Someone stole my phone. To be honest, it’s all just stupid. It happened at school, last night, while I was practicing. Guess part of it was my fault, as my bag was left in a room without surveillance for about an hour. (I can’t be bother explaining the long story behind that.) But then again – do we really have to lock everything up to make sure it’s safe?

I know stuff gets stolen at my school. Phones is the favourite bait. Then other kinds of electronic gadgets, then cash. They seldom steal credit cards, those are too easily traced. All the students at my school have laptops, and they should always be locked up (or better: kept close at all times).

On my very first day at this school, I was going to buy some used books from another student. She couldn’t find me, and since she didn’t have a locker, she left the books in a plastic bag underneath some lockers. Not a good choice. The next morning, the books were gone. (Except for the music books, because someone would recognise them.) Last year a student in my class had his mp3-player stolen. It was in the bottom of his bag, which he left in the hall for 5 minutes while going to the toilet. A few months ago, another boy in my class had his laptop stolen. He left his bag in the hall as well, and when he looked for it a few hours later, it was all gone. I think he recovered his bag and possibly some books, but the computer was lost. If we bring any valuables to PE, we have to bring them into the gym with us. Anything could get stolen in the wardrobes. A girl I know had her shoes stolen. That was the same day she’d forgotten to bring trainers for PE, so she was left behind barefoot. Today I talked to another guy in my class about stolen stuff. He’s had his phone stolen at school three times while attending this school. And his wallet once. So at least I’m not alone…

They had searched my wallet as well, but I didn’t have any cash left. And I’m relieved they didn’t take my VISA card. Or my keys. But my phone was gone. We tried to call it, but it was turned off. I knew then that it was lost. I’d never turn my phone off (unless I’m on a plane or there’s a concert going on), and the battery was fully charged. Have to admit I sweared. A lot. Loudly.

I would like to use the opportunity to speak directly to whatever idiot decided to rob me:

I’m not hurt. I’m just very, very angry. (One of the states of mind which can be described much better in the language I can swear extensively in..) But how can you do it? How can you just take people’s belongings like that? You’ll have to go through my phone and delete everything on it. You’ll have to delete my photos one by one, I know there’s no other way to do that. You’ll see the picture of a proud dalmatian, my dog in New Zealand. You’ll see heaps of pictures and at several videos of a 2 months old golden retriever puppy. In person you’ll have to go through the pictures of my smiling friends, without knowing who they are. How can you do that?

At least there are a few points in my favour:

• My phone was old. Almost 3 years. They don’t sell phones like mine anymore.
• My phone doesn’t both vibrate and ring anymore. It sort of alternates. Every now and then, it does neither.
• Since I got that phone, I’ve used it as an alarm clock as well. And I got this really nice alarm clock radio for Christmas.
• The screen of my phone is so scraped it’s difficult to see what you write.
• The volume button is stuck. You can’t turn it down. Ever…
• It’s getting old. Very old. This last week, the screen has started freezing. A tip: You have to remove the battery and leave it out for a few minutes before turning it on again. No longer my problem…
• A few hours earlier, I’d spent my last bit of cash, 9 kroner (approximately 2 NZD), on one packet of chewing gum.
• You didn’t take my VISA card. That was stupid. Very stupid. Possible to trace it, yes – but I had enough money to pay the value of that old phone perhaps… 10 times? Stupid choise, mate...

...about time?

While walking home from the coffee house last night I suddenly got the idea to start blogging again. Some might say I never really gave it up in the first place. I'd say I never really got started.

... so what's new? Precious little, to be honest. I'm still in school here, another 6 months and one week until graduation. (Hmm.. Didn't I graduate in New Zealand a year ago? Silly life..) I still have a weakness for things that taste like chocolate, and I'm still trying to read at least 5 books at a time. I still spend amazingly much of my life drinking strange tea and chatting with even stranger people. It still rains. So in general, there's not much different. Maybe that's why I'm blogging again.

Yesterday was the annual Christmas concert at my school. As about NZ$ 1200 were stolen from the school at a break-in last summer, we had to sell tickets to earn some money. Afterwards we felt really bad about that, because the concert was not really good enough to pay for. The school choir sang several songs and various soloists performed. The local newspaper wrote a really bad article on the concert, only focusing on the two students who'd participated in the Norwegian Idol this year. The reporter said they didn't get much attention, only one song each. Well sorry, but this is real life, not showbiz..

The school choir

After the concert a few of us went down to Onkel, the only coffee house/modern cafe/somewhat in place in this tiny town. It was nice and dangerously relaxing as always. Altogether a fairly good day... Except when I returned to my flat quite late and did homework until 1 am.

Updates will come. Hopefully soon. One can always hope..

Svalbard Photos

The local police chief, Per Sefland, with the AFSers Felipe (Brazil), Tomaz (Brazil), Be (Thailand), Chiara (Italy), Carlota (Mexico) and Koen (Belgium). And a polar bear. A dead one, luckily.
Some of us on our way out of Longyearbyen. Most of the town in the background.
A little break between Longyearbyen and Barentsburg.

What a great deal of Svalbard looks like.

Norwegian letterbox in the Russian settlement Barentsburg.
A bunch of scooters and a little bit of sun.

Me and a dog. (I'm the one wearing the funny-looking hat...)

A nice traffic sign and one of the locals passing by.

Svalbard!

Ok, everybody knows I'm crazy, but this time it's serious. Today I'm leaving for Svalbard, one of the most remote parts of Norway. We are about 16 people with connection to 2 AFS chapters, Kristiansund and Molde, who suddenly found a good excuse to go somewhere special. So we chose Svalbard.

Svalbard is Norwegian territory. It's far to the north. Really far to the north.


So who actually lives up there? In the Norwegian town Longyearbyen there are about 1800 people, and in the Russian mining town Barentsburg there are about 800 Russians. There are also the mining town Svea (about 250 ppl commute every week from Longyearbyen) and the two research stations Ny-Ålesund (Norwegian, about 25 ppl) and Hornsund (Polish, about 12 ppl). There are no roads between the towns.

Svalbard is the only part of Norway where there are polar bears. They might look cute on tv, but they eat everything that moves. We have to bring guns (for warning shots) when we go out of the town. And it's really cold up there, at least by my standards. (Paul would laugh at me..) Won't be too cold up there while we're up there, though, just around -5 to -15 degrees centigrade. Ok, I can handle that, it easily gets that cold here in winter. But isn't it supposed to be spring up there too?

..and that's pretty much everything I know, to be honest. So in a few hours I'm on my way to the airport in Kristiansund to fly to Oslo (yup, that's south of here). After waiting for hours and hours in Oslo, we fly northwards to Tromsø, and wait there for a couple of hours until we fly on to Longyearbyen at midnight. We were supposed to fly to Oslo at 6 pm, but I recieved a call about an hour ago from our chapter leader telling me that the flight was cancelled, and we would have to leave more than three hours earlier. A bit complicating, seeing as the plane takes off an hour before I finish school, but that's how it is living in the Hooray! No German class for me today! =)

Ok, should stop now, my science teacher saw me working on the laptop... =) I'll get some photos and exciting stories up here once I get home.

Winter break!!!

..ok, almost winter break. Only.. 40 minutes to go now =)

I'm in music history, last period on a a Friday. My teacher (who by the way is blind) stryggled like crazy to make the computer system work, and has just given up in order to walk downsatirs (this could take a while) to get a class list to take the roll. I wonder how he's going to react when he finds out we're only 13 of about 25 students present. Pretty good for last period on a Friday, to be honest.

Ok, tomorrow is the first day of the holidays. Winter break is one of the holidays that exist simply because someone figured out it would be nice to have holidays in the middle of February. We just have a week off school, that's all. Quite nice, if you ask me.

Now I'm going to try make sense of what the teacher is saying for the remaining.. 25 minutes. Wish me luck =)

... and from German class

This is horrible, I really should stop writing stuff in class and actually doing school work instead. Oh well...

Wednesdays are usually quite depressing, starting with two periods of German. Today I got up at quarter to 6, travelled for over an hour, almost fell asleep in the car (it was too cold!) and finally woke up when having a ginormous cup of tea at school before the bell went, just to find out that the German teacher isn' t here today. This guy from the administration came to take the roll, but I've only been here for a month, so my name wasn't on the list. I could have slept until 8! ....

Two days ago, I was going to call a friend of mine, but the phone wasn't working. We emailed the er.. phone people?, and they might be able to fix it today, but maybe over the weekend. Plus yesterday morning I woke up to my mum standing in the door of my room saying "no point in taking a shower, there's no hot water in the house". So in the middle of the night, the hot water tank had stopped working. My dad managed to fiw the problem, as always, and gave my the full explination of how a hot water tank workes. Kinda cool, actually =)

So yeah, life is normal. It's still winter, although it's getting pretty light outside now, which makes life a lot easier. We still have minus degrees, so the weather is stable and nice, we don't get soaking wet when going outside. Not that I spend that much time outside at the moment, this is my first day at school without crutches after I injured my knee almost 4 weeks ago. (Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid....) Well, at least I get free taxi to school every day (government policy). Next week my part of the country has winter break, one week off school for no reason in particular. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in a bit.

Oh yeah, this is my normal everyday school life:
5.45 Start getting up, having breakfast, having a shower, etc.
6.45 Drive to the ferry with my mum
6.55 Arrive at the ferry, find that the line of cars is short enough for us to get on the ferry
7.25 The ferry departs
7.45 Ferry arrives in town
7.55 Arrive at school, all alone, sit around and wait for others, have a cup of tea
8.30 Bell goes
8.33 Moving to class, a bit late
---school stuff, like sitting around, being bored, having another cup of tea---
at some point, like 3.40 Last bell goes, wait for stupid taxi to arriv(e knee injury=free transport to school)
4.20 Ferry departs
4.40 Ferry arrives on Averøy, my Island, get onto bus
4.55 Home!
approx. 7 Collapsing on the sofa watching tv far into the night...

Can't wait to get a flat in town!!!!! (I've found one, can move in at Easter! Yay!)

Back in Norway

Hello everybody!

3 weeks ago, 48 hours after leaving the beautiful New Zealand behind, I landed safely in Norway. Well, it's kind of cold and dark around here, and everybody's depressed with winter and school work, but it's kind of good to be home to.

Right now, I'm at school, we've got Norwegian, and I actually look as if I'm doing something useful here... =) We all have laptops, and most of the students waste all their time "working" on the internet... They actually let us get away with as good as anything! Have to admit it's bit of a bummer going back to the middle of year 12 after graduating in NZ...

Don't really have too much time right now, ant not too much battery, either. I promise to write some amazing and exciting stories about my life here up north, but right now it's Monday morning, and I'm supposed to be working on some famous Norwegian playwright =)

Lots of hugs for you all!!!