I´m working on a two days case on this island in the middle of Norway and I find myself hoping it was summer and that I had a whole week off to explore it like I should! (not that I have a driving license, but still!) Hitra is just stunning! The nature is unlike everything I´ve ever seen before (I might be exaggerating, but you should know it´s not intentional, I´m generally a grateful tourist!), the houses are cutie cute and I´ve seen both fish, sea urchins, a sea star and a deer! All that in just 1,5 days! 😉
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Norway
A gettaway to Cristina´s cabin
I wrote about feeling a bit lonely since almost everybody was gone this Easter break and the city was empty of people. As a response to that, a fellow countryman whom I´d only met a couple of times, but who was on my list of fb friends, invited us over to her cabin! Can you imagine such an act of generosity? 🙂 And we said yes, although my man was so anxious after having watched so many horror movies in his life that he had to check her fb page and see what she was up to! Haha! 😉 Luckily it was all ikebana and benign stuff. 😉 haha! 
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Walk with my Best Bud, Sam
Yesterday I worked for 14 hours straight, including traveling hours and believe me, they were work! Sitting in front of two chatty teen-agers on the train is no fun when your head is throbbing with pain and all you want to do is get some sleep! I did get to wolf down a burrito and a beer with some friends, though, before heading home to sleep for 10 hours on end. The upside is I woke up before 8 today! 😉 Meaning I had lots of time to unwind before embarking on an adventure in the woods with my bud, Sammy boy. 😉 The weather was gorgeous, as you can see, the snow was melting and my influenza is finally giving me a rest. 
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Winter is back
Can you imagine how happy I was when I woke up this morning to see at least 10 cm of newly fallen snow? (hint: not at all!)
This morning was a disaster in every way, had to wake up at 6 just to find out I wouldn´t have to work after all, but then again they changed their mind, so I had to literally run to reach the train, which was delayed (Thank God!), ´cause then I was told we´ll leave it for tomorrow in the end. Of course I´m billing them, but that´s besides the point. The point is there were almost no buses, it was really early, cold, chaotic and nobody should go through that unless strictly necessary. Hahaha! Besides, I had to wear my winter boots! Bhuuuuu!
Sunny Saturday Stroll
Yesterday was such a lovely day and we sure made the best of it. Since V had a day off, too, we decided we should have a city day. And what better way to be urban than walking around with our fluffy polar bear? 😉
Spring
Spring is coming at last and it feels so good! I brought a couple of peach blossom branches home today and the white cuties bloomed, so the apartment looks festive and warm. Sammy boy is enjoying his walks, mostly with his pops, since I´ve had a major flu for some days now. He keeps finding gloves and stuff and is ever so happy to carry them around in his mouth.
Work is steadier now and I guess I´m relieved, although I´ve been enjoying my lazy couple of months, too. But now it´s a good time to be busy, the weather makes is easier to get out of the house and just savor a cup of coffee in the sun. Finding an outfit to wear is also more pleasing when you don´t have to think about being warm all the time. 😉 I´ll be sure to post a couple of pictures about that later on this week.
I hope you have a great week! I´m slowly recovering and looking forward to salmon sashimi with white rice and cucumber salad, although I have absolutely no taste or smell whatsoever. 😉
Sunday thoughts
Finally Sunday! So good to be able to breathe and know you have no plans other than coffee with friends. I have an interpreting colleague visiting and after speaking my mother tongue for three days in a row, I´m starting to be fluent again! 😉 haha! Today I´ve been thinking a lot about identity and belonging. In fact, we discussed it at length over coffee and waffles at our friends´ place. Whether an immigrant feels most allegiance with the mother country or the country of residence has been a much disputed subject in the media, too. How the second generation immigrant defines herself is another interesting topic. For my part, I feel I belong nowhere in particular, but that I could live in pretty many places. I´ve lived 20 years in Romania and 15 in Norway. Romania is the country of my childhood and my adolescent dreams, while Norway is the place where I started reasoning, found love and matured. Whenever I travel back to Romania I say I´m going home and when I leave for Norway I say I´m going back home. Still I feel a bit out-of-place in both environments. And I get “Where are you from?” quite often. My line of work is a dog eats dog world. I´ve run my own race and worked myself nearly to death the first three years and now I´m exhausted and tired of fighting. It´s slowly getting better, partly because I´m one of 7 certified interpreters in the country (Romanian-Norwegian) and partly because I´ve chosen to surround myself with the few colleagues I like. Back in the day, when I used to work in a bank, I could count on one hand the people I had something in common with. Now I can count them on two. 😉 I think it must be me, I´ve always felt like an outsider. I guess on a certain level I couldn´t be bothered with “the little man´s stuff”, however harsh that sounds. Hoping for more sense of belonging in the coming days, now that the first sign of spring is here. 😉 Tell me about your experiences in connection with the subject, if you have any! 😉 Meanwhile, enjoy my pictures! 😉
Snowy weather
These days have been slow and good for the soul. I´ve been cooking, decluttering and selling a few items on the internet, walking Sammy and dreaming of sunny holidays.
Friday I only worked for a few hours and it proved to be a lot of fun, we were several interpreters waiting for an hour or two in the Court House lobby and had a blast discussing beginner´s errors and such. Later on I had some drinks with a friend at Café Amsterdam, discussing professional pitfalls (how you can avoid laughing when the situation is soooo comic), Norwegian-born husbands and Romanian inhibitions. I wrapped up the day with Mr Selfridge on Netflix. I love that series! 😉
Saturday we went for a never-ending hike (6km) in the snow with Sam, part of it on the ski-lane (no fun), but it was so beautiful it almost hurt my eyes! Istagram doesn´t do it justice, I´ll give it a try anyway. We walked and walked and it felt we´d never get there. In the end it was so foggy we couldn´t see more than a meter in front of us, so we had to ask hundreds of times for Frognerseteren, where we had dinner and a beer. 😉 Tired and beat, we took a nap before some friends came over and we had some laughs over take-away pizza and Prosecco.
Thursday off
I had a couple of days in court outside Oslo, meaning I was away from home for 10-11 hours, and now I´m beat. Although that used to be my daily routine, I reckon I´m getting too old for that. 😉 Today I only want to take Sam for a longer walk, make myself a spinach salad with chicken and parmesan and read a book by the fireplace. Hoping it´s the winter blues, I long for lighter days and more sunshine. Here are some pictures from our latest “adventures”.
Family Gathering for Christmas
On the third day of Christmas we were invited to a family gathering at Våler, where Vuong´s sister recently moved with her husband and child. Although the Trans are Buddhists, they do find a day around Christmas to get together, eat good food and do some catching up. And yesterday was that day. 🙂
Since interethnic marriages are not very common in Norwegian-Vietnamese communities, that´s given us some heart-ache along the years. In the end we all had to admit we were stuck with each other and make the best of it. So now we meet once in a while and smooth things over for the sake of our nephew, who is one gorgeous and lovable little guy!
Today we went for a walk in the woods and had the best time ever! Sammy was super happy and so was Benjamin, who slid like a pro! After taking in the fresh air and the amazing landscape, we felt our cheeks flush with blood and our feet ache with cold. So we went in for cakes and coffee. Take a look!
life in a bubble 