Yannani

Some lovely walks with a small furry friend.

Yesterday we got a little visitor. My mother had made plans to meet up with her friends that she grew up with and one of them owns a dog. The person did not want to bring the dog with here because of several reason. So began our day of dog sitting..

The day started at around noon. My mother’s friend came over and dropped off the dog while waiting for my mother to be done at the dentist. After they headed off we had to wait until my dad was done with his appointment at the dentist, which wasn’t done before 2:30 pm. We were planning on heading to some kind of museum, but because it took longer than expected we decided to just walk along the river.

Here in Oslo we have a river called “Akerselva” which I’m sure I have talked about multiple times on this blog. Long story short; There is a river that travels throughout the city. In the olden days it was used to separate the east side to the west, but now it’s just used as a nice walking place for a lot of people.

We drove down to the shopping centre. Usually we would take the tram, but due to my fathers condition which requires us to bring a walker plus we had the dog. We decided to take the care down. The walk was really nice. We did get a little bit of rain towards the end, but besides that it was alright weather throughout the walk. The entire thing took around 1h. After that we just took a taxi back to the centre and then drove back home. We didn’t do much for the rest of the day besides heading over a close by nursing home because my sister had forgotten her dinner. The people there get to meet the dog, which I’m sure they found really nice.

Rest of the night was spent eating more kebab and watching tv. We decided that the dog would sleep with me since my sisters room is quite messy atm. That was yesterday.

Today we also were in charge of taking care of the dog, so we decided to go to the Botanical gardens in the city. We were planning to visit an art museum, but that was before we knew that we had to watch the dog. The weather was still gloomy so we weren’t out super late, but it’s always nice revisiting places that I used to go to as a child.

The rest of the day we just waited until the owner came back together with my mother to pick up the dog. We all had pizza together for dinner and then just spent our night as usual. Tomorrow is the big day of the baptism so that’s going to be fun. Meeting the rest of the family and my cousin’s child as well.

A day filled with different art.

Yesterday was a bit more active day. First we had to wait until my mother was done at the dentist and then we all headed down town a one the most famous parks that I have been in several times to eat lunch.

The day started around 11pm after my mother was done with her appointment. She came home to collect me and my dad and then we all headed out. We drove down to “Vigelandsparken” which is a park filled with sculptures from an architect called “Henrik Vigeland”. We didn’t do much else than having lunch since my mother had to go back for a second appointment at 1:30. I had a lamb sausage served with potato mash and two kinds of salads. My parents had a toast with mushroom and pesto. My dad wasn’t able to finish his dish so I had one of his toasts.

After my mum left my dad and I headed out of the city to a place called “Henie Onstad Art centre” which is basically a place that has multiple different art exhibitions. Today they had an Japanese exhibition, one called “Fifty Shades of black” and a couple of others which I don’t remember. We were there for around 1h and looked at multiple ones before eventually heading home.

While waiting for dinner to be ready I just hung out with my friends and did some games. It also randomly started to hail for like 30 min, which was quite interesting. Today’s dinner was a salad with scampi.

The rest of the evening was just spent playing more with friends. We played tft until like 4 am xD.

Appointment & the best kebab in Oslo.

Today was a not a really eventful day. I had an appointment with a clinic today to swap out my birth control implant.

This day started quite chill. I just woke up and got myself ready to head down to town for my appointment at the clinic. As someone who is in a long term relationship using birth control is a no brainer. I figured out quite early that the pills wasn’t really the best solution for me, because I would have to keep track of taking them regularly. I therefore decided to go with something more effective and barely requires any hassle. In Norwegian we call it “P-stav”, but it’s generally know as an implant.

I’ll sum it up quickly for those who doesn’t know what it is and might be interested. So you get a prescription for something called “Nexplanon”

Nexplanon is a form of contraception, or birth control. It is a small, plastic rod about the size of a matchstick that is inserted under the skin of your upper arm. The implant releases a hormone called progestin, which prevents ovulation, or the release of an egg from your ovaries. It also thickens the mucus in your vagina to prevent sperm from entering your uterus.

This is something I have been using ever since I was around 19 years old. It’s really easy and the only thing you need to is just to swap it out every 3 years. On a side note, as any other birth control product this does make your cycle unregulated.

Anyway, I head down to town since my appointment wad at 1 pm. I was a bit delayed since they had changed location since last time so it took me a bit to find it again. I went in sat down and just waiting for my turn. Then when I got called we just walked into a room and started the procedure. The whole thing even went so fast that I had to sit in the waiting room 10 min after to make sure I didn’t have any bad reactions to the anaesthesia.

After my appointment I head to get some late lunch. When itcomes to kebab in Norway there is only one place I go to called “Bislett Kebab House” . If any of you guys are from Norway and enoy kebab, I’m sure you know which one I’m talking about. Their kebabs taste really great and the you get so much for your money. If you go with the meal of the day you’ll get a 0.5l soda and one kebab for 99kr or € 9. The actual kebab you get varies depending what day it is, but the deal is really decent especially after you see the potion. Today’s deal was a Dönerkebab and I just went with a cola. The food ofc didn’t disappointment and taste just as delicious as always. If any of you guys ever go to Oslo and want a tasty kebab, you should try this place out. It’s in my opinion the best place in Oslo.

Rest of the afternoon was quite chill. My parents had to take care of some things so no a lot happen. The only thing left for for the day was dinner and some TV time. My dad made salmon with some mushroom maceronies and some vegetables. After that we watch some TV before getting ready for bed.

My scariest travel experience.

I am currently in Norway, seeing my family. I arrived yesterday night after a bit anxious travel experience, which I will tell you guys all about.

So the day started as any other day. Wake up, eat breakfast and then start packing and tidying the apartment before I had to leave. I decided to take the tram this time, which would bring me straight to the central station. I took one of them electrical scooters to the tram station. When I arrived I saw a huge amount of people already waiting since it was in the middle of rush hour. The tram arrived and I barely made it on since it was so full. I even missed my original train because the tram had to spend almost 3 min on each station to let people on and off.

Fast forward to the airport. Thankfully the plain had been delayed by 20 min so I got time to make it through the security and get something to eat. Then began the boarding process and this is where the true story begins.

My seat was 25A which meant that I was sitting next to the window, which I was really happy with. There was one guy sitting in the seat next to the aisle, but he moved after we had taken off to sit with his friends. I was all alone on that row until a guy came along and sat down. He briefly asked me if it was okay for him to sit there and I just nodded “yes”. Then halfway through the flight I took out my earbuds for a moment and that’s when he suddenly started a conversation with me.

He first asked where I was from and then after I said I was from Norway he started continued and asked if I was born an raised there. At this point I was already starting to feel really anxious. I am very much an introvert and also have social anxiety. I also tend to overthink a lot which made me start to worry if this guys was checking me out for something scary. I started to panic and just said that I was born and raised in Norway, which isn’t really true. I was adopted from China at a really young age, but in that moment I just wanted to be done with the conversation. Then the guy proceeds to ask me about my parents. He asked if they were from Norway too and I again just said “yes” followed up with a “why” since I was really starting to wonder what that had to do with anything. He look at me with disbelief and mumbled something “you look different” which is fair since I did technically lie to him about my origin. At that time I just turned my head and quickly put in my earbuds again.

For the remainder of the trip was feeling quite on edge. Multiple questions were rushing through my head such as “maybe he choose me because he is into Asian girls” “is he going to follow me as soon as I get of the plane?” “is this where I get kidnapped?”. As I stated earlier I overthink ALOT. I even started to feel a bit nauseous from the whole situation. Even though the chance of him being a bad guy was 0.0000000001 %, in my head the number doesn’t matter. I end up mostly over focusing about the fact that there is still a chance. Thankfully I later discovered that he was traveling with his wife and kids, which made me feel a bit at ease and realised that he potentially only talked to me because the kids were busy and he was probably just board.

When the plane landed I still waited until he had gotten off the plane before I walked off. The rest of the trip was alright. I thankfully didn’t have any more strangers talking to me. Regardless I will still say that this is the scariest I have been when it comes to traveling alone. It is one of the things I am must afraid when it comes to traveling alone.

I arrived safely at my family’s home at around 11:30 pm. Had a small chat and headed straight to bed.

Today was quite a chill day. Woke up, made breakfast and then headed out for a small walk around a really nice water. It’s a place where I have been multiple times back when I was living in Norway. I have even been there with my school. The weather was nice, a bit chilli, but I like that.

After that my mother and I headed to the pharmacy to get some items and then it was off to the hair dressers and get my hair cut. I showed the lady my reference photo and she began cutting. The end result was really amazing and I have decided that this will my go to hairstyle from now on. I showed the result to my friend and she loved it as well.

The rest of the evening is just spent, eating dinner and watching some tv with my parents, then have my daily talk with my boyfriend and then off to bed. Tomorrow is also going to be a bit of a busy day with different appointments.

Hope you all are having a nice summer so far and I’ll update you again tomorrow ^^

A nice end to a wonderful week.

Yesterday was the day my parents headed home. We didn’t do anything besides trying to get to the airport as soon as possible, but something interesting happened.

So the day started very abruptly with me getting a call from my mother telling me that I had to try to get to their hotel withing 45 min. So I literally jumped out of the bed, got dressed and ran out the door. Thankfully there wasn’t any trouble with traffic so I made it bang on 12:30. The first thing we did was ordering a taxi to the central station where we were going to take the train to the airport.

When the taxi came we loaded all the baggage and sat us in. We started talking Norwegian and suddenly the driver was like “You guys from Norway?” and my mother responded with “Yes, how did you know”. It turned out that the driver had family living in Oslo and therefore could understand and speak a little bit of Norwegian and I just thought to myself, what are the chances for that to happen. So we had a really nice conversation with the driver in Norwegian, which I wasn’t expecting.

After we got the the train station we just bought our tickets and headed down to the platform. Since our train was delayed by 10 min we had enough time to just walk at our own pace. Not a lot happened the rest of the day. It was mostly just walking and waiting. We did have a lovely last lunch together at the airport where I went with a dish called “Vol-au-vent” which was quite tasty. Then it was time to say hug my parents goodbye. I asked them to send me a message when they had arrived at home and then headed home. I just made it on time to start my stream at 6pm.

I was planning on just doing my standard 6h, but when it was midnight I thought I was so close to finish my Elden Ring run by defeating the final boss, but little did I know that it would take 2.5h alone to just defeat one guy. After my stream I just chilled on the sofa before heading to bed.

But it was really nice to spend this time with my parents, as I mentioned earlier, it was the first time my parents visited me since I moved out. Ever since my dad was diagnosed with ” pulmonary fibrosis” traveling was a no go up until last year, so it was really great to be able to show them around and have them see for themself how and where I live. It was on the list of things I would love for my parents to take part in together with my wedding and the potential birth of their first grand child. I will be visiting them this summer because my cousin is going to baptise her child on the 9th of June which I am looking forward to, but that was it for this week.

I hope you guys enjoy the posts and everything and I’ll see you next time ^^

Tourist train and 2 lovely dinners.

Yesterday I met my parents in the city together with my boyfriend. The plan of the day was a simple, yet nice one. We would start our day with taking a small tourist buss around the city and then later in the evening they would come over to my apartment for the first time since I moved.

The day started really chill and relaxing. We planned meeting up at 2 pm at Grote Markt in town. When we met up with them they were in the middle of buying tickets to a small tourist bus which would take us around town with an audio guide. We drove along the cannal, through the mini china town, past the lovely central station and through the diamond streets. Almost every place had a small explanation or story attached to it and even I learned a thing or two about the city. It was a really lovely and sunny day too which was a nice change from Tuesday’s weather.

After the mini bus tour we headed into the Cathedral so just see the enterior and and such. It was really huge inside and had lots of lovely paintings and artifacts. Everything we did took about 2 hours.

Then my boyfriend and I headed to the store on our way home to just buy some food for dinner. We had invited my parents over for raclette, so we bought different meats and veggies they could choose from. They arrived at around 8:30, because they had some trouble with the taxi’s.

The evening starter with a very small tour of the apartment, just showing them each room. Then we sat down for some cheese and cracker for starters while we just talked until we eventually moved over to the dinner table where we had set up the raclette maker. As for food we had some sausages, burgers, chicken, mushroom, aubergine, potato’s, beef skewers, a salad, cheese and some bacon. We defiantly did not eat all of it, but we did to my surprise finish the entire aubergine. It was apparently the star of the dinner. The dinner lasted until almost 11:30 pm. Then it was ordering a taxi for my parents and that was the day.

Really nice and relaxing and it was very nice to be able to show my parents where I live. It has always been on the list of things I want my parents to take part of. Other things on that list are wedding and birth of their first grandchild, but that is further down the line. I just hope my dad is strong enough to experience all those things. It does sometimes worries me that he won’t due to his condition, but it was nice crossing one thing off the list.

Fast forward to today. We were planning on going to the botanical gardens, but my dad did not have a really good night, so he was sleeping for the majority during the day. So today I just went a bit of shopping with my mum, she sponsored a new outfit for me. Then it was back to their place until we all headed out to a small and cute restaurant called ‘t Hofke. The restaurant was quite hidden in a small alleyway and it even took my boyfriend 10 min to find it because he was going to meet us there.

The food there was amazing and much better than the dinner place we went to the first night. For starters I had some snail and then some more beef. My boyfriend had a shrimp croquette and Duck. And my parents had salad, snails and beef as well. The people there were really nice and even took a lovely photo of all of us. We sat around and had some lovely conversations until it was time to leave, because my dad was feel quite tired today. They are leaving tomorrow so most of the day is going to go to them traveling and explain more of the central station. I said I would join them to help out with the bags and after that the visit is over.

Now I’m just relaxing again on the sofa while boyfriend is playing some Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Family meetup came with museum visit and juicy stories.

Today for the first day I met up with my family and I was not expecting the things that they had experienced so far on their travels. Been here less than 24h and already had a run in with the police.

The day started as normal. I woke up, took a shower and picked out what to wear. I had already scheduled with my parents that we would meet up outside of the MAS museum in town at around 1 pm. It was really great seeing them again and it did feel kind of weird heading in to town knowing that I would be meeting them there.

We spent most of our day at the museum. There were in total 10 floors, but we didn’t have the time nor the energy to visit them all. The staff there were really nice and helped us out with the elevator when we needed it. We saw 3 different exbitions; first one about the prehistorian columbian times, second about homes and third one about the WW2. My favourite I would say is the home one. It was unlike anything I have seen before.

The exebeition was about what differnt people associate with the word “home” and what made their them feel like home. There was a small video where they showed differnt living situations and ask the people about their thought. I felt I learned quite a lot which I liked.

After we were done at the musesum we took a taxi back to where my parents are staying and I got to see there hotell room or should I say mini suite. We started looking for places to eat which ended up being quite the challenge because the place needs to have comfortable chairs, preferably padded so that my father can sit comfortably. All the places we looked at had small wooden chairs until we finally found an Italian one which looked nice and wasn’t even that far away from the hotel.

We made our reservation at started getting ready. The place was nice and the people there were also really nice. For food I ordered “Aubergine with tomato sauce and mozarella” for starters and a “Entrecote with veggies and potatos” as my main course. My parents had aspargus as their starter and as their main dish my mum had scampi while my dad had squid.

During the dinner my parents told me a story how they had a run in with the police.

After they arrived yesterday with their boat curise, they headed into town with some of the other people, just to do some sightseeing. On their way home in the cab they came upon a problem. The road that the taxi need to drive to get to the boat was closed off. They tried to look around, but found no solution. Then they asked a police man who was standing near by and he aparently answered very rudly “No you can’t drive here, it’s against the law”. The driver tried to explain that my dad was handicapped and need a direct as possible acces to the boat, but the police man didn’t seem to care.

After a while they found a small road would lead straight to where the boat was, but it was partly on the “no driving” area. The taxi driver takse responability and goes there anyway and when my parents steped out of the taxi to get on th boat they same police mane approached them and this time he was angry. He started yelling at them telling them how they have now broken the law and that he will be speaking to the manager of the taxi driver to issue a punishment. He went on to saying that the cruise boats are suppose to dock next to the fort and not where it was currently staying. My parents told the curise manager to which he responded with “We tried, because we also want to be stationed by the fort, but we weren’t allowed by the people in charge”.

Then today as they were leaving the boat they saw multiple turist busses parked in the so called “No driving” zone.

So there you have it. That was their little run in with the police. It’s hard to determin who was right or wrong in this situation without knowing the full picture, but in my opinion I think the fault lies with multiple people. It was just an intersting story in general.

When the food arrived I was already quite hungry. My food was tasted really good. The aubergine was nice and soft, perhaps a bit too soft for my liking, but not a big deal. The entrecot was really tender. Sadly my parents did not have the same experience. For my mum the tiger prawns were aparently tastless and quite soggy and for my dad the octopus wasn’t directly bad, it just was as tender as he hoped.

After we were done eating we called it a night. I followed them to their place and then proceeded to head home.

I am now just sitting on the couch, writing this post while my boyfriend is playing on the switch. Tomorrow is going to be another full day with my parents and they are even coming over to our place to eat dinner and watch a movie.

Spring Cleaning before family visit

After 2 years I finally did a spring cleaning of my apartment and 7.5h later it was looking like a normal living space 😀

I know it’s been a while since my last post and this might be a weird one to write about, but here we are xD

So my family is visiting us this week. Although I do see them once a year it’s mostly me traveling back to Norway as I have written about in previous posts because my father wasn’t allowed to travel out of the country before last year due to his health condition. Last year they visited England again after almost 2 years, so they planned a trip to come and finally visit me here in Belgium. The started their trip in Amsterdam and are taking a boat cruise down to Antwerp where I live and are arriving this evening.

Therefore I decided to tidy up and clean our apartment, because it was quite messy. We rarely have visitors over so the mess tends to pile up quite a bit after time. So yesterday I woke up at around 12:30 pm and immediately started on the first room aka the kitchen. Most work was to gather all the trash around the apartment and throw it away and doing the dishes. Then it was over to the living room which didn’t take too long. After that it was time to head over to my “gaming” room which really needed a thorough clean because I had tossed a lot of things on top of the spare bed that need to either go in the trash in be put away. Last room was the bedroom which mostly involved laundry tasks aka folding and putting away the clean clothes. My boyfriend was doing the bathroom and the toilet room and after a total of around 7.5h the apartment finally was starting to look half decent.

When we finally called it quits for the day we decided to order out as a small reward. So we ordered kebab. I ordered one with lam, feta and bacon in a regular pita bread and one lam with feta in a Turkish bread. While we ate we just sat in front of the couch and watch some anime and headed to bed to too late afterwards because we were both feeling quite tired after an entire day of cleaning and tidying.

Today I had my last stream before the mini vacay. I decided to try my luck in League of legends ranked and I was actually blessed by riot today. Played total of 6 games where we won 4/6 and after that I won 2 ranked TFT games where I ran the exact same comp

I am really looking forward to meet my parents tomorrow and show them around the town and also the place where I have been living for the past 2 years.

Catching up with family

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went over to his mom’s place together with the brother and his family to eat dinner. We had a really nice time, but some of the conversation topics were quite interesting to say the least xD

We started by heading over to the brother’s place like we always do, because they always drive us. I had a small chat with them, catching up on how their holiday was etc. I told them about starting to go to the gym and my boyfriend talked about which game he has been playing lately. The drive is not that far so it only takes us around 15-20 min.

When we arrived at the mother’s place we said our hellos and gave everyone a hug each. We got there a bit earlier just to hang out before dinner. The brother had bought a couple of mini games such as mini Pool, mini table football, mini basketball, and Mikado from Flying Tiger. It was quite fun, and my boyfriend’s nephew also joined. The nephew even found 2 of the missing pool balls that had gotten stuck inside, which was quite funny because the brother (aka nephew’s father) had also been looking for them but gave up and put it away.

After a couple of hours, the stepdad went out to pick up the grandmother and then we got ready to eat. We had Raclette, and the brother had bought a huge variety of meat. We had sausages, mini burgers, bacon, slices of steak, schnitzels, chicken, and so much more. We could safely say that after dinner, we were all quite full. We had just about enough space for pancakes ^^

During dinner, the mother brought up the fact that she wanted another grandchild and was trying to make jokes about when my boyfriend and I would start trying. We also talked about glow-in-the-dark dildos and waterproof vibrators because apparently the wife of the brother has a store and was trying to talk up her products. Needless to say these topics were a bit awkward and weird, but the family seemed to have fun talking about them xD

We headed home around 8 pm, which I was REALLY happy about because I was already feeling quite tired after all the food and waking up earlier than usual. All in all, despite the convo topics during dinner, I did have a nice time.

I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend and I will see you in the next post ^^

Happy New Year Everyone!

First of all, I’m sorry for not posting here for the past 6 months. I planned to create posts several times and even took the photos for them, but I just totally forgot, and now it’s the new year.

Nothing unusual has happened in recent months. To sum it up: Nathan and I tried Korean BBQ for the first time, I visited the place where Nathan’s dad lives for the first time, Met up with my friend, streamed a lot, attended a work dinner, cut my hair short and explored both the Christmas markets in Antwerp and Brussels.

I think the highlights these past months was Korean BBQ and go bowling up with my friend, because those were both new experiences where I had a lot of fun.

When it comes to the new year I do have some goals or just things that I would want to improve in general:

Create more TikToks, Reels and Youtube video of my content.
Remember to post updates on my blog.
Speak more Dutch to become more comfortable
Be better at applying for jobs
Going back to excersising
Cook more dinners

I will try my best to uphold these goals, but I won’t beat myself over it if there are some things I don’t manage to do before the next year starts. I am quite exctieded and feeel somewhat motivated, but that might just be the New Year vibe talking xD

I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday weither you celebrated or not and I wish you all the best for this new year to come.