As you guys may know (if you didn’t know up to now, you now know), I have been alone in Norway for the past couple weeks. A’s pursuing a life-long dream of his: getting his phD in one of the most amazing schools in Europe. So being alone in a still somewhat new surrounding, with only a hand full of friends has been quite interesting (read: super boring). I have been trying to keep busy (read: watch a lot TV) and kept myself pretty occupied (read: cleaned the apartment from A-Z about 7 times).
So heading to my ‘do-good’-house (the shelter for drug-abusers and mentally ill) was – obviously – the highlight of my week. As usual, I got there around 10 a.m. super excited to get my day started. I looked good, I felt good, I was full of energy and ready to rock. So when D asked me to help in the kitchen, I gladly did. He asked me to fill several pitchers with juice and then place those pitchers on the tables in the dining room. And so I did. I joked around with D and he told me about his week and how much he loved Friday-(cake)-day (yes, every Friday we make cakes for everybody to enjoy, need I say more why I work on Fridays?). While thinking about the soon-to-be-made Oreo-Cake, I lifted up one of the ikea-glass-pitchers turned around and then, out of nowhere, the whole thing just exploded, right onto my jeans, my sweater and my shoes. Obviously this was a great start for cake-day, but me, being full of energy and in a obnoxiously good mood, started to laugh and then went to get a mop and started to clean everything up, but what happens when you try to mop juice? Yes, right, it gets sticky. Needless to say, that we didn’t need the radio to make any music, our shoes did that for us, with every single step (note: this is okay for the first two minutes but after that it’s just super annoying).
After another rather uneventful couple hours we all sat down and got ready to have some lunch, today’s menu: salmon. Yeah, you read right, salmon. I don’t like salmon – it’s not only salmon. I strongly (!) dislike everything that sometime ago swam or crawled in water (I also don’t eat sharks or crocodiles). And no, even after living in Norway sometime, I still am not going to start liking fish, even if you sprinkle chocolate on it and call it something fancy like rainbow-truffle-cake. Still not in for the ride, but today, yes, why not try it. And so I did, for the first time ever in my life, I ate fish. D, who was sitting next to me, clearly sensed my dislike. He asked me if everything was alright, while I tried to choke down the last piece of swimming-slimy-fish, that he called ‘delicious’. No, nothing was alright. But I am polite, so I nodded, smiled and pushed a ‘mhmmmm’ out.
Now, the only thing worse than eating fish, is smelling fish. Thank god, I wasn’t in charge of rinsing the dishes, putting them into the dishwasher and cleaning the pots after lunch. Oh, hold on a second, yeah, that was me… Obelix – who’s name is not actually Obelix, but he reminds me of one the gauls (if you don’t know them 1. shame on you, 2. google)- handed me every single plate and casually talked about the weather, while I tried to hide my disgust. This only was the worst torture of my life – almost as bad as eating snails in Paris – nonetheless I made it and treated myself to a cup of coffee and listening to music.
Some of our Hispanic members started singing and dancing and spilling coffee all over the floor, which made Obelix laugh so hard, he couldn’t stop giggling, but this didn’t make me giggle much, because what happens if you spill coffee on the floor? Yeah, gets sticky too.
At 3 o’clock it was cake-time and man, was I happy to finally sit down and enjoy a good hot cup of coffee. Turned out the coffee I made earlier that day, was the grossest thing I ever drank, but the members didn’t want to seem rude, so no one said anything… Lucky me. You can see, at 4 p.m. I was more than happy to finally start my journey home. Shopping after work? No, thank you, I want to go home and snuggle up to A.
Oh, wait a sec, he is not at home. So now what? Yes, I decided, since no one was waiting for me, I might as well go shopping. So I did, I went to the store, bought 2 orange-chocolates and then some-what raced home.
As I prepared dinner (smashing the orange chocolate against a counter does count as making dinner) and sat down, getting ready to eat, my heart jumped a little and I smiled. Yes, today has not been the greatest day ever, I did not change the world, nor did I change anybody’s life but coming home after a somewhat rough day and being able to skype with A (while eating my orange-chocolate) is still the luckiest I could ever be.
I love my life.
A bird loves a fish 