Hello, Dearest readers! I suppose it is somewhat arrogant of me to assume that I still have readers left, considering my horrendously long absence and lack of recent, laudable material, but if my suspicion holds true then that means that no one is here to call my bluff. So I shall ramble happily on.

I have been in Norway for two weeks come this Thursday (23.6.05) and I am enjoying the experience thus far. One thing that I have encountered, however, is a copious, almost painful amount of free time, in which I haven`t the luxuries of modern America to remedy. It`s not as if I`ve fallen into an Amish village, don`t get me wrong;they have more english speaking television programming here than I do back home. Their small home is equipped with most niceties when it comes to technology (minus the most boredom-alleviating one, the holy intarweb), but I don`t have acquaintances and work to keep me busy.

I have thus taken up sketching and, though it`s taken me a while to pull out the lap top and start typing away, I think I`ll return to writing regularly. As I said, they haven`t hooked up their dial-up (shudder) quite yet, but when they do I`ll start to post regularly once again. My sketching is actually somewhat impressive. I can draw a really, really nice little sketch given, you know, 5 and a half hours.

I adore it here. Things are simple. Granted, that might just be because my grandparents are retired and they live in a very small town, but I enjoy the slow pace regardless. Most of the time. There are moments when I miss home, and I miss people. I miss people who speak English.

My grandparents are absolutely darling. I can`t believe that I`m related to such hospitable people, I find it somewhat shocking at times, really. They are kind enough to display patience while I stumble through Norwegian, and use their limited but incredibly clear English to help me out when necessary. Everybody here speaks English, but I haven`t had a conversation, a real, we-speak-the-same-language-fluently-and-well conversation with the exception of phone calls (pricey ones, might I add. I plan to limit my spending so that I can leave a couple hundred dollars with my grandparents for the phone bill.)

Things are going well, and it looks as if I'll be posting often, because I just heard we're getting broadband. I'm off for now, though. Take care, darlings.