#311; Hi, I'm not dead!

This blog has been inactive for months..

To be just a tad more precise it is today the 28th of January, 2017 - and the last post on this blog is from the 25th of March, 2016.. Soeh.. It's been quite close to a year. I do have a good explanation for 7 of the months, though!

I have been traveling Australia and New Zealand for just about 7 months, and I came home the 26th of January.

So there's that! I have many times doing my travels thought about posting some updates on my blog, but the thought has always slipped out of my mind, or I have just decided to live the experience, and then maybe write about it when I came home. This is what I am planing on doing now, and maybe I'll stretch it over a few posts, but we'll see.

It has been such a great feeling to finally come home! My parents visited me in Sydney for two weeks starting at the end of November - and when they left to go home I had a few options; I could go back to Melbourne (where I had come from to meet them in Sydney), I could go home with them, or I could go to New Zealand.

The choice became New Zealand, as I didn't feel ready to go home at that point, and I didn't fancy flailing around in Melbourne and risk not having accommodation over Christmas and New Years. And well, I was already on the other side of the planet, so I figured I might as well go to New Zealand while I was there in the first place.

I was lucky to be able to travel with the weather, meaning I was able to move around and stay in temperatures I, as a normally pasty white Scandinavian, could survive in. The highest temperatures I experienced was about 35 degrees Celsius, and admittedly I was on the brink of melting 24/7... This was in Cairns, one of the bigger cities on the north of the East Coast, in "Tropical North Queensland".. "Tropical" isn't really what I'm used to so that was definitely a huge change for me.

The big change was especially because at that point I came straight from the "winter" down in Adelaide - South Australia. To be fair, the winters they claim to have are not just mild, but for me, most of the days I experienced the 1½ week I spent in Adelaide could easily have been the spring back home. We are talking about 15 degrees here, and most of the locals were running around in giant jackets, hats and gloves. That was extremely strange for me to see, as we break out the light jackets, and some of the true viking even wear shorts at this point of the spring back home. Now, you might think I'm highly exaggerating, but I seriously know 3-4 guys who stubbornly wear shorts as soon as the thermometer says 15 degrees Celsius outside.

I had read online that the warmest months in New Zealand would be from December to February, which suited me really well as basically all the clothing I had was summer-y, and I did really have space for buying more clothes - my bags were packed almost to the brim. And yes, bags, plural! You accumulate a lot of shit over 6 months, so by the time I was flying to New Zealand I had 4 (!!!) bags..
Two "big bags", a big duffle bag and a small 25 liters hiking bagpack. Then I had two backpacks, where one of them was packed into one of the bigger bags. So I had two pieces of checked-in baggage, one carry-on and then my small handbag. I didn't exactly travel as primitively as I could've.

This post is turning out to be quite long, so I'll write more about my Australia and New Zealand adventures in other posts. And I promise there wont be several months between posts, as it has more or less been custom for the last 1½-2 years - I am really not good at writing on a blog, but as it is something I really want to do, I'll get better.. Maybe ;-)

Till next time!

- Kristine

Little PSA

Hi there!

Some time back I swore I would NEVER take the famous trip down memory lane, and go through my old blogposts, because I came across one, and it made me cringe so damn hard I couldn't really look at it for longer than 15 seconds - those seconds felt like a lifetime!

Buuut, I'm going to do it anyway! The reason why I'm doing this because I've seen that some of the pictures used have been taken down, and since I sometimes posted a picture with very little text, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have those posts still there.

I've started a thing where I'm giving my blogposts numbers:

 I'm not really sure if I'm going to keep doing that, but we'll see..

I once promised in a post that I wouldn't go back and edit old posts, no matter how cringe worthy they might be - but I found a loophole in my own promise; I never mentioned not editing the "headlines"! So I might do that to a few posts, but I'm going to make sure it won't go "too far", especially because it's okay to have been hella awkward teenanger (Lord knows I was and can still be, woops), and I'm not going to be too strict on myself, awkwardness should not be totally forgotten, after all, it was who I was at the time ;)

Small changes might be coming, so let's see how it's gonna go - cheers!

#310: Music recommendation

Hi there!

A lot of things have happened in my life since I last updated this blog (a lot can happen in roughly 6 months....), but I intend to get better at this, also because I found out it can be quite therapeutic for me to type out things I might need to get off my chest. Which is also part of the reason I have about 30 drafts of things I needed to write down, but have no intention of ever sharing with the world.

I am going to start small, and post some music recommendations , pictures from my life, and inspired posts (like promts) and maybe smaller text posts until I get into the habit of posting more regularly, regularly is not defined as anything on purpose, as I don't really know how fast I'm gonna pick up on this again.

Well, moving on to what I actually wanted to do with this post - recommending some music!
I recently started listening to twenty one pilots, and I have become quite a fan. twenty one pilots was one of the band I've heard a bit about, but have never "reached out" to myself - and therefore have not heard a lot of their music.

But then I came across their newest hit: "Stressed out" - and I am absolutely in love with it! With the knowledge that I like this piece of music, it made me search for more of their music - one of the best music "decisions" I've made in a long time - so I thought it could be a thing to pass on, as I know a lot of people find "new" music through others' recommendations, so here are mine;

Apart from "Stressed out" I have also fallen in love with the track "Car radio" - something about it just fits my mood at the moment, so I'll throw that in your faces as well;

Lastly I want to give you a link to a youtube playlist with a lot of their music - here
There you are, my current music recommendation for today

#309: Picture time

I'm 175cm pure boss ass bitch

#308: It has been 5 months and 22 days..

And holy dangflabbit shit.. I'm sorry guys.

I just checked my list of posts - and the last post was from 3/3-2015.. Which is a hella long time ago. I actually made some nearly finished drafts, but I didn't get to the stage of actually posting them, for some reason. I made drafts about how I was kind of scared about my future when I was reading for finals, I started a posts about how relationships with your siblings can be complicated and annoying - and actually a lot of other posts.. I just never finished them, and thus never got to posting them.

But during these awfully many months, exciting things have happened in my life. I've graduated - eyyyy! Yes - I graduated and got my hat! The damn hat I feel like I've fought for (blood, sweat and tears have been shed) for three looong years. And I was S O super scared and excited about it at the same time - because I had no idea what my life was going to revolve around when I didn't have school. It feels kind of pathetic, I know, but that was how I felt. 

The thing is that I have no flippin' idea what I what to study at university - which is something I have to figure out. So I'm taking a gap year - or maybe two.. As my mother says when people ask about my plans: "Well, she's taking at least one gap year, maybe two. We're not pressuring her into choosing something as fast as possible." This is amazing for me, my parents are really supportive when it comes to this, which was a huge relief, especially since I was close to dropping out of school in year 2 because I had a minor breakdown over school, homework and stress.

For some reason, some divine power granted me my wishes when it came to final exams - no oral math and no oral biotechnology! These subjects are my main subjects, and it's not because I don't like them (cough cough ~fuck you math~ cough), but I just really dislike the exam "method" (does that make sense) with these two subject. I ended up getting Ancient Studies (C-level - part of a song from the Odyssey) and History (A-level - focus on Rome) and praise whatever divine force made this happen, I was so happy I could cry! Being emotional probably had something to do with the lack of sleep, as it is tradition that all of the seniors have a huge party (at a club or somewhere similar) the night before we are told what subjects we have for our final exams.

All of my exams went well, and I actually scored the dangflabbit H I G H E S T  S C O R E for my final exam, and holy shit I was so damn happy! I think my teacher was quite happy as well, she looked like it, that's for sure! It's tradition here that you have your parents and maybe some family waiting outside the room where you're being examined, and I had my parents, my moms sister and her husband, all of my siblings and my brothers' girlfriends were there as well. So - no pressure!

How it happens: you go into the room of the exam and get examined by your teacher and a examiner, and after your time is up, you go outside while they decide on your grade. When they're done you get called into the room again, and when you have gotten your grade/score, you come out again - and it's all over. For the last exam someone gets to put your hat on your head, and for me that was my mom. And we cried. We all cried. Holy damn, all of the people cried, I'm not kidding. My father, my uncle, my sister in laws and even my oldest brother shed a little tear - now that's impressive! My mother (and I) cried the most, I'm pretty sure a lot of the tears were kind of relief, as in "the last three years are finally goddamn over - and it is amazing!" and the fact that I ended it the best way possible was just.. It felt amazing, absolutely amazing! (especially because a certain cunt someone didn't get the highest grade, and she fucking cried about it.. Classic. #sorrycertainlynotsorry)

Well, I actually put my ass down and get to write a post - I am actually a bit proud of myself! So to end this quite long post I will post a picture of me with my hat - my precious, precious hat!

Look how happy I am - horray for me!

#307: Austria

Hey you all!

So since I haven't been posting for about a million years (a million years here is about 3 weeks in human time), I thought I could post some pictures from my skiing trip to Austria! The week was brilliant, I must admit that my dear boyfriend got a lot better at skiing in during those 6 days than I had ever dared to hope. He went down a slope categorised as "black" the last day, and "black" is a lot in Austria. The black slopes are those with a steepness of 70 degrees. I not quite sure how they measure it, but when you're at the top of it - it's clear to see that they're different from the others! Anyway, here we go -  I hope you like the pictures, I enjoyed the trip, and thereby taking the pictures!

#306: I am going skiing - yay!

Hello dudes and dudettes!

Just like last year I am going skiing! This year I'm not going with the youth-club-thing-a-ling, but I'm going with my parents like I used to. This time is different though.. This time I am dragging my boyfriend along with me!

Ahh, yes. My poor, lovely boyfriend is being voluntarily dragged with me and my parents to Austria to try skiing for the first time. Needles to say, I am so flipping excited I can barely handle it! We're driving to Austria ourselves in our volvo, and another difference from 3 year ago - this time we're 4 people to take turns to drive, so it's not just my mother and father who's responsible for the driving. I am also quiiiite excited for that part of it, as I haven't been driving on the German autobahn (motorway) during the night, and with the parts of the autobahn with no speed limit (yup, that's a thing in Germany.. No speed limits on some of das autobahn, you can look it up if you don't believe me), it can very hard to "read" the upcoming cars from behind, when the only thing you can see is the car's headlights.

As mentioned, my boyfriend has never tried skiing before, and I am so excited to show him everything wonderful about skiing and amazing winter wonderland that is Austria in the winter. Skiing is literally one of the only sports I'm good at! And I'm serious here - I can't think of any sport aside from skiing that I'm actually good at, I'm just one of those people who are just extremely uncoordinated with a ball, a bat of any kind or hurdles or anything. I'm just very uncoordinated, but skiing is my secret power. So as my boyfriend hasn't tried it before, or have seen me on skies, I am SO looking forward to showing him a sport that I'm actually good at.

"Secretly" I'm also looking forward to see him flip and flop a bit around on these giant skies with limited amount of movement. I can't wait. Of course I'm not going to be a mean and evil stunt-on-skies-for-the-first-time-filming-girlfriend all the time.. Just for some time the first day ;-) I have kind of promised some of our friends that I would film him a bit, and honestly  who am I to deny the wishes of the masses ;-)

We are going to live in a apartment the four of us, my parents in one bedroom, and my boyfriend and I in another. There's a kitchen, a living room with TV, two toilets and a bath and wifi in the apartment - it is going to be a blast! Of course we are going to be spending as much time as possible out on the slope, but having a nice apartment to come home to is certainly not a bad thing. The area we will be skiing in is called Zauchensee, and there's currently over a metre of snow in the city itself located at 1350 meters hight. I've been there two times before, so I know the area quite well by now.

I am so stoked to go - and we're driving tonight! Before I can go I need to do a few things first. Among those things; finding clothes/equipment, packing aaaaaaand handing in a 7 hour English assignment. Preferably done in 3 hours. Damn. I'm not quite sure how amazing that assignment is going to be, I am dreading it a bit - I hate writing essays last minute, but I've had two assignments (chemistry and maths, 4-5 hours each) this last week, which has drained a lot of my energy, so I don't have a lot of it for writing this damn English essay. One could argue that I choose English on A level myself, and yes I did, but 15-17 hours of assignments in one week would be tough on anyone. But I just have to get it done, so I can relax and focus on the oncoming vacation - phew..

So I just need to breath, relax and get my assignment done so I can go on this awesome vacation! I hope the wifi in the apartment is good enough for me to maybe upload some pictures, and I hope the weather is going to be great! Ah, I am just so excited! (And I'm secretly hoping not to break a leg or any other body part!)