Visitors and Nutshells

It's 75 degrees with a breeze on my 4th floor story balcony, which is where I now sit in disbelief at how quickly the last month has flown past. The landscape has utterly transformed before my eyes, one day a chilly urban streetscape covered in gravel and lacking any color, to todays technicolor portrait of green trees, fresh flowers, and Disneyland spotlessness. And it isn't just the physical that has transformed. Each day I find myself relaxing into this not so new life. As if I haven't always lived in a spacious European apartment with the sounds of the seagulls and ocean liners greeting me from the harbor every time I open my door.

So besides watching the trees bloom and getting my feet under me, the last few weeks were especially busy and celebratory, with holidays and visitors a plenty. My mom, step-dad, aunt, uncle, cousin, and her two kids all arrived in Oslo for whirlwind family reunion. It was my first major hosting experience, but it was great fun to be able to share my new home and city with my family. It was also a great chance for me to be a tourist in my own city, with my first visits to the Folk Museum, Viking Ship Museum, Polar Ship Fram, and a few others.

After my uncle, aunt, and cousins went back home, my mom and step-dad stayed around for another week to get the full Norway experience. We started off with the Norway in a Nutshell tour. I had been told by many folks that doing the Nutshell tour, while a typical tourist activity, is definitely worth doing early in my time here in Norway. I completely agree and am so glad I got see the mountains, fjords, and Bergen all in just a couple of days. Coming back to Oslo, I had a few days of work while the folks did some more relaxed touring, with a random Thursday holiday (Ascension Day) allowing for a quick trip down to Hadeland Glassverk.

After a sad goodbye, I had less than a week to prepare for Norway's biggest day of celebration, Syttende Mai (17th of May, or Constitution Day). I'll post on that separately, but enjoy some touring pictures below.

Stavkirke at Oslo Folk Museum

Viking Ship Museum

Mountain lake, somewhere in between Oslo and Norway

More beautiful lake scenery

Flåmsbana - the only way from the top of the mountain to the fjord

Flåmsbana makes it's way down the mountain

Small valley village near Flåm

Looking back up the fjord

Small village on the shores of the Nærøyfjord

Brygge area in Bergen

Bergen from the Fløybanen

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Scooter Weather

I'm now entering my third spring season in D.C. and I still haven't gotten used to the amazingness that is a real change in the seasons. Seattle is a beautiful place to live, and the summers there are indeed tough to beat, but the transition from one season to the next is gradual and anticlimactic. Kinda rainy to more rainy to really rainy back to not so rainy. And the cycle begins again. And while we have true seasons where I grew up, on the dry side of the mountains in the Pacific Northwest, there are very few deciduous trees to burst back to life and the arid climate tempers down some of the greenness. But here in the swampy mid-Atlantic, spring seems to happy so suddenly. One day everything is dead and brown, and seriously, a week or two of sunny days and suddenly there is grass, and flowers, and leaves, and blossoms. Everywhere!

Here you can see the progression from brown trees, to slightly green grass, to full blown blossoms. I've been able to get out on the bike a few times, as well as out on Bella, my trusty Vespa. I can't believe I've been a scooter owner for over two years, but she now has over 700 miles and a freshly renewed DC registration. I'm hoping that wherever the foreign service decides to send me, I'll be able to take Bella with me, though the thought of scooting through a chaotic African market or a packed Asian city makes me more than a bit nervous. I don't think I have those skills, (a topic discussed humorously in this article by former FSO Dave Seminara titled "10 tips to avoid breaking your neck or your budget on a moped"). So in the mean time I'll just enjoy the spring weather here in DC and get as many scooting/biking days in while I can.

photo a day

While reading this blog I came across a simple but brilliant idea being facilitated by this blog. Take a photo each day using simple themes as inspiration, and then post the photos on your own website, twitter, pinterest, etc. To fill up some space and give me something to think about besides my impending future, I thought I'd give it try, starting today.

And get the creative juices flowing, I used a few of my past photos for the first four days in March. 

                                            1. Up                                                                               2. Fruit

                                          4. Bedside                                                            3. My Neighborhood 

The themes for the rest of the Month are: