The days grow longer. 

We actually had light until after 5pm today- amazing.  The last few days have been clear skies and sunshine.  A real pleasure.  I will never take the sun for granted again.  Well, I’m sure I will, but, at least I will be slightly more conscientious and thankful moving forward.

After two weeks of gloom and darkness, my friends Bea, Kevin and I decided we were hiking- with the weathers blessing or not.  We couldn’t handle being cooped up any longer.  We decided to hike up Floyen, a popular Bergen mountain and well-maintained path/trail.  It was sprinkling but we all have good gear so we were good to go.  Until (Dad, stop reading here and go to the next paragraph), upon reaching higher altitudes, the trail became completely ice covered.  There is railing so we decided to keep on going up.  We’ve all hiked this trail many times before and knew what to expect.  Still, a dicey decision but… come on, we are young and invincible right?  While we did have some good laughs slip-sliding around, we thankfully didn’t have any falls on the ice (or worse yet, off trail).  I’m so glad I have my Keen hiking boots!

School is picking up.  And, just before class work gets all consuming, I’m heading off to Amsterdam for a long weekend.  My good singer/songwriter music friend Gregory Page has some recent successes with music released in the Netherlands.  So, he and his band are touring for 3 weeks.  I’ve never been to Amsterdam and figured a fun reason to get there.  Sights to see by day and music to enjoy by night- magnifique.

Singing with Gregory Page at Lestats in San Diego on Jan 5, 2011

Momentary Thoughts:

My hallmate Paul has never had a piece of pie, a whole pie, anything pie related.  It’s true they don’t have pies here but I was flabbergasted.  So,  will bake a pie for him at some point this semester.

Two new hallmates- an Italian guy and a Spanish guy.  They are fun and love to cook- did I mention they made me salmon dinner one night in return for some live music?!  Heaven.

There was a Dad grocery shopping with his two teen sons today and it was really sweet- after sports practice or something.  A nice demonstration of the egalitarian society.  Men teaching guys how to grocery shop, what a concept.  

My Mantra- from my hallmate Paul

Off to pack my bags,

lisa