we had to give up and go home. The picture probably says it all:

(JJ looked like this after being out in the rain for a grand total of 2 minutes)

I had a great time with JJ while she was here 🙂 Tonight yet another visitor arrives – my brother Ludvig 🙂

Home Sweet Home.. For now ;)

As I mentioned in my last post I am now finally back home in Norway and Oslo! 🙂 I am not staying here all that long though, as I am moving to the Netherlands tomorrow to live with Rob. I have spent around 3 weeks here, catching up with friends and family, enjoying my wonderful hometown and it has been really awesome. I especiallly enjoyed grilling in the Vigeland Park, taking the ferry out to Hovedøya and meeting my family again of course – I even brought Rob and I think they all got along pretty well so that was nice too. Time has gone way too quickly while I was here, but I enjoyed every day and I will hopefully be back pretty soon 🙂

Korean BBQ

Close to my university there is a place that offers a really cheap and tasty Korean BBQ all you can eat.  I have actually never tried this before, so it was pretty exciting for me to go there. There is basicly a little grill inside of your table that you put whatever you want from the buffet on. I mostly grilled tons of meat marinated in some spicy sauce, really loved it – very full now though, haha. Im going to miss all the different choices Shanghai provides – you can basicly find all sorts of food from around the world on all price levels, awesomeness.

Catching up

I spent a many of our evenings in Japan catching up with old friends. As I used to study in Japan, I have friends from 2007 that I didn’t see for years. I even know Japanese that went to Norway to study before I went to study in Japan. Most of these friends I only meet about once every 3rd or 4th year, so it was nice to have the chance again. Here are some highlights:

(lunch with Azusa – that I have known since she studied in Oslo 2005-6)

(Dinner with Minori and Mai – friends from the language course in Shanghai last summer)

(catching up with Haruka – my speaking partner when I studied in Japan in 2006-7)

(Dinner with Koichi – my uncles number 1 fan and a good friend since I met him in Japan 2009)

These are the friends I had the opportunity to meet this time, I wish I had more time to meet the rest of my friends in Japan as they are all really awesome. Some of my friends had to work, some I couldnt grab a hold of, but Im happy I got to meet the ones I met ^^

 

Chinese New Year in Shanghai

I returned to Shanghai just in time for the Chinese New Year. A bunch of us Norwegians went out together for dinner and drinks. We started out at the financial district before heading over to The Bund and bar Rouge to watch the fireworks. It was rather cold outside, and we stood outside for a while waiting on the fireworks. Tons of people had gathered to watch them and take pictures – mostly westerners though as the Chinese celebrate with their families. We were a little disapointed with the fireworks on New Years eve, they were nice but not nicer than the ones at home. About a week later, at the last day of the New Years week, the sky seemed to explode though and there was tons and tons of fireworks outside of my window. Im guessing we picked the wrong night to watch them. We still had a great time though, and a few of the fireworks (like the one in the picture) were real nice 🙂