Photos from the Sunday-hikes

Long Lake - reminds me of Norway. Funny how it is quite a normal sight for me, but exotic and new for some friends from the Netherlands. I enjoy it a lot, though, of course, even though it's not exotic. When I'm in the city I don't always think about it, but when I get out into the forest or out by the sea I realize how much I love and need to get out of the city and into more natural areas. 

Herring's Cove - first sight of the sea for a while, it was amazing. Lots of wind and sun and waves and freedom. The trip was quite varied - first through a neighbourhood (with a bridge and a nice river), then tall cliffs (not really visible on the photos, but they were tall, maybe ten meters some places), then an area that looked more like up in the Norwegian mountains (short bushes, a few trees here and there, with a strong and wonderful smell of sun and plants), then a walk through jungle-like bushes taller than me, and then we were back in the civilization again. I've also been introduced to geocaching by Corine, a friend from the YMCA. This little bottle is from the third one we've found, the two others were at Long Lake.

Might give a slightly better impression of the heights on some of the cliffs.

William's lake - far more civilized than Long Lake (houses along one of the shores), but still a lovely place to visit. Found a frog and a skeleton. At first I thought it was a fish, but I'm not sure what the long pieces in the upper part of the picture would be on a fish..? Had a swim here, it was wonderful. Also got through some of my readings for my classes.

Assorted photos from Halifax

Photos from the Sunday hikes so far are here, an album of photos of the Dalhousie Campus here, and an album of Halifax in general here. 

Some assorted photos that made me think of some of you, or that I just want to show for some reason: 

I now have the coolest lunch box ever.

I was so lucky to borrow this from Jacob, one of the guys at the YMCA. It's a graphic novel, dark and beautiful and fascinating and horrible and funny and very much recommended.

A glimpse of the Farmer's Market on a Saturday morning. Local products, mostly food, but also a lot of other products: jewelry, art, clothing etc.

My favourite bench in the park across the street from home. A good place to study.

The view from my favourite bench. The view often includes ducks, and once in a while a turtle.

 

Around Halifax I have seen a lot of painted boxes, I'm guessing they're some kind of electrical something or whatever. But at least - they look so nice! I think it's such a good way to make something that would often look quite gray and misplaced into a piece of colour and art instead. I love it! So far I've photographed every one I've found, you can see them here if you'd like to.

My dear computer died (could no longer recieve charging at all), and I had to buy a new one. This one has a touchscreen, which is fun (seems that a lot of new computer have that - I had no idea...), but I miss my numpad.

Fabrics coloured with indigo, shown at the conference I attended about sustainable fashion. This photo do not at all show the absolutely amazing colour they had, but it might give you an idea. The producer/artist grew and prepared the indigo in a traditional Japanese way in his home in the US (?), and it was amazing to see his talk.

Our stairs have a hippopotamus.

Every hot dog-"shop" I have seen here so far has veggie dogs! I love it! There are also usually several vegetarian dishes in the restaurants and cafés well. There's even a place at my university here that three times a week serves free, vegan lunch with products given from local farmers! (Including dessert.)

They have a quite good selection of organic products here, better than in Sweden and much better than Norway. They also generally have a lot more chocolate  milk here. (This one is so tasty!)

They have a lot of Fair Trade chocolate here, in every small and big shop that sells chocolate. And not like in Scandinavia where most of the Fair Trade chocolate is way too fancy pancy dark, dark chocolate - here they always have milk chocolate, and often other nice choices as well - like this one.

So far I've been walking barefoot on all the hikes. ("Signe-style" I think Pontus called it on Gotland? :) ) It really gives another dimension to walking in nature - it's so fascinating to feel all the different surfaces I'm walking on, to feel the warmth where the sun reaches, to feel where the earth is slightly more moist or dry - and generally it's just a lot more fun!

Text chunk-post about me and Halifax

Warning: All the dry text comes here, and in the next post all the photos.. 

I have been here in Halifax for a little more than a month now, and I very much enjoy it. I arrived the 26th of August, had about a week to settle in, and then my classes began. Here's some thoughts and facts about my stay here - feel free to skip to the parts (if any) you find interesting. ;)

A little about where I live: Halifax is in Nova Scotia, on the far South-East cost of Canada. It's a very "lagom"-sized city for me: not too big and not too small. There is quite a lot of green, trees and parks here and there, and a lot of cute wooden houses, some beautiful and majestic stone houses from the x00's, and also quite a lot of ugly, square-shaped concrete buildings. I'm staying at a YMCA International House - usually in my experience the YMCAs are hostels, but this one rents out rooms primarily for a longer time. There are about 30 other students here, mostly international, and we're sharing bathrooms, kitchen and a common room. 

I have my own room on the corner of the building, with one window out to the park across the street and one window to the blank wall of the neighbouring building, so I have quite a lot of light and practically no-one can look in. Pictures will probably come at some point when I have stowed away all my stuff in the drawers... (The location of the YMCA is great - 1/2 minute to the nearest park, 7 minutes to the campus where I have one of my classes, 15 minutes to walk to the other (bigger) campus, 5 minutes to the nearest grocery stores and 20 minutes to the superstores (enormous grocery stores), 10 minute bike ride to the bigger park/forest, 1 minute to the main street with bars, shops, libraries, 10 minutes to the downtown with other bars and 15-20 minutes to the waterfront (great to walk a long the waterfront), etc.) 

Oh, and by the way - the weather has mostly been amazing here! A few gray days now and then, some heavy and some fog-like rain, but mostly sun. During the daytime it's still t-shirt warm outside in the sun. Not at all the windy, gray, rainy city I was fearing before I came!

About what I'm doing here: I'm on exchange from my university in Gothenburg, and I'm staying here until Christmas. I'm in my third year of studying in Sweden now - in the summer of 2014 my plan is to have a bachelor's degree in Environmental Sciences with a sociological perspective and in Human Ecology. In this I also try to put as much learning about behaviour and psychology as possible. Here in Halifax I'm taking five courses at Dalhousie University. (Which is called full-time, but it's a lot more than full-time with human ecology in Sweden... These past three weeks I've been studying about 50-60 hours a week to keep up with all my readings and assignments.) It's a lot, but it's very, very interesting. It's so fascinating how my courses' themes intertwine and touch and all the interconnections I'm finding here and there and everywhere. The courses I'm taking are:
- Introduction to psychology and neuroscience
- Community design (a city planning-class with a focus on living, local communities)
- The mind and the machine - introduction to cognitive science (a philosophy course)
- Enterprise sustainability 
- Environmental problem solving

The remaining time of the week I basically spend with nice people, salsa, nature and learning. With some friends here I've been going on a hike every Sunday, taking the bus to a new place every time. We've been to a beautiful lake called Long Lake (the area looks a lot like Scandinavia), to the cliffs of Herring's Cove (lots of big, splashing waves coming in from the sea and possibilities of rock climbing), and last weekend we did a combined study- and swimming hike to a place called William's lake. Next weekend we have a day off because of Thanksgiving, and I'm going with a group from the YMCA on a road trip to see some of the wonderful nature areas that Nova Scotia have to show. Very much looking forward to it! 

Afternoons with good weather I often do my readings in the Public Gardens, the park across the street from where I live. I'm also frequently visiting a park/forest here called Point Pleasant Park - it's somewhat like Bygdøy in Oslo. Last time I was there I was doing some school work, and I was visited by a small squirrel. It ate from my hand, even sat on it, and came back several times during the time I spent there. Therapy for animal abstinence-Signe... Oh yeah, and I started learning salsa! It's a lot of fun, and I'm enjoying it a lot. 

During my time here I have also been on adventures in the YMCA building, been swimming in the pool here (there's a sports centre downstairs that we who live here can use for free), been trying my first yoga class (the classes downstairs are also free), tried to balance on a slack line (so fun! I really want to try it more), saved a mouse from the kitchen (that would otherwise have been killed, and released it into the park), started the fire alarm (and learned that the kitchen door really has to be closed when someone's cooking), bought a bike (love it!), played table top games, had second breakfast on Bilbo's birthday (so much good food and such nice people!), tried local wine from Nova Scotia (white, sweet, good!), fed ducks in the park in secret, dared to go the Thursday salsa night alone to find people to practice my salsa with (some of you might know me well enough to know how much of my courage I had to conjure to actually do that... It was great, though! Met some of the people I dance with in my salsa classes and some other nice people, and I had a great time), visited the Farmer's Market (I wish the had a similar in Gothenburg/Oslo! I have to look more into what already exists there.), watched some episodes of Star Trek Voyager (now I have almost never ending supplies of science fiction series to enjoy!), fallen asleep while reading (repeatedly), been so amazed during talks that I couldn't stop smiling, become disappointed with Canada, become impressed with Canada, been ashamed of Norway (& Sweden), been proud of Norway (& Sweden), drawn monsters and squirrels, stressed, calmed down, stressed again, calmed down again, and generally enjoyed life.

Through a school assignment called "Interviewing a problem solver" I had a great conversation with a woman called Ruth Gamberg, from the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax - it was so inspiring! With her I went to my first "Lunch and Learn" here in Halifax, hopefully the first of many to come. This one was about saving energy in homes. It's very inspiring and interesting to learn also in areas outside of school, and I take every opportunity I can get. I have for example been to a film screening of the movie Blackfish followed by a panel talk about orcas/killer whales in captivity, and to a very inspiring one-day conference about sustainable and local fashion (Sow to Sew), with participants from all over Canada, the US and Europe. Hopefully I can do some volunteering at the Ecology Action Centre - they seem to be having a lot of interesting projects going on. 

During my time here I also try take the chance as often as possible to speak to people from the local student associations and other organizations here - I'm getting a lot of inspiration and ideas for the student association we started up in Gothenburg in 2012: Handels Students for Sustainability (Handels/Handelshögskolan is the faculty I'm studying at in Gothenburg). This way a lot of my time is spent on school releated issues even outside of my study-time, but I guess that's what happens when you're studying that which really interests you...

1st Canadian blog post - about my animals back in Scandinavia

Disclaimer: To avoid having to choose between writing in Swedish and Norwegian, I'll just go for English for a while from now.

(Very infrequent blogging going on here.. Bear with me. Better late than never?)

Ember
I just bought a horse. August 26th I left Gothenburg for Halifax, Canada, to stay here for four months as an exchange student, and the day before I left I bought Ember. She is a wonderful little creature, a one year old mare bred by my friend Lobelia Barker (who also made my tattoo). Ember's father is the fairy tale-like cremello Spanish horse Levante, and the mother is the beautiful and very talented coldblooded trotter Haiwa. Ember is palomino coloured - golden with silver coloured mane and tail - but she changes in colour from quite pale to almost red, so it will be exciting to see how she will be when she grows up. She seems social, intelligent, calm and absolutely charming. While I am in Canada, and probably for some months after that as well, she will continue to live with her friends and family at Lobelia's place. That is about 1-2 hours by bus from where I live in Gothenburg, so I can visit Ember often when I get back there. The next few years will be filled with me and Ember getting to know each other, a lot of playing around and going for walks and her getting to know my dear Otto, and eventually some ground work - there is no stress in reaching the riding-part of her education, it will come when we are both ready. And imagine - we will hopefully be together until I am around 50-55 years old! Wow...

Thanks to Linda for the second photo and to Lobelia for the third and fourth! More pictures of Ember here.

Levante and Ember in march, 2013

When I was considering to buy her.
(How can anyone resist someone like her?)

The day Lobelia and I signed the paper.

Barbie
Just to make it very clear, I have not forgotten "my" absolutely fantastic Barbie, and I still plan to be a lot with her in the future too! For those who don't know: She's my "fôrhest"/"medryttarehäst" (?) in Oslo. I've had the joy of knowing her since 2007, and depending on where I've been studying I've been riding her more or less frequently since then. It was with her I learned to ride according to the Academic Art of Riding (akademisk ridkonst/ridekunst), and I've learned so much from her. For some years I used to be with her 3-4 times a week. The past two years when I've been living in Gothenburg I've almost not had time, but I try to visit her as often as I can (which is always way too seldom). It always feels like coming home when I am with her. We had some wonderful days together in august before I left, and I miss her very much!

Thanks to Henrik for taking the photos.

Coming home from a ride.

Otto
Before I left I had to leave Otto with my sister Inger. They both know each other very well and I'm quite sure he'll have (and is already having) a wonderful time there. But still - the feeling of leaving him is horrible! There are so many small things that keep reminding me of him, and I miss him enormously. There is no-one who reacts when I get up from my chair, or when I put on my shoes, or when I move at all, no-one who follows me around and sniffs on everything when I'm walking in the forest or barks when I'm swimming in the lakes. Strange. Flexibility and all that is nice, but I know now that for me it's not worth it - the little extra planning I have to do to get home to him and take him with me to places and the flexibility I loose is made up a thousand times and more by the everyday feeling of happiness he gives. Just so you know. Haha, I have to find a dog here that I can walk sometimes - I'm having dog abstinences... 

Thanks to Louise for the first, second and fourth photo. 

Louise, Otto and me at Vättlefjäll, Göteborg.

Otto and I visiting our Gotlänningar at Gotland.

On our regular "chew and play"-stop on the
evening walk, near our home in Gothenburg

At Sillvik, near Gothenburg.