Day 1: I Kill a Television.

It's the first official day of my half-term break and I have already managed to screw up something technological thus far. Kristian has a very nifty all-in-one remote control that controls his TV, the Wii, audio system, DVD player, etc, etc. Annnnnnnd, in the company of yours truely for about 30 seconds, I now can't get the damn TV to turn on. I am a death sentence to all things technological. Sarah's laptop is taking its life into its hands by allowing me to be on here at the moment.

My visit has been great so far! I landed around midnight on Friday so came to Sarah & Kristian's and headed to bed. Saturday, Sarah had First Aid training at school and Kristian had some errands to run so I had the place to myself for awhile. After coming home, Kristian opened up his birthday presents I brought with me (a Metallica towel and the Dave Mustaine autobiography) and we headed for a walk downtown. Our 'quick walk' led us to the Stavanger Museum which was really cool! There was a Darwin exhibit on and lots of other exhibits showing Stavanger throughout history...supergeek in me is coming out now.




There was one exhibit in the basement that had all kinds of animals, both in skeletal form and stuffed form. One such creature is...



...This furry little friend. I knew it was long-since dead and stuffed...but I was still waiting for the eyes to blink or something.


After stopping for coffee and supper, we headed to Cardinal, the pub that we went to on my first visit here. Thankfully, I wasn't ID'd as Cardinal is 24+. We left Cardinal and went to another little place where the only people there were....the 5 of us. Sarah, Kristian, Per, Arthur & myself. And, to make it even better, the music was all country and classic rock. Score! After our wild night on the town, we ended up at home at the nice late hour of...9pm. I guess that's what happens when you start your day on the town in the mid-afternoon.

Yesterday, we went to Hallestø beach and took Sarah's colleagues dog, Theo, with us. Theo is a St Bernard 'puppy.' I use that term very loosely as Theo's head is about the size of my torso and he is capable of knocking me over with a well-aimed nudge. And the drool on that dog...I had a sudden flashback to the old Ghostbuster's movie where the pink slime was coming out of the bathtub, trying to snatch the baby. After a windy walking on the beach, we dropped Theo off and came home. Kristian's mum, Sidsel, came over for tea & coffee and it was really nice to see her again. She and her husband, Jon Einar, had been up in the mountains skiing over the weekend. She told me a saying often applied to Norwegian's and I'm starting to believe it: Norwegians are born with skis on their feet. Probably true.

I brought no schoolwork with me this week so I plan to relax for the next few days. I may head into work with Sarah at some point this week...we'll see if my nerves are up for that.