Today is the day, 31th of December 2010, New Year’s Eve. It’s weird how fast 2010 has passed. It feels like 1st of January was a week ago. Or maybe two, but not more.

I can’t describe how short the years that have passed are, and how long the years to come feels. One year has 52 weeks, each week has 7 days, each day has 24 hours, each hour has 60 minutes and each minute has 60 seconds. To mention it; life is not like a bad animation, each second is important. Whether you believe it or not. To understand it, just study a timeline of a movie while watching it. Notice what the characters are doing.

Besides the fact that 2010 has been short, I would like to tell you a few things that I have done this year:

• I have, for the first time in my life, been in Hungary. I visited Budapest, a really beautiful city.
• I finished middle school and started on high school where I met some incredible nice and sweet people. The funny thing is the fact that choosing a school to start on was hard, as I didn’t know anything about Oslo’s high schools until January 2010.
• I have been to Greece, for the first time in 12 years. I can’t describe how much I love Greece! The food, the people, the architecture, the nature -just everything.
• I finally have understood the “proper” definition of “syden” (Norwegian word used for a certain type of holiday areas): It’s the tourist areas around the Mediterranean
  Sea, not the whole country as someone might think. It’s a combination of the place and what I like referring to as the charter tourist “mood”. These areas aren’t quiet, and they aren’t meant to be either. Personally, I find those areas both nice and scary at the same time. I don’t know why.
• I have read two novels in Swedish, which makes it the 3rd language I have read a novel in. However, I can’t write in Swedish, but I might try learn it soon (I haven’t had any education in Swedish).
• This is cool: I have been outside every day, no matter what the temperature was. And yes, it has been around -20 degrees Celsius because of some wind from Siberia.
• And finally, my room got a makeover. It needed it and I needed a new closet (the last one was something that we got with the house when we moved in (about 8-9 years ago) and was made for, in my opinion, 10-year-olds. Luckily, the walls aren’t in a blueish colour, as some of them were before (first, my room had a greyish blue colour, then a creamy white plus one wall in turquoise and one in blue).. Now, they are all white and clean-looking.

Well, this picture does not include any fireworks, it’s a light show in water.

Well, the clock has passed 6:00pm, what I like to call Children’s New Year’s Eve because parents tend use their fireworks around that time. I guess the next time is around 8:00, before the “big show” at 0:00am, or the first ten minutes of 2011.

The whole thing about the New Year’s Eve and so on is quite interesting. Another year of the Gregorian calendar has passed, and the planet Earth has just completed another trip around the Sun (wait, didn’t that happen on my birthday too, and on yours? It takes one year for the Earth to travel around the Sun one time).

I’ll leave the rest to you.

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had an amazing day yesterday. The food was good, and the gifts I got were lovely. It’s weird to think about the fact that this was the first “proper” Christmas celebration we have had in two years. Last year, I was in Tunisia, and spent most of the day learning about Tunisia’s history on a guided tour, but I did forget almost everything the same day. Anyway, I celebrated this Christmas with my family (of course) and my grandma.

For dinner, I ate apples, potatoes, sausages and that Finnish rice pudding-and-carrot-thing. I didn’t ate any rib meat, even though we had two types of it. We had homemade flan with cream for dessert.

When we were done with the dinner and the dessert, it was time to open our presents.  I got some money, two books, a DVD, an alarm clock radio, a picture of my grandma, my sister, my brother, my cousins and I, a chocolate box and a few other things. The

Our Christmas tree with all the gifts. Yes, the tree is 100% real!

So, tomorrow is the big day. It’s finally Christmas and I can’t wait for the gifts. They are all under the Christmas tree, and I want to open them now!

It’s really weird how fast 2010 has passed. I didn’t except it to go so fast, but as the weeks have just flown away, it is just like this. Also, they started selling Christmas soda in October, so I have been in my so-called “Christmas mood” for the last two months.

Today, I saw my dad making the Finnish Christmas food. I honestly prefer the Finnish (my dad is Finnish, so we have both Norwegian and Finnish dishes for Christmas) dishes more than the Norwegian ones. The ham always tastes delicious! And I love the dish that is a mix between carrot and rice pudding (Yes, I know it sounds odd).

Also, the fact that we didn’t celebrated Christmas last year, is quite weird. Last year, we visited Tunisia, and on the day, we visited Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. For dinner, we ate pizza on a local restaurant.

This year, we will celebrate Christmas with my grandma, which I’m looking forward to.