Nytt år, nye muligheter

Då var det allereie september igjen, og det nye skuleåret er i gong. I should actually write all of this in English, since I’m studying English this year.

Well, that’s a challenge.

And I want to try. It's good practice.

So let’s start over again:

September is here, a new year of studies have just begun, and I’ve got an awful lot of plans and wishes for the two next semesters. Unlike other years I already have a good feeling about the fulfillment of at least some of my brilliant plans.

One of my strongest intentions for the autumn is to walk more in the mountains. Under that topic I had a specific goal: For a long time I’ve been wanting to go to Løvstakken, one of the mountains close to Bergen City. It’s not a high mountain compared to the other mountains in the area, and absolutely not compared to Norwegian mountains in general. The path is said to be good, and I know many students and other people that go there quite often, and seem to enjoy the trip. Therefore, after four years in Bergen, it was about time that I went there myself. And then, when I found out that one of my best friends, - from Bergen -, hadn’t been there either, we just had to go as soon as possible.

“As soon as possible” turned out to be yesterday, a Friday, which is the self-study day of the English course at HIB. “Studying harder on my own” is also one of my strong intentions for the next semesters, but this specific day we decided to study the sun, the nature and the coordination of the human body instead of English books. I don’t regret it. It was a lovely afternoon. We got to see known places in Bergen from a totally different angle, and we also got to explore new places, unknown streets, hidden paths, and wonderful gardens and houses.

Even though we didn’t manage to stay indoors in the reading hall yesterday, I actually think that studying harder will be possible this year. The first reason why I believe this is that I like my timetable much better this year than the last years at the “Teacher with music” course. We have lessons 08.30 to 10.50 Monday through Thursday. That’s all, compressed and nice. The starting time, though, may seem brutal, but I think it will be good for me to get into a normal rhythm, and wake up early every morning. I like getting the lessons done first, I think, and then work individually afterwords. It’s so much easier, - I'm sorry to admit this -, to force myself to get up early when the teacher and the attendance list are waiting.

I really love that we only have one subject to focus on. It has never happened before in my life. I’ve always had music and lots of other different things mixed together every week or even every day. Often I’ve liked it, it gives a lot of variation, but at the same time it’s requires so much extra time to switch between the different subjects and rooms and books. Of course we have lots of different books now also, but everything is connected to English at least. And we have our own classroom! It’s much nicer and brighter than the reading hall in the cellar at Landås, and hopefully much more quiet than the library.

In the addition to the good things about the rooms and the times this year, we have the good things about English itself. It’s a language, I like languages. It’s also a very useful language: It's useful when I’m traveling to other countries (I like traveling to other countries), it's useful when I talk to foreigners in Norway ( I like talking to exchange students, tourists, new inhabitants, guesting artists..). English is also to be found in books and films of all kinds (and I like books and films of all kinds). So this will certainly be a lovely year, won’t it?

Right now, I’m listening to Pain of Salvation, their acoustic live CD, one of the best CDs ever, lyrics in English. I’m writing a blog post, in English. So you can actually say that I’m studying right now. A Saturday evening/Sunday night, while relaxing.

And about relaxing, that’s also one of my strongest wishes for this year; to be able to sit down, drink a cup of licorice tea, read a book, write, or just think, listen to music, watch a film, together with friends, but also alone sometimes, because that’s a thing I really have had a problem with since I moved away from home at the age of 16. But when I decide to try, and get past the first helpless lonely feeling, it’s actually quite nice. I can listen to music that my boyfriend and my friends don’t want to hear, I can choose exactly the film I want to see that exact evening.

Maybe I should make it a tradition to party Thursdays and Fridays, and then stay at home alone on Saturday evenings, without my flatmates, without my boyfriend and with my mobile phone broken…