Top Hat

Man skal passe på med at prøve at genopleve 'barndommens glæder' hvis man ikke vil skuffes ;-)

Mandag opdagede jeg at min YNDLINGS-is fra jeg var barn var kommet tilbage - Tophat. Chokolade-kerne, vanilie is og så chocoladeovertræk med nougat. Når mine søstre og jeg måtte få en is efter at have været i svømmehallen var det så godt som altid den jeg valgte, og jeg savnede den flere år efter Frisko var holdt op med at lave den... så sent som tidligere i år snakkede jeg med Lars om den.

Som sagt, mandag ser jeg så en reklame for at "80'ernes is-hit er vendt tilbage!" På vejen hjem fra arbejde tog jeg forbi hver eneste kiosk for at finde den, men Nestle is er åbenbart en del mere populært end Frisko for hele vejen fra Friheden station og til os var der ikke en eneste kiosk der havde den - suk.

I dag fandt jeg den endelig og betalte straks de 14 kroner den nu koster, og æv - den var ikke NÆR så god som jeg huskede den. Nougaten i overtrækket gjorde den alt for sød (det havde været bedre med nødder i stedet) og chokoladen i midten var blødere end jeg forventede.

Så vidt jeg kan se er der tre muligheder: jeg blevet mere 'vant' til god is, isen var bedre dengang (eller jeg var uheldig med den ene jeg fik i dag) eller - hvad der er mest sandsynligt - isen var blevet meget bedre af at have stået i hukommelsens lyserøde skær så mange år.

Ak ja.

Men det skal dog også siges at isen var noget større end jeg huskede den. Forklar DET, hvem der kan.

Family weekend

I've had a GREAT weekend though. Saturday Nina, Miriam and Isabella held their joined "Princess Birthday Party" (Isabella's idea) and yesterday my cousin Jakob was confirmed. We had a great time at both parties. As always, it was wonderful to spend time with my sisters and nieces/nephew and the weather was just perfect. Lars had lots of fun playing with Isabella and Jordan on Jakob's tramp :-D The more I see that guy together with the three kids, the more I see what a great father he's going to be. Isabella hurt herself on the tramp, and he immediately cuddled and kissed her to make it better. SO SWEET!

Lars and I drove Isabella and Jordan from the church to the place of the reception (7 mins walk) on our bikes, and I think that must have been the highlight of the day for them, because for the rest of the day they talked about how "Unce Lars and Aunt 'Ia" (sic) had given them bike rides :-D


I also got the chance to have a long talk with all three sisters which was definitely the highlight of my day. It's so seldom we have time to talk all four of us and JUST the four of us (without husbands and kids to interrupt us), but every time we do get the chance to do so, I'm reminded why my sisters are also my best friends :)

Home again

Back home, and BOY it is good to be home! Lars surprised me by coming to pick me up at the airport last night. We went home and more or less straight to bed, and I slept for 10 hours straight. The bed at the hotel in Amsterdam was horrible so I was absolute knackered and glad to be back in my own bed with Lars lying next to me. All good :)

Wednesday I got the chance to have dinner with Paula who was also in Holland on business. Wonderful coincidence :-) Though we've known each other for about 10 years, we've only met once before, but I knew her to be of the race that knows Joseph and was really looking forward to seeing her again. With good reason :-) We met at 6:30pm found a nice Chinese restaurant nearby and proceeded to talk non-stop for the next 3 hours, making her miss her first train. Oops! Sorry about that, Paula.

I had a great time, and it was without a doubt the most comfortable and relaxing three hours of my entire stay :-)

But now I'm glad to be home, and hope to stay home for a couple of months.

Austria

Feeling more myself today after a nice long night's sleep and a day of doing absolutely nothing. I took today off work which was definitely the right thing to do.

I have very mixed feelings about the skiing trip this year. Parts of it were EXCELLENT - definitely the best yet - but then there were the hours I spent being miserable and sick which were probably the worst yet.

We arrived to hotel Sunny Sölden at 1am Friday morning and were immediately very impressed by the rooms. I shared a room with 3 others and had expected it to be a tad crowded, but the rooms were HUGE!

Two large bedrooms (larger than the one I have here), a living room, a walk-in closet, a toilet and a HUGE bathroom with two sinks, a shower and a jacuzzi! So first impression=definitely great.

The next morning as we went to rent skis, we discovered that the people arranging the trip had somehow gotten permission to hang the NC banner from the hotel flag pole! THAT I had not expected!


Unfortunately the weather on the slopes wasn't too great - foggy, snow falling and you couldn't really see more than 10-20 meters in front. A huge shame, as they were some of the best slopes I've ever tried. Next time I'm going on a skiing trip with Lars and Henni I'm going to suggest going to Sölden instead of Livigno, because even though the town isn't as cozy, the slopes are MUCH better.


After 5 hours on the slopes, my legs were wasted, so I went back to the hotel for a shower and to relax a bit before meeting the others for after-ski. Here came the second surprise - the after-ski place had a NC banner as well!!!


The after-ski went as it always does, with lots of egg-shells (snaps and mango liqueur) and Flügeln (red vodka and red bull)

as well as lots of dancing, fun and laughter.

At around 7pm we went back to the hotel to get changed for dinner. Austrian cuisine is one of the most boring I've experienced, but that doesn't matter much when the company is great :)



At 11pm some of the others went to a disco, but I was tired and wanted to be ready for a new day of skiing, so I decided to just go to bed. Unfortunately, that was not to be... well, I did go to bed, but after about an hour I got such a stomach ache that I couldn't sleep, and at about 2am it turned into horrible nausea instead :( I didn't sleep a wink all night, and felt like death warmed up the next morning, so instead of going back up on the mountain I felt I'd better stay in bed :( I felt so incredibly sorry for myself, I could just have cried. Lars had had a night shift, and was fast asleep, so I called my parents for some pity.

Around noon I felt better and went for a walk around town. I still didn't feel well enough to go to the slopes, as I felt like I might be sick at any moment and didn't want to risk it, but despite the nausea I was starving so I found a place that served soup for lunch. I felt no worse and no better after eating that, so apparently my upset stomach didn't mind what was in it, it was just gonna be upset no matter what? Weird!

Fortunately I finally managed to get some proper sleep in the afternoon and therefore felt well enough to join the others for dinner. I'm glad, because we had so much fun!!! The table next to mine kept performing "Bananaphone" (one had it on his cellphone and sent it to the others, so they'd all play it at the same time and sing along. Could have been really annoying, but it actually ended up being loads of fun!) and the table I sat at got into the weirdest inside jokes and just couldn't stop laughing. :-)


We went early'ish to bed as the bus was picking us up at 3:30am the following morning, and the trip home was utterly uneventful. I was feeling well again (but TIRED) and extremely annoyed that I'd been sick at all. So all in all, I think I'd have to say it was a good trip... at least, it had more good moments than bad :)

Tomorrow I'm heading off again - this time on a business trip to Holland. At least I get to meet two friends while I'm gone :)

1990 - Part 5: More school stuff

Typisk, den morgen jeg skal afsted på skiferie vågner jeg og er snot-forkølet. Am NOT impressed. Ah well...

Næste 'kapitel' i 1990 minderne.

P.E.
During the year we'd have different "Modules" in P.E.. I'm going to mention three of those here: Swimming, folk dancing and preparing for the gym competition.

* During the summer term we had P.E. classes in the school pool which was great when the weather approved, and really, really cold when it didn't ;) It was a rather shallow pool - no more than a meter deep I'd guess - so obviously no diving of any kind was allowed. Instead, for free play if we could get it organised we got everybody in class to stand in a long line and walk around the edge of the pool. With proper spacing we were enough to make a complete circle, and could really get a current flowing. Then at the appropriate time somebody (usually Mrs. Gilliland) would yell "Turn", and we'd all turn around and try walking the other way, against the current. Typically completely impossible and we'd fall and falter, all the while shrieking with laughter :)

* I don't even remember why we had a folk dancing module any longer, but it was lots of fun and ended with a performance for all our parents. We were taught several different dances, and practised them daily. Unfortunately I remember nothing of them any longer, but at the time I'd dance around to music in my head at any and all times :-) I was paired up with Daryl - one of the few Maori boys in class. While not Daniel, I liked him a lot and he was one of my good friends in class.

* About halfway through the year those of us who wanted to could sign up for a gym competition, with events on the bar, the mat, the 'horse' (okay, have no clue what that's called in English, it's a 'horse' in Danish), a balancing beam and jump rope. I did fairly well, but felt extremely cheated with the grade I was given on the mat. We'd been told it was a square mat, so that's what I had rehearsed my routine on. We came to the competition to discover it was a rectangular mat instead. I adjusted as well as I could, but was graded down because "I used too many superfluous steps". Yes, of course! I had to change the routine from a 5x5m mat to a 3x7m! Bah!

Where The Wild Things Are
About halfway through the year our class was visited by a student teacher. Ms. Saathof was studying to be a teacher, and as part of her training, she had to have some practical experience, so she helped teach us for about a month or so. As she was majoring in music and drama, her final project was to write and instruct a 'musical' with her class.

She decided to make a musical adaption of "Where The Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak, writing out lines and songs for us to learn by heart. Meanwhile we spent the art classes making costumes (brown bags and scary masks) and set. Everybody had at least one line (is it sad that I still remember my line? "Brain the size of a pea?!" if you were wondering... which you probably weren't ;-) ) ). I was a bit sad I only had one line as even then I loved acting, and the girl who had been chosen to play Max' mother wasn't too pleased that she'd been given a part with many lines, so we tried to convince our teachers to let us swap. They wouldn't :-( Instead I was chosen to lead the gnarling and slashing when the Wild Things tried to threaten Max, so it wasn't all bad ;-)

We had a blast! It was simple, it was fun and it was just perfect for the age group. We performed it twice for the rest of the students as well as family and friends (I later discovered that Michael had actually been to see it!!! It's a small world) and were sorry when it ended. Like I said, I still remember most of the lines and practically all the songs. Some of them had words I didn't understand at the time, but I just LOVED to say! Like this: "We're proud we're loud, untamable, exceptional, immutable. We're the wild ones, that's who. We've come to frighten you (BOO!)"

Fun times :-)

School camp
In November standard 3 and 4 of Winchester School went off on a school camp (I was std 4) for a week. We had a great time! Every evening we were told to spend some time writing a camp diary. Most people found this an awful chore, but even then I knew I'd love to have such a diary later in life, and spent a lot of time on it. I was right, and have kept it around ever since. Not that I read it often, but it's just nice to have available. I reread it last night, and realised two things: 1) My English (written at least) was definitely NOT as good as I remembered it ;) 2) Even though I remember myself much older, at 11 I was still a young kid.

Anyway, the camp was great fun. We stayed near Wanganui which apparently has the oldest brick house in NZ - oldest, being from 1870 or so. I remember the others being suitably impressed, and me trying my hardest not to laugh, as it seemed so young to me (our local church was from 1100).

Some of the best things about camp:
* A tree swing - not the ordinary kind though. Of course you could use it like an ordinary swing, but a ladder had been put next to the tree it was tied to, and by getting up on the branch it was tied to and getting somebody else to pass the tire to you, you could throw yourself out from the tree, and get really, really high. So much fun!! I almost fell off once, because the tire snagged on a twig, which scared me off it for a couple of days, but before camp was over I was right back on it.

* The last day we were told to make our own lunch over a camp fire we had to build ourselves. We were split into teams of 4 and each team was given branches (I think), matches, a billy casserole, a sausage, a carrot, some potatoes and some chicken-noodle soup. Thanks to Mum teaching me how to build a good fire (and a LOT of luck) we were the first to get our fire started, and actually managed to make a delicious casserole by cooking everything in the chicken-noodle soup, instead of attempting to cook the things separately.

* The last evening we had lots of entertainment to end the camp with a blast. Everybody who wanted to could put on a show of some kind. There were skits of all sorts, as well as songs, dances etc. I remember very few of the acts, but know that Katie, Sarah and probably Steph danced to "The Right Stuff" by New Kids On the Block, and another group put on an act to "Tonight", also by NKOTB. They were HUGE in my class that year! ;) Andrew G and some others put on quite a funny skit about "the ugliest creature in the world". We ended the evening by playing games and eating chocolate. It was fun!

* While we were gone, the rest of the school had painted a mural on one of the school walls of the Maori legend of how the Manawatu Gorge was created (unfortunately I can't find a link to the legend), and of course our class were to add to it the week after. The school wanted us 'visitors' to paint something typically Kiwi on the mural, so I got to paint a kiwi bird :)

The camp was also where I first learned how to play knucklebones, but I think I'll save that for another post.

Hyggedage

Det har været skønt med et par fridage! Det føles lidt som om jeg lige har haft en weekend, og nu får en til med det samme - just what the doctor ordered :-) Og dagene har været ren hygge og afslapning.

Torsdag aften havde vi Peter, Rebekker, Peter og Camilla på besøg til en Settlers aften. De kom dryssende mellem 4 og 5 og vi hyggede os med god mad og snak indtil bordet blev ryddet og der blev sat op til et 6-personers spil "Byer og Riddere". Camilla vandt, og vi er allerede helt på det rene med, at det er en tradition der skal gentages :)

Jeg nyder altså at familiemedlemmer ikke bare er familie, men også venner :-)

I går besluttede Lars sig for at tage mig på en sight-seeing tour. Han havde taget en sikkerhedsvest med hjem til mig, og så tog vi ellers toget til Svanemøllen station, og gik derefter langs banen (på et lukket spor, der kun bruges af arbejdskøretøjer) fra Svanemøllen til Østerport station. Altid sjovt at få en tur hvor 'almindelige dødelige' ikke må færdes. Og det var jo heldigvis dejligt vejr, så vi fik en rigtig hyggelig tur ud af det.

Vi skiltes på Østerport station, for jeg skulle videre ind på hovedkontoret på Grønningen, da der var arrangeret bordfodboldturnering den aften. Min makker og jeg vandt kun et enkelt spil og endte vist nok næst- eller tredjesidst. Men hvad - vi morede os gevaldigt alligevel.

I dag er planen så at tage hjem til Henriette og bruge en hyggelig aften sammen med hende, og så står i morgen endnu engang på ren afslapning.

Jo, det er skønt med sådan en forlænget weekend.

Bøger læst i marts

Yeah, pseudo-torsdag! Jeg har fri torsdag og fredag og GLÆDER mig allerede. Skiftet til sommertid tager hårdere på mig end jeg synes det plejer. Godt jeg har en sød mand til at forkæle mig ♥

En liste over bøger læst i marts. Linket går til min anmeldelse på Bogormen

Birchall, Diana: Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma, 7/10

Boom, Corrie ten: The Hiding Place, 9/10

Dahl, Roald: Matilda, 9/10

Diamant, Anita: The Red Tent, 7/10

Doyle, Laura: The Surrendered Wife, 8/10

Finch, Phillip: f2f, 7/10

Frank, Anne: Diary of a Young Girl, 8/10

Larsson, Stieg: Luftkastellet der blev sprængt, 10/10

Månedens bog Larsson, Stieg: Mænd der hader kvinder, 10/10

Larsson, Stieg: Pigen der legede med ilden, 10/10

Lindgren, Astrid: Kalle Blomkvist lever farligt, 8/10

Lundgren, Max: Drengen med guldbukserne, 5/10

MacDonald, George: The Princess and the Goblin, 7/10

O'Connell, Joe M.: Evacuation Plan, 6/10

Unknown: Robin Hood, 4/10

Tøndering, Claus: Helvedet - og en kærlig Gud, 10/10

Westerfeld, Scott: Specials, 8/10

Willett, Marcia: Looking Forward, 8/10

18 stk... omkring hvad jeg ville forvente en måned hvor jeg har ferie ;-)