I have now been home for 2 days and it has been really nice so far. Always nice to visit old places I haven’t seen in years and spending some quality time with the ones you love.
I arrived on Thursday at around noon. Nothing much happened on the first day I was home. I just helped out around the house for the most part. Helped my dad with the groceries shopping, replacing some bulbs and taking stuff to what we call “a dump” which is just like an area where you can dispose of different stuff such as gardening trash and old electronics etc… That day we had a really nice Torbay Sole for dinner, served with Colliflower and potatoes. We did a lot of catching up and also had a long conversation about some future plans for me, but overall it was a calm day.
Yesterday I was also up before noon because my mother and I were planning on heading out to gather some information about my rights and stuff. It didn’t take longer than 15 min so when we came home, we had breakfast. After we had eaten we jumped in the car and headed out for the day.
Our plan was to head to a place called “Blaavakerverket” which is a place where you learn about the discovery of cobalt that is used for the famous blue powder/ paint that are used to on different pieces throughout the many years. We were wanting to visit a cobble mine and we drove an extra 7km up a mountain on a narrow road, only to discover that they were closed. We headed down to the other exhibition and had a lovely lunch on top of a giant waterfall.
We were there for around 4 hours. For dinner my father and I just headed out and got some kebab and we started a new crime series which was quite interesting.
Today is going to be a quite day. Nothing major plans besides getting everything ready for my father’s birthday party tomorrow.
Hope everyone everywhere are having a good start of your weekend. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post where I tell you all about the party.
This weekend was really packed. There were so many things happening. Got to meet up with a bunch of lovely friends and had one of my best time at TwitchCon.
The weekend started with my friend Yungul arriving on Friday. He was going to stay with us for the weekend, because on Saturday we had plans to attend TwitchCon where we would meet up with more friends. Nothing much happened that day. We just got bubble tea and then headed home. We were originally planning on going to the a carnival, but both Yungul and my boyfriend were quite tired so we decided to move it to Sunday and just spent the rest of the day chilling, gaming and just getting settled.
Saturday was the big day. We woke up at around 10 am, ate something small before our friend picked us up and we drove to Rotterdam for TwitchCon. We arrived a bit later than planned because we got stuck behind two suspension bridges, but at least there wasn’t a queue to get in by the time we arrived. We presented our tickets, got our badges and goodie bags and headed in to the event. The event itself wasn’t as big as it has previously been, but it was a decent amount to things to see. We met up with a couple of streamer friends and most of the day was just spent walking around with them and hanging out.
They did have a artist gallery area which I went into at least 3 times. I bought myself a couple of nice things. A Espion beanie, a red panda mouse mat and a Sylvion key chain. My friends also got some things for themselves. I even did my first IRL stream from the convention, which was really fun. We did disconnect twice, but besides from that both the audio and the visual was good, so I might do more of those types of streams in the future. We peaked at 14 viewers which is more than we usually have during streams.
We stayed until they closed at 6pm and then we were planning on getting something to eat, but non of the places around the even had space for us. There was also a rock concert happening, so there were a lot of people in the area. We eventually decided to just hang out for a bit with our friends and then get some MacDonald’s on our way home.
After driving and picking up the food, we just headed back to my apartment and hung out, watched some YouTube while we ate. Nothing more really happened on that day.
Sunday we were planning on going to the Sinksenfoor, which is like a huge carnival that is being held close to us every summer for 4 weeks and I thought it would be a fun experience for Yungul. He did however sleep until 4 pm, so we ended up being there during the evening, which wasn’t that bad. The temperature was nice during that time. We did have some showers of rain, but nothing too bad. At the carnival we did a couple of things
We first took a ride called “Big Splash” which was just your typical water log ride. Then we did some small attractions. One where you got an X amount of balls, depending how much you pay and then you roll them up a lane and try to make them fall into 1 of the 5 holes which had different scores on them. I hit the 500 score 5 times, which definitely is a personal record. The boys hit 1 x 500 each. After that one we did where we had like a gun with small pellets and tried to shoot down cans and then the last one we did was archery.
We also tried a couple of foods and drinks. I had a Cuba Libra and then I tried a corn dog for the first time. We also ate like a potato slices on a stick. I had a lot of fun overall ^^
Fast forward till today. We headed out at around 4 pm so that we would have time to get something to eat before Yungul had to catch the train to the airport. Sadly the public transport perfectly lined up so that we missed the one bus and one tram and had to wait until the next one. We got the city, got some more MacDonalds and then headed to the train station.
After I left Yungul I decided to pick up some bubble tea on my way home since I was in the city. I picked up one those scooters that you rent and headed over to bubble tea place. After getting my order I was heading back towards where I usually take the buss to get home. I found one of those dedicated parking spots for these things and tried to park it, but every time I pressed “end ride” it told me to confirm that I was standing in a parking spot. I used my camera and even though the app did say that I was in a parking spot, it still didn’t allow me to end my ride. It took me like 5 attempts on 5 different locations before I finally got to end my ride. Then it was off to the bus which were suppose to arrive at 18:50, but for some reason that bus just vanished. When the bus did arrive I went on and sat down. I already started to fall a sleep since I was really exhausted and my feet hurt. I forgot to activate my tickets and two stops in there was a control and I got fined. So today was a REALLY bad day for me, especially mentally. Straight after I got home I headed to my bed and did a smoll cry. Now I’m just going to hang out with friends and try to decompress for the rest of the evening.
Despite the fact that today was horrible, I did have a fun time from Friday till Sunday. I’m ready to go back to normal and not going anywhere for the next months xD I hope everyone had a nice weekend and didn’t get caught without a ticket.
Yesterday was my last full day in Norway. I was originally planning on heading home then, but since it was my sisters birthday I decided to extend my trip by 1 day. It was a lovely day spent with my loved ones. A perfect ending to a nice trip.
I woke up at around noon again and just waited for my sister to come back from her 17km run. In our family we always celebrate a little bit in the morning, but then the main part is that we all go out for dinner at a place where the birthday person wants to go. After my sister and I had eaten our chocolate cake my dad and I prepared ourself for our finale outing.
We drove to a place called “Fetsund” which was a place around 30 min outside of Oslo. In the old days one of the ways they would transfer huge logs was that they would send it down Norway’s biggest river called “Glomma” and then there would different places where people would work at taking out the logs from the river. It was apparently a dangerous job because they would have to balance on top and one misstep would lead to you getting crushed between two logs. We saw the water platforms they used and the saw. It was a perfect day. Not too cold and not too hot. There were a fair bit of mosquitos there though, but besides that everything was good.
After we had gotten home we change out of our current clothes and into some nicer ones for the birthday dinner. The place we were heading to was an Asian place called “Tatakii”. It was in the middle of town. The place looked really nice. You could choose to sit outside or inside. We decided on inside.
I ordered a “Hao Gao” which were dumplings with pork and scampi with chili paste and then I had the “Crispy duck” which was 1/4 of Crispy fried pulled duck and served with pancakes, 5 types of vegetables, and 2 types of sauce. I do not remember the what the vegetables were. As a dessert I had Crème brûlée with pandan flavour and today’s sorbet. It all tasted really delicious, especially the duck. Rest of the family had dumplings, salad and lamb. Sadly my father wasn’t too happy with his dishes, but he ate them regardless.
When we had eaten we went back home and watched the last episode of the crime series that we watched the first night. I headed to bed semi early since I had to wake up early for today’s flight.
There isn’t really a point to include today since it was mostly spent traveling, but it was really nice seeing my boyfriend again, returning to my pc and I also ordered a new phone which I’m excited to get and hope it will arrive here during this week.
Hope you guys have enjoyed the blog posts this week. I also hope you all had a nice week too. Next post will most likely be about TwitchCon which is at the end of June, so until then. I wish you all a lovely summer and as always, stay healthy and safe.
Today was the big day. We woke up nice and early to get ourself ready for day ahead aka the daughter of my cousin’s baptism. We were going to start off with a small sermon in the church and then an after party at their place.
We headed at the house at 12, to make sure we wouldn’t arrive too late in case the traffic and parking would be difficult. The church was around a 30 min drive. The sermon didn’t start until 1pm. We arrived in good time and managed to find nice seats at the front.
As soon as everyone had been seated and the church bell rang the sermon started. It was a lot of singing and praying as it usually is during these kind of things, but then came the time for the actual baptism. My cousin was first, so then she, her fiancé, her sister (aka my second cousin) and I think the brother of the fiancé walked up. The priest said the words and then they lit a candle that had her name on it. The priest showed her to everyone else like a lion king moment and then they sat down again. We had to sit through 5 other kids who also were getting baptised today. It all lasted about 1h in total.
The churchThe alterHer momentMum and childFamily photo
When the sermon was done we headed over to their place for the after party. There we got to talk to the rest of the family, eat tons of delicious food that my second cousin had made and of course had some cake. People took turns to hold the newly baptised child and it was all in good fun all together. Talked to my second cousin about their new house which they moved in last December and also told people about how things went in Belgium. We stuck around till around 6 pm before heading home. We stopped at a small deli to buy two slices of cake for my sisters birthday celebration tomorrow.
Cake made by one of the guests.Happy family
Rest of the evening will just be spent on relaxing, gaming, making some noodles, hanging out more with my friends and my family. Tomorrow is my last day before heading home and I must say that I’m feel ready to head home. I love spending time with my family, but it doesn’t come without a bit for drama attached to it which I try to avoid as much as possible especially when its family related.
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.
Theo chilling in bed
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.
One of many sculptures along the riverThis is called a “fish staircase”
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.
This is called a “Smelling garden”Giant palm tree
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Sognsvann”A small family of geese3 smiling faces
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 ^^
This weekend met up with some friends for an amazing BBQ party. We had a lovely time with bunch of jokes and wholesome moments. Even some spicy ones xD
The agreed to rent a place on a small campiste in the Netherlands. All I had to do was to get my ass on the right trains. Thankfully this time the distance was shorter, so I only needed to change train one time. My friend picked me up at the station and we head to the place. When we arrived everyone else were already there.
The people I met up with are a group that I have gotten to know online through either games or streaming. I had met some of them before like Nacho_gal, Joouwx and Pinbals. It was my first time meeting my friends Difan and Mr.Moopie. They were really nice ^^
We got to know each other a bit and then we two of us headed to the store to buy the food and drinks. We got some sausages, burgers, bacon and chicken scewers. Mr. Moopie had bought two small grills for our food. We just hung out, ate food and had a lovely time all together.
I had to leave a bit after 8 pm because I needed to catch the train home. I didn’t want to take the very last one in case I would get stuck again xD Three of the people were staying over, but I wanted to take things slow and decided to not do it this time around. My friend Pinbals drove me to the station and I had to run because I only had a couple of minutes. I managed to get on the train with 1 min to spare.
I got home at around 11pm and spent the rest of the night streaming until around 6 am before I headed to bed ^^ It was really nice to finally meet more of my online friends and I’m definitly looking forward till next time.
Today we were heading home from Germany. That shouldn’t be too hard, right? Well I’ll just tell you this. It’s was one of the most annoying and frustrating travel experience I have had.
We woke up really early because our train was planning on leaving at 6:33 am from the neighbour town. Thankfully our friend was able to drive us. By following this route we would be home at aroun 1 pm. We got there with like 10 min to spare and all is well. We sit down on the train, look up at the monitor and it still says that the train is on time and then it starts driving. Around 15 min later we suddenly stop to let a train from the oppisite direction through and then suddenly after that the monitor changes to say that we will be 13 min delayed, which was just the beginning of our annoyance.
We arrive at Frankfurt and walk as fast as we can towards the other platform just in case our train was still there. As we take walk anot the platform we see just see the conductor walk onto the train and the doors shut. The really frustrating part was that the train even stood there for like two minute before driving off. So we look up alternatives and qickly figure that we need to head to an another big city called Köln Messe/Dautz so that we could take a quick train to Köln Hbf. On that route the exact same thing happens. Waiting for opesite train and we miss the exchange. We do manage to get a anoter one quite quick which still gave us a chance to get the direct train from Köln Hbf. We get on, arrive at the station try to run as this time, but constantly gets stopped by other people and MISSED the train AGAIN by a hair!!
At this point we are REALLY frustrated. We don’t like spending time on traveling so the longer it takes the more annoying it gets. Nathan also has to work tomorrow and didn’t want to spend all day on just traveling. We decided to wait 1h for the next direct train instead of taking an earlier one that had 3 different changes. We got something to drink from Starbucks, sat down, relaxed and got our grocerie shopping done since there was nothing better to do.
We get on the train and make it to Brussels with some odd stoppes that weren’t even mentioned on the timetable. When we got of we even realised that we had stopped at Brussels Noord instead of Bruxelles Midi, which was good cus that is closer to home. The we hopped on our last train and even took us one step CLOSER to home than what the other ones that we usually take do. Got of the train and onto the bus. After that it was only a short walk which felt like it took forever. A bit over 2h delayed we were FINALLY home!! We went from 1 pm to 3 pm and we were both just exhausted since we had woken up before 6.
Today was defintly just a big loose when it came to transport. My friend suggested that it the reason might have been becasue Germany is missing insanly amount of people right now, but we learnt that next time if we go by train we should take the on BEFORE our original plan and just basically expect delays and include that into our planning. Now we are just chilling, gaming, updating everything and stuff like that before we will be heading to bed, maybe a bit earlier that usual.
Tomorrow everything goes back to normal. I’m quite excited to be back to streaming and gaming. I have missed that part of the vacay the most. We did a bit of gaming at my friends place, but nothing can compare to using your own pc.
The Anna behind Yannani 