South Africa!

January 16th, 2010

It’s all set now, I’m going to South Africa during Easter! I am so excited!!!

I have my tickets in my email inbox, and am ready to go at any time! I leave from Sola at 6:45 in the morning on Sunday 28th of March and arrive in South Africa 15h later. Geez, that’s a long time! We’ll go via Amsterdam, and the plane from there to Johannesburg will take 11h! Fortunately the plane looks quite comfortable so I think I will manage.

We went to a vaccination office yesterday, and seems I only have to be vaccinated against hepatitis A/B, as I have the rest already So that was one shot yesterday, and another one in a month.

I have never in my life been outside Europe before, so this is really exciting for me. I’ve always loved travelling and my big dream has been to go to Africa or Asia and now it’s finally coming true!

So why South Africa? My aunt, uncle and cousin live there now, and after a lot of thinking we finally decided to visit them! It’s going to be really nice as we in general don’t see them too often. I haven’t seen uncle Didier in.. I don’t know how long really.. Can’t remember last time I met him! My cousin Natalie was, as I have mentioned earlier, here for Christmas, which was really fun too

We don’t really know much of what we’re going to do there just yet. At least we’re staying for two weeks, and for 3-4 days of that time we will go on a safari. I’m gonna see lions.. LIONS! :D:D:D I’ll probably see most of the safari through the lens of my camera, but I’ll try not to be too crazy.

Anyway, hope you’re all well!

Cheers,

Juno

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I love my Casp <3

January 16th, 2010

I got a present from my boyfriend today, for no reason at all. He’s so cute <3 The gift was extremely cute too:

Scrat and his girl from the movie Ice Age 3D: Dawn of the Dinosaurs!

Here’s how the lovely couple met:

Caspar and I went to see the Ice Age 3D in the movies in Zürich this summer and I absolutely loved the movie. I thought it would be terrible, as it is the third movie of the series, but the 3D did it’s work and had Scrat, Sid, Manny and all the others surprise me again!

I’ve also gotten a huuuuuuuuuge Sid toy pet, but it’s currently still in Zürich with Caspar =)

Thank you so much honey! Love you <3

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Movie Highlights of 2009

January 8th, 2010

I thought I should list some movies that have inspired, entertained, and impressed me this decade, so here you go (in no particular order):

The Dark Knight

IMDb rating: 8.9/10

Year: 2009

Genre: Action thriller

Actors: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman (more)

Story Outline: Batman (Bale) is back to fight crime, this time it is the Joker that makes hell for both him, Gordon (Oldman), and Harvey Dent (Eckhart). As the Joker manages to increase his allies by contacting the mafia, things just seems to get worse and worse, and as the move rolls on, the Joker turns everyone up against each other.

Personal Comment: The movie has a great story, a lot of action and include some of the best pictures of 2009. It is an honest movie that doesn’t glorify Batman in anyway, his limits and weaknesses being clearly displayed through the movie. Many scenes, including the entrance scene, is shot in IMAX, which is one of the highest quality cameras you can get. It is the first time this camera has been used for action pictures, as it has such a short focal point, thus the movie is very impressively captured.

WALL·E

IMDb rating: 8.6/10

Genre: Animation

Year: 2008

Voices: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy (more)

Story Outline: The Earth is covered in dirt and the humans have escaped the planet to be able to survive, leaving a series of robots called WALL-Es behind to take care of all the garbage, hoping that one day they may return back. Hundreds of years have passed, and the Earth still doesn’t seem like a safe place. There is only one WALL-E left working. One day another robot arrives on Earth, to change the history of both humans, the Earth and WALL-E.

Personal Comment: The movie is incredibly cute, and it is amazing how much feeling they have managed to put into the robots. The pictures are great and even though it might seem like a children’s movie, it brings up a very important political issue: What to do with all the waste we produce? First of all a great family movie, but everyone should see it!

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain

IMDb rating: 8.6/10

Genre: Drama (?)

Year: 2001

Actors: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Lorella Cravotta, Serge Merlin, Jamel Debbouze, Clotilde Mollet (more)

Story Outline: Amelie is a quite special girl living in Paris. She grew up under a strict care from her parents, because her father thought she had a heart disease, and when she finally moved out, she had no friends or anything, but seemed to be used to it and didn’t care much until she met the Glassman, who had stayed inside his apartment alone for so long he could barely touch anything without breaking a bone. A mystical man always crouching by the photo booths collecting the paper pieces from underneath one day lost his book where he had glued together ripped pictures of people. Amelie tries to hunt him down to get him back his book, coming up with a billion ways to tease the ripped-photo-collecting man she somehow has fallen in love with.

Personal Comment: The movie is more of a cultural movie, all in French with a background narrator commenting during the movie. The colours are mostly green/red and happy piano music is played in the background. The movie is simply beautiful, a realy feel-good movie. I belie it’s not something for everyone, but I think most people who can take listening to French should watch it!

Up

IMDb rating: 8.4/10

Genre: 3D Animation

Year: 2009

Voices: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagain, Bob Peterson (more)

Story Outline: Carl Fredricksen is now an old widower who never managed to fulfill the dreams of his life. As the government decides that he is too old to take care of himself anymore, they want to take him away from his home and place him in a home for elders. Carl still has one more thing to do before he gives in though, and makes a giant bouquet of balloons that he places on his roof to fly away and go to Africa to fulfill his dreams. Only when it is too late does he discover that the annoying neighbour boy scout was on his balcony when he left and that he will be stuck with him for the whole journey.

Personal Comment: The funniness of this movie simply amuses me. It is a very easy-to-watch movie, with no deep meaning to care about, as far as I see. Just watch and enjoy! And oh, 3D is awesome!

Sin City

IMDb rating: 8.4/10

Genre: Action/Comic

Year: 2005

Actors: Jessica Alba, Devon Aoki, Alexis Bledel, Powers Boothe, Cara D. Briggs, Jude Ciccolella, Jeffrey J. Dashnaw (more)

Story Outline: All I will tell you is this: The violent stories of three different people in Basin City.

Personal Comment: This is a really strange movie full of sexy women and macho guys! The lighting and colouring of this movie is quite special and makes it very comic-like. I guess the movie is quite boy-ish, and not all girls would like it, but I do simply because it is so artistic!

District 9

IMDb rating: 8.3/10

Genre: Science fiction

Year: 2009

Actors: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Nathalie Boltt, Sylvaine Strike, Elizabeth Mkandawie, John Summer, William Allen Young (more)

Story Outline: A ship full of aliens stops above Johannesburg, South Africa, and doesn’t seem like it is planning to leave. The humans detect that something has fallen out of the ship and understand that maybe they are not able to leave. They break into the ship and get the aliens down to the earth, giving them a ghetto-like area to live in.

Personal Comment: From a political view, the movie starts by telling us a story close to the story of the the ghettos, this time it is the Africans that don’t want to welcome anything new to the neighbourhood, thus the tagline “You are not welcome here”. We are presented to a mixture of love, drama and action, through one of the best-looking movies of the decade. The aliens are very realistic and seem to be inspired by insects. This movie should be watched in 1080p (blu-ray) to get the full effect of the great images.

Other movies you should watch:

Click the images to see more info on IMDb.

Which movies did you enjoy from the last decade?

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Christmas

December 29th, 2009

Christmas has pretty much passed now and I’m finally writing a new blog entry. I haven’t updated since the beginning of December. I’m just getting worse and worse at updating it seems ^^

My cousin, Nathalie, was here this month to experience a Norwegian Christmas. It was really nice having her here We did some fun stuff together, played games, made a ginger bread house, went shopping and made the worlds coolest snowlady, called Iselilja Yeah, we actually got a white Christmas this year. I’ve never had such perfect Christmas weather in Christmas before!

We made ginger bread biscuits before she came though, and that was also a lot of fun. I’ll just upload some pics instead of writing too much, so here you go:

Icicles hanging from our roof:

Iselilja, the snowlady

Some Christmas tree decorations

A not too good pictures of the ginger bread house

Ginger bread baking! This year a new animal is introduced: The elephant

My school also had a Christmas prom on December 21, so here’s a picture of me and three friends from school (Left->right: Hanne, Oda, Me, Isabel, picture taken by Tove)

So now I’m just looking forward to New Year’s Eve, because that’s when my boyfriend, Caspar comes to visit me. He’ll stay for a few days so most likely no blogging then

I’ll make it one of my New Year resolutions to blog more frequently and I really hope I haven’t lost all my readers because of my absence! Merry Christmas to you all, and the best in the New Year!

Posted in Christmas :D, Cooking, Photography, Random | No Comments »

December <3

December 8th, 2009

Ok so it’s December and Advent! You gotta love it Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that I have less to do just yet, so I’m still too busy to update my blog frequently. I hope to get some more time to get back into the blogging business during the Holidays though!

We’ve had some advent decorations up for more than a week now, and it’s really nice. I got this really cute Advent calendar of my mother this year! It has some really nice quality chocolate as well, with marzipan and stuff. Nothing for children, really, but just the kind of stuff I like ^^ Today I got a dark chocolate one with nougat and marzipan inside and a almond on the top Tasted great. Here’s a snapshot of the calendar:

My cousin, Nathalie, is coming to stay with us for Christmas btw! It’s gonna be really nice We haven’t seen her for a year now, and I don’t think she remembers a single Norwegian Christmas, so it will be fun to have her join all our yearly traditions!

But I really need some sleep now. I need A LOT of sleep these days. No clue why. Probably just the winter season sneaking up on me and making me so tired all the time.

I’ll tell you about all my Christmas traditions some other day! In the meantime, why don’t you tell me about yours?

- Juno

(Mom took this pic last year I had long hair back then O_o)

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Tina

November 25th, 2009

My boyfriend had a picture of Tina. Again he saves my day.

I myself haven’t taken a picture of her since she was three years old. I’m so happy to have this little picture to remember her by now. I have one of her and Lisa in my wallet as well, I think it’s from when they were about one year old.

Anwyay, here’s the picture my boyfriend took

You’ll always be in my heart, Tina (:

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R.I.P. Tina

November 24th, 2009

Her eyes were closed, the sawdust around her was kicked in all directions, away from her. She looked cold and stiff. She was dead, and there’s nothing I could’ve done about it. Hopefully she died of age. She’s been acting strange for quite a while now. I’ve thought she was dead a billion times, but today at school, I knew it. As soon as I got out of school, a bit early actually, I went straight home and to my guinea-pig’s cage. My grandmother had put some salad next to her house, but it was untouched. I knew it then, and as I walked closer I could see her tiny leg sticking out of the cage, all stiff and strange. I hear my grandmother from upstairs and I shouted to her: “Tina’s dead!”

I haven’t cried yet. Maybe I won’t, but I’m close to it all the time. Tina has been with me for almost eight years now. She lived for 7 years 9 months and 17 days. Even though I wasn’t always so good at showing it, I loved her. I can’t say I’ve always taken good care of her, cuddled with her as much as I should, etc, but she lived a long and hopefully happy life anyway. Eight years. When I first got guinea-pigs, I was told they would live for 4-6 years. Later I’ve read that the average age is 6-7 years, but that still makes her older than average.

She had a friend once, who acted more like a mother to her. Lisa was half a year older than her. Tina followed her every step, when I let them down on the floor, Lisa walked first with Tina at her tail. It was really cute, and they made those funny sounds only guinea-pigs can make. They always made me smile.

Lisa died when she was four years. After that Tina seemed more or less afraid to walk around by herself, so I stopped letting her out on the floor. We took her to the vet in case Lisa had been sick with something, but they told me she was as fit as she could be. “Her weight is same as of an average male’s” they said, and that was a good thing, I was told.

Tina got to go outside on almost every nice summer day to eat grass and enjoy the sun with us. She’s been here for as long as I can remember.

I hope she rests in peace in guinea pig land. Maybe she meets Lisa again and can finally jump around with her on some beauti(taste)ful" dandelion fields.

- Juno

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Stopping by to say Hi :)

November 11th, 2009

So here’s a small entry just to tell people I’m alive.

I’ve been quite busy the last weeks, and when I’ve had time to write here, I’ve honestly felt far too lazy.

It’s November, the busiest month of the year, in Amnesty, in writing (NaNoWriMo, which I gave up after three days), and somehow school ends up feeling busy as well thanks to all the other things. It’s fine though, I like being busy.

So since the last time I’ve been to Switzerland and Oslo, I’ve had a lot of homework and campaigned for the people and environment of the Niger Delta.

I’m planning maybe to start a vlog instead of continuing the blog, just to try out something new. I’ll see if I ever get around with it. It would be a nice challenge though!

Well, I’ll try to tell you a bit of what’s up soon enough Please be patient and stop by now and then to see if there’s anything new, or you can follow my RSS.

Some pictures from the past month:

Picture from a shopping centre in Oslo

Shell campaign

Exhibition about the Niger Delta at Oljemuseet, Stavanger

Posted in Amnesty International, Photography, Random | No Comments »

Holidays :D

October 2nd, 2009

Today was the last day of school before the one week long fall break, so I finally have some time to write in my blog again!

The previous weeks have been quite busy, but ok anyway. School has taken up most of my time and Amnesty the rest. I really enjoy it though. I have a lot to do and time just runs past. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Switzerland to visit my boyfriend! It’s been a few months now, and I really miss him. Gonna be nice to see both him and his family again!

When it comes to more creative projects, I haven’t had much time lately. I’ve started crocheting again for CAS and I’ll hopefully do some photography again soon as well. We made a commercial video in English class, but I haven’t asked the others if I could upload it, so I won’t.

Well this is just a short entry because I don’t know what to write about ^^ Hope you all are well, and have a great fall break, those of you who do!

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A fun challenge ^^

September 15th, 2009

Yay, something that makes me write a blog entry xD

Marie challenged me to do this picture blog thingy..:

1. Go to your Pictures folder

2. Choose the 6th folder

3. Find the 6th picture

4. Paste the picture into your blog and write a bit about it

5. Invite 6 new people

Soooo… Let’s go to the Pictures folder then

So then we hit something kind of boring: Pictures –> Nature

Which means there are only edited pics ^^ Anyway, here it is:

I have no clue why I even have this picture.. I really liked it somehow, because it was so creepy with the chain and the movement, etc. Anyway, this is my mother’s old bike. It hangs on the wall in our garage, because she never uses it. Today she actually got a new bike, so let’s hope she uses this one a bit more!

Now; people to challenge.. Almost all the bloggers I follow have already done this! Therefore I’ll challenge YOU instead ^^ Yes, you, now get your ass on the task and tell me if you’ve done it, because it’s always fun to see what picture people end up with!

Apart from that, school is quite busy. We sold cakes at school this evening at a parents meeting, and earned 1000kr 500 will go to “Pant en flaske for Nairobi” and 500 to our school group of Amnesty International. Amnesty is going to sell more cakes on Thursday next week, and I really hope that goes just as well!

Oh, and of course I’ve been photographing!

These pictures are from a Norwegian project where we were going to take pictures of ourselves in front of the statue of an author and then tell about the author in class. The top one is some friends by the statue of Aleksander Kielland, and the bottom one is of me next to “Johanna”, a character from Ajax’s stories!

A lot of other things have happened as well, but I don’t have the time to write about it :/ Please forgive me x)

I’m enjoying life these days. It’s busy, but really fun as well. Sorry for not blogging too much, but hopefully I’ll get better again soon

Best wishes to you all!

- Juno

Posted in Amnesty International, Human Rights, Photography, School | No Comments »

South Africa!

I love my Casp <3

Movie Highlights of 2009

The Dark Knight

WALL·E

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain

Up

Sin City

District 9

Other movies you should watch:

Christmas

December <3

Tina

R.I.P. Tina

Stopping by to say Hi :)

Holidays :D

A fun challenge ^^

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