Yeah!

It's snowing! And because of Diwali people are sending up fire works. Feels like New Years Eve in Norway!

Visste du at..

..engelskmenn er overtroiske?
Tror jeg, i alle fall. I gata vår finner du på partallssida hus nummer 10, 12, 14 osv. På odetallssida er det 11, 12A, 12 B, 15.. Hoppet over tallet 13! Er det rart vi slet litt med å finne frem da vi kom hit?

Ny spalte: visste du at..?

Dette blir en spalte som skal gå på norsk, og blir publisert når jeg føler for det, egentlig. Her kan du lære noen fakta om engelskmenn, språk, kultur, meg eller andre ting jeg finner ut!

Dagens:
Visste du at..

...uttrykket om klokkeslettet "half four, half two" osv. på engelsk ikke er det samme som på norsk? Her har man bare kuttet ut ordet "past" i mellom, og half four vil derfor på norsk bli halv fem. Forvirrende? Til å begynne med - ja!

Challenges

In a foreign country, you may meet a lot of different challenges. Language, costums, being away from people who know you well. They are all different challenges I need to deal with here in England. In the job I also meet some challenges, but it's nothing I can't overcome. I'm just glad there actually are some.

The past two weeks, I've had to plan the sunday school for the hindi service myself, that's something I hadn't done before, but I'm glad I have to. I haven't got a lot of teaching experience, but now I'll get some, and it's quite fun! The children have actually behaved! Today they preformed what we had about today and last Sunday - Daniel in the den of lions. One group dramatized it, another group made a poem, and the youngest ones coloured some drawings.

Upcoming saturday will bring a new challenge - Adrian and myself are going to lead a childrens choir, and practice for the carol service we'll have before Christmas. I've never conducted a choir before, so it will be interesting to see how we'll manage. But as I learnt by reading the story about Daniel in Sunday school - whom trust in God, will recieve help. So we'll just pray it will go well.

And there will probably be a lot more challenges during the year, and it excites me. In order to learn new things and to grow as persons and caracters, I think we all need challenges, and we need to seek them. If we just hide from them, we won't learn from them either.

Jesus challenged people, their behaviour, their faith, and he was different. So, we should also be a bit different, let people get challenged by the way we live our lives. We actually know something important non-christians don't, and we need to challenge them with it. I don't know what point I'm trying to make here, but anyway, I want to encourage people to seek challenges. Do something you thought you wouldn't dear to do. So, go and get challenged. Or give other people a challenge. We all need it, I think...

Takk!

Adrian var i Norge på reunion med Hedemarktoppen fhs i helga, og når jeg kom på rommet mitt nå, hang det en pose Non Stop på døra! :D
Så, dette var en ofisiell takk.

Skal sies det ikke er første gang jeg får godteri av han da...

It's raining..

..and I just finished season 3 of Friends. Will Ross choose Rachel or does he move on? I'll have to start season 4. Now!

Teamday in Alperton

Yesterday we had teamday again - this time in our house in Alperton. We played settlers and made waffles.

Ben (2 years, 1 month) wanted to join Settlers, but when he started putting the houses in his mouth we had to send him to the livingroom to play there insted. He liked the waffles very well, though.

And Joseph (8,5 months) also enjoyed his waffels.
Jo-jo, as he is called, has started crawling, and a few times he has pulled himself up on his feet along the furniture. So it's harder for Louise, my host mom, to keep an eye on them both now that they move around everywhere!

This is me and Ben in my room. If I leave the door open, he likes to come in. And when he leaves again, he says "Bye!" He's learning to talk very quickly, and each day he's got a new word. So I'm planning to teach him some Norwegian. Haha..
Ben also likes to wear Adrians shoes. Especially his football shoes. So maybe we'll get him a pair for Christmas. And when we leave the house, he hardly lets us go. He is so cute! When he wants us to come with him, he says "pull", because he's kind of pulling us. And if it doesn't work, "pss" (please) does. He doesn't know how to say my name yet, and calles me Tree, T or something like that. But he'll probably learn in a short time.

Åkei da:)

Etter forespørsel fra Helga Therese, så ska æ skriv et innlegg på trøndersk. Æ har altså ikke glæmt helt kor æ kjæm i fra (enda*), sjøl om æ trives veldig godt i London. Beklager for alle tolkningsproblema d her må medfør for dæ som eventuelt ikke e så stødig i trøndersk.

I dag e d åtte uka siden æ kom hit, og det har gått fort. Så da går det sikkert kjæmpefort t æ kjæm hjæm en snartur for å vær me på bestefar sin 75-årsdag om tre uka. D blir kos å treff litt vænna og familie igjen, så d glede æ mæ t.

Når man bor i utlandet, e d mange ting man oppdage om sitt eget folk. En ting, e at vi egentlig ikke drikk så my te og kaffe som vi ska ha d t. Æ e vant hjæmmafra å ha kaffepause en gang daglig ca. Her e d mer 4-5 ganga daglig som e greia. Kjæm man på besøk t nånn, e man garantert å bli tilbydd kaffe eller te. På mor- og barngruppa har vi også prioriteringan i orden - vannkoker'n settes på før vi bynne å gjør nå som helst anna.

En anna ting, e at vi nordmenn e ganske sprek, sånn reint hverdagslig. Da æ å Helene va ut å gikk i Londons gata forrige fredag, å hadd stoppa på et hjørne for å finn veien videre på det geniale lommekartet Helene har, kom en engelskmann bort t oss og spurt kor vi skull. Vi sa vi leita etter Hyde Park Corner og Harrods. Han kun meddel vi sto midt på Hyde Park Corner (ja, litt flaut, men kordan kun vi vit d? Det sto ikke skilta, liksom) og at Harrods va i den (her peka han) retningen. Men d va alt for langt å gå, så vi burda ta en buss. Psjt, langt å gå, tenkt vi, å tok beina fatt. Etter å ha gått rundt nesten hele Hyde Park fordi vi skull innom Speakers Corner og den norske minnesteinen omtalt i forrige innlegg, så gikk vi t Harrods, og vi hadd fremdeles ikke brukt en time liksom. Æ kan ikke si æ så på klokka, men d va absolutt ikke en lang avstand som man villa tatt buss for. Ka skjer me engelskmenn å vær lat da? Liknende har vi hørt flere ganga..

Amen uttales likt på engelsk og norsk, forresten. Og høstværet e my finere her enn hjæm. T-skjortevær i hele forrigårs, for eksempel. Og sikkert 20 grader.

Så no håpe æ i alle fall den trønderske delen av leseran e fornøyd, om ikke dæm andre også. D e bare å si fra når d blir på tide me et norsk innlegg igjen.

*engelskmannen(damen) i mæ blir stadig sterkere, sje bare ka æ kjøpt på fredag (d e en England fotballdrakt for dæm som ikke sjer det). Men ingen fare for at æ blir værende her for alltid, bare så d e sagt;)

The past week

Eight days without writing on the blog - it's a new record, I think! And not in a good way, of course.. The reason I've not updated is because we've had a lot to do, witch I will tell you a bit about now.

Sunday school last Sunday:
The girl who usually runs the sunday school didn't show up, so I had to have the group by my self, without anything planned. It kind of went well, if we forget about kids running around and yelling, but we also managed to do some word puzzles and play some games.

Body combat workout:
Three or four times I've been to a body combat class at the gym, and it's great fun! The class is based on different marsial arts, like karate, capoeira, thai boxing and others.

Lunch club:
Tuesdays we do lunch club for 11-year-olds at the local school. I think both them and myself enjoy playing games like "Guess who" and "Connect four" for an hour each week.

Teamday:
Wednesdays we have teamdays, which is something I enjoy very much. We try to have a biblical session with a bit of reading and praying, and the rest of the day we eat, shop and hang out.
This week we had lunch at Pizza Hut again, as we probobly will about once a month or so, because the buffet is so cheap!


Tidying:
Thursday I was home for only a couple of hours the whole day. Morning prayer at 9 am, followed by taking everything down from the loft over the office. In the afternoon I went to East Twickenham with John to check out the building we were going to be in on Saturday, and in the evening we had to sort out the things from the loft, throw away what was not needed, and put the other things back up again. This is how the church looked when everything was taken down:


Home group:
Thursday evening, after a quick run home to have some food, we went to Sandras house for home group, witch is the same as a cell group or a bible study group. We were five people including me and Adrian. We talked about the story about Lazarus, and it was really nice.

Central London:
Friday was this weeks best day thanks to London city, the sun that came out and my dear friend Helene! After going to Lillywhites to buy England football shirts, we took out the map, and started walking. And we walked for several hours! We wish we had step counters (or whatever it's called in English), but had to settle with just an estimate of the huge amount of steps we took that day. 20.000 at least! Places we visited were Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square (where the National Art Museum is), Hyde Park Corner, Hyde Park, Speakers Corner, Harrods (we just LOOKED, it's too expencive to actually buy something, but at least I can say I've been there now), Green Park where we had lunch after looking for a long time for a regular shop like Tescos or Sainsburys. Then we walked back to Picadilly Circus and to Holborn and Lambs Conduit Street, where we had a coffee in Starbucks (Helenes first visit there).

Picadilly Circus

Walking in Hyde Park
Memorial Stone from Norway

Quiz:
After walking all over London, we met some people from Janne Lise and Helenes church, to go to South Bank for a quiz. People from many different churches were there, about 15 in total, as an event to collect some money for a group of people preaching in Soho, a area of London with a lot of people who needs to hear Gods word.

Church away day:
Saturday was St. James big away day, when everybody who had the opportunity to come along could join for a day with the theme "How do we grow in faith?". Richard Bewes was teaching, Adrian and I did the worship (think it went very well, considering that we hadn't rehearsed a lot, because we found out we were going to do it on Thursday). We also helped out with the children, who had a separate programme. Four tea breakes, games in the park in lovely weather, and magical tricks are other things to remember from this day.

Everybody joined the game, both children and adults - very fun!

Stuti running in the park

IsaacSydney, Fabian and Tavis

My team - The Wildcats!

Jonathan and Anna

Football:
Norway - Scotland 0-0 was nothing to miss, but I got to see the last 30 minutes of England - Kazakhstan, a game that ended 5-1! Not unexpected, but some entertaining last 15 minutes.

Girls night in:
Saturday night we had a non-planned girls night in, with us three norwegian London girls, a fresh baked brownie and The Terminal with Tom Hanks. Cheers, girls!

Good friends

I love having good friends to hang out with. Thanks for being here guys (and Janne Lise as well, even though she is not on the photo). Cheers!

1st of October..

..allready! The time really is passing fast, but I take that as a good sign. I've been here for 6 weeks now, and I have really enjoyed it so far. I think this is something God wants me to do.

Today we've had leadership traninig for the first time. We are ten people going to be trained once a month, in order to become better leaders. Today the training took place in St. Stephen East Twickenham's office, and next time we'll be going to St. Paul's in Hammersmith, where two of the others on the course are interns.

And actually, today I brought my camera! Wehey! It's a progress. I still forget to take a lot of photos, but here I have some from todays walk in London...

First we crossed the London Bridge, which actually isn't anything special to see, and we didn't understand why it is so known. Anyways - now we've been there!

Tower Bridge, here we come!

And we got some brilliant/awesome/lovely weather for a photoshoot!


Two of my marvellous teammates. Unfortunately Janne Lise was a bit tired, and went home earlier.



Today they have removed the wall in front of the Hindu temple they are building, so I had to take a picture when I passed. It is huge, and very beautifull - although it's a Hindi temple.