hey hey hey!!! here's an update as promised! well....just to warn you, it's going to be a short one.
i've been having a blast with bex and eric in England. after a couple of sleepless nights we arrived in Nottingham on the 24 & ate PIZZA!! so although i was far from home on christmas eve, i still got a bit of the tradition in there :) right now we're in london, today we walked around, saw a bunch of sites, took a bunch of pictures. the next two days look the about the same. i'm going off to bed though......who knew walking around & taking pictures could be sooooo exhausting!
i love you all!! i'll make sure to post a more descriptive & pictureful post when i'm back in Borgen.

it is quite official now. the lecture phase is done. today was the first day of my christmas holidays & i spent it the way any normal person would spend their first day. slept in, ate chocolate first thing, surfed the net, and then continued on with my day in that sort of manner. it was great. bonus was that it snowed some today! the snow hasn't been staying on the ground....but it's been quite cold the last couple of days, so i'm hoping that it will this time. in other news: it's dark. except for approx. 2hrs of each day where we enter a bit of a twilight zone...the rest of my day is dark. but we try to keep the lights on inside, so that helps :)

here are some pictures:

the faucet in our room drips...like every minute. drip drip drip drip drip. so Bex invented this nifty little device which allows the water to flow down instead of dripping, which then allows us to fall asleep at night.

Thursday night we got spoiled by God. it was 12:30am and Bex and I were about to go to bed when Lenneke came into our rooms & told us that there was some northern lights out. So bex and i grabbed our sweaters & went out into the cold. it was worth it, i'm telling you. i know that i'll never be able to explain in words or even show in pictures how amazing it was. it covered the entire sky & did some wild things! we even had shooting stars. 2hrs later we came back inside, ate some soup, talked a bit about our experiences during the lecture phase & then decided it was best to go to bed. here are some pictures from the northern lights show:
(you can click them to make them bigger)

the girlzHelen bought us a gingerbread house.....on Thursday night we worked together to put it all together

Lenneke wanting to be like our house
There's a christmas tree in our kitchen!
Bex is lovin' washing the pots

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

last night we had our Borgen christmas party. the girls got dolled up, the boys put on their suits & combed their hair and we had a party. Everyone from the base came our. First we ate supper together, then we had a little childrens program, then we took a break for the parents to put all of their kids to bed, & then we resumed our party. it was so relaxing & christmasy. we had a gift exchange, ate great Norwegian dessert, & sang christmas carols. We also had the people living in/around the base pray for us going on outreach. it was great.

and that's it! I hope that you are all enjoying your Christmas. much love :)

it's another late saturday night, and i'm here to update :)
this week was our last week of lectures & tonight i created my journal for the very last time!
***sigh of relief, the heavens sing***
it's a strange feeling to be done this! next week we're going to be busy with outreach preparation, then i have a week to do absolutely nothing (although i'm sure i'll end up busy somehow), and then i'm going to London for a weekish with Bex and Eric, and then......drum roll.....OUTREACH!!

last night the the girls all went over to Ansku's house & had a sleepover. it was so much fun: we watched a movie, ate junk food, talked, laughed, and then slept a bit. this morning we stayed in bed until noon, then got out of bed to make ourselves brunch, ate the brunch, then some of them crawled back into bed, others read, and i web surfed. we did that until 5pm and then we slowly made our way back to the base. :) happy happy joy joy. it was a good day.


here a little story for you. it was thursday evening, it was getting late. but bex and melodie got very excited for some reason. why? well, it could have been because the next day was the last day of the lectures, it could have been because of the lack of sunlight, or it could have been that they are just strange. they didn't know what to do with their new found excitement. it was 11pm, too late to wake the others. so they decided to hop out of their window (in pjs and bare feet) and run around the building to the door. so that's what they did. they escaped from their room out of their window (like real rebels) and then giggled their way around the building. all of the commotion woke up dear lenneke.....so they pulled her in and did a round 2.

THE END

hi everyone...well it's 1:30am on a saturday night and i'm awake waiting for my family to come onto skype so i can chat with them & see them on sherwood's new web cam :) eeeeeeee, i don't mind waiting :) thank you jocelyn (or isaiah and luke) for buying it for sherwood.....it's really the greatest gift ever! this afternoon i got to see sherwood, joc, isaiah & luke and afterwards i could not stop BEAMING! hehe, it really made my day :)

here are some pictures from this last week:

last week-end we got invited to hang out at a house where some of the staff from our base live....bex and i got very excited, and a bit nervous as you can see

bex and i acting strange & ansku laughing at us :)

wednesday night helen, lenneke, and cherob joined bex and myself in our room for a little chocolate cake/candle/girl time

helen and i mutilated our candles

anneke and me chillaxing after classes on friday

bex and her dream ring

last night i was working on my journal....it got a little late.......

and i was so happy after all of the work i had put into it...

tonight we had a pizza party, we all went into the kitchen together and made our own pizza and then watched the movie 'hitch' together....when the movie was over we came back into the kitchen to find the dishwasher was pouring water out of the bottom!! as you can see Bex was being a great help trying to find and fix the problem :)