Ch ch ch changes!

I've done some slight changes lately. Which I like. Which I need. If I don't change things now and again, try something new, or do something crazy I feel that my life is leaving me behind.

So this week I decided to only make salad all week, - no meat, no pasta, no bread. I love salad, but haven't really taken advantage of the excellent salad conditions here in Spain. In Norway the prices are high and the selection of greens is poorer and less fresh.

This here is a salad with couscous, avocado, cheese (Viking cheese from Denmark, of course!), cucumber, tomato, red pepper, dried cranberries (soaked in hot water for a couple of minutes) and different types of lettuce. Dressed only with lemon juice and olive oil. Another variant tried out during the week was salad with smoked salmon (Norwegian, of course!), avocado, cucumber, black pepper, cheese, lettuce, and the standards: cranberries, olive oil and lemon juice.

My breakfast/evening snack-variant: greek youghurt, whatever fruit available, walnuts and honey.

Another change was one I made together with Lucie. We got our ears pierced - third and fourth ear piercing for me, and fourth and fifth for Lucie. A bit in the moment, but cheap, quickly done, small, blue and beautiful. Making me and Lucie 'hermanas en sangre', tihi.

A kind of change: I'm gonna try something new for the first time tomorrow. I've wanted to try it for some time, and have been working up my guts. I'm going travelling couchsurfer-style up north of Spain. Tomorrow I'll meet up with my ride to go to Zaragoza, my ride being a spare seat in a van. It was announced on the website viajamosjuntos.com which makes it possible for the driver to save gas money and the passenger to save bus money ant lots of time. In Zaragoza I'll meet up with Joke, - a crazy Belgian girl I met when she was falling in love with Granada and ended up staying 2 weeks longer than planned, - and we'll spend Easter surfing couches around Basque Country. I'm really looking forward to travel in this way. Already I've met so many interesting people just being a part of the couchsurfing comunity. I highly recommend it: you don't have to host anyone, nor surf anywhere. You can just meet up for a coffee or a walk around the city. Or you can get together with someone to do an exchange of languages or talents. Genious.

Oh! And another change:

I feel like - in the words of my mother - a "crazy woman"!

Have a crazy and colorful Easter holiday, everybody!

Temptation/obsession

There are terrible temptations which it requires strength and courage to yield to.
- Oscar Wilde

Temptation recently made someone the happy, new owner of my wallet, cell phone and keys, but being an easy target for temptation myself, I can't really blame them.

Temptation have given me: a badly done tattoo in Vietnam, a motorcycle pipe burn, a student's life in Spain, bad exam results, good memories, fun stories, painful sunburns, adrenaline kicks, festival tickets, empty bank accounts, a single dread lock, some extra weight, new favorites, old flames, worried parents, laughing friends, beautiful views, a glacier course, a trip on the Trans-Siberian, starry skies, terrible hangovers, long nights, early mornings, heavy backpacks, more tea than I can finish in a year, a hookah, the possibility to enjoy a rainy day on a roofed balcony an April Sunday, and, by the looks of it, too much work too close to deadline.

 

 

I must be awfully strong and couragous. 

But am I strong enough to yield to my biggest temptation, bording on obsession? Do I have the courage to do what I have wanted to do for so long? Can you leave the comforting, entertaining and tormentingly tempting thought that is there the moment you wake up and follows you through all conversations, adorns all situations, decides your choice of music, helps you make dinner, and makes you smile when you normally wouldn't?

I'll be more specific: I've eaten close to 10 avocados and made taco twice in the last week. I enjoyed sitting alone by a bar late at night, just watching people, and giggled after realizing someone had stolen my purse from right next to where I was standing, - preparation! I've interrogated strangers about their travels. I've already called my boss from last spring to see if he has any work for me in the fall. And I have spent hours reading travelling tips for women going solo to Latin America, asking myself at every other sentence if I would have the street-smarts, common sense, social skills, immune system, confidence, strength and courage to deal with border bureaocracy and 20 hour long bus rides; to count only on myself in balancing safety and budget; telling the difference between 'go-ahead-and-have-fun' situations and 'get-the-hell-out-of-there' situations.

I guess there is only one way to find out. I just have to save up some money, and stick to my promise that I'd visit my friends in Brazil and the fact that if I don't go, I'll regret it.

Jorberis og oliven

Eg gjekk å dafte halvdaue i sju blåe og sju raue, 

Du konne se på meg at det va skitt.

Men det hjalp

Med syltetøy og akevitt.

Eg gjekk å hangla og va skrale i sju høge og sju smale, 

Du konne se det på at eg tog skade. 

Men det hjalp

Med kaffi og remulade.

Eg gjekk og lengta og va leie i sju lange og sju breie, 

Du konne se det på mitt skrukkefjes.

Men det hjalp

Med øl og majones.

Og så kom sommaren og solå og skein i sju timar pluss ein.

Eg blei så glade at eg gjekk på badet

Og vaskte magen

Og kaviar og sjokolade.

Så om du kjenne deg litt kleine og syns at alt står i sju steiner

Finn fram gaffelen og kniven

For det hjelpe

Med jorberis og oliven.

  - Svein Tang Wa

One of my favorite songs, - by a multiartist from my city. 

The three first verses starts with him singing about his feeling bad and sick for a long time, but ends with the words: "But it helped with jam and aquavit/coffee and remoulade/beer and mayonnaise". The fourth verse says: 

"And then summer came and the sun shone for seven hours plus one. 

I was so happy that I went to the bathroom and washed my tummy. 

And caviar and chocolate."

And the fifth tells you that if you ever feel down and that you can't make a change, 

"go get your fork and knife,

because it helps

with strawberry ice cream and olives."

This week has been about great weather, new friends, sign language, salsa, dreads, fun concerts, stories, coffee, jokes, birthdayparty, home made tiramisu, picnic in the park,

 

sunglasses, siesta at the beach,

 

couchsurfers, tattoos, travels

and happiness.

Inspirasjon

Tom travelling by his thumb from England to India 20 years old.

Joke finishing her studies and leaving Belgium the very next day to go travelling alone through Europe, - looking towards South-East Asia.

Couchsurfers bringing too little clothes being forever optimistic about warm weather in Spain.

Young travellers from all over the world getting in a car with a stranger to cross and broaden horizons.

Forever young Tony living and working in strange countries with foreign cultures, travelling all over the world with nothing to lose.

Sam going where his ever new friends are going, living or recommending him to go. Sam asking me, with a frown: "Are you really going to waste a trip to Latin America just so you take your driver's lisence?"

I guess not...

This is your city?

   

Hm.

 

Yes please!

Canned heat

If students in Trondheim had this weather in May/June, they would be complaining about having to study for exams, and not being able to enjoy it. In mid-March we would probably be complaining more about the bad weather than having to study.
Mid-March in Granada the students enjoy early spring and look forward to the next two months of excellent weather. In June they will be complaining more about the weather than having to study for exams in air-conditioned libraries.

I'm still so cocky as to claim I'll have no problem with the heat, - I love warm weather. Let's see how I feel when summer comes, and I have no less than 6 exams in the two last weeks of June, when temperatures easily reach 35 - 40 C.

Cloudless sky and 22 C would be a very nice mid-summer's day in Norway, - I'm soon going to join 6000-8000 people at the Botellódromo (a free zone where it's allowed to drink in public) for the Spring Party! It started 4-5 hours ago, but I still have to eat dinner, take a shower and figure out what to bring, - Calimocho o Tinto de Verano - the traditional drinks (redwine with Coke or Lemon soda, respectively). Or maybe the bottle of Extra Dry Martini in my cupboard...

Just dance!

Musicophilia

Couldn't agree more with Nietzsche, - "Life without music is simply an error, a pain, an exile."

I will never feel old as long as I can discover, enjoy and fall in love with immer mehr songs, bands, artists, melodies, rythms and voices. Here are some of my recent discoveries and growing infatuations and a couple of well established lovers:

Thao Nguyen



The Tallest Man on Earth

Still I am not from Barcelona,
I am not even from Madrid.
I am a native of the North Pole
And that can mess up any kid.

Well if you could reinvent my name,
well if you could redirect my day,
I wanna be the King of Spain.

King of Spain


Jeff Buckley



Geoff Berner

Promise me we won't go into that nightclub
I really think that it's obscene
What kind of people go to meet people
Somewhere they can't be heard or seen

  Keep it light enough to travel


Cold War Kids


And so many more! And tickets to FiB! I've gots them! Sun, beach, beer, friends, strangers, The Stranglers, Beirut, The Strokes, Portishead, Mumford & Sons, Friendly Fires, The Streets, Arctic Monkeys, and <3 Arcade Fire <3 ! Check out their awesome DIY music video, - while we wait...