The blog(s)

Long time again since last post.. The reason is mainly that I am not quite sure what I want with the blog at the moment. In the beginning I had an idea, but the idea transformed into many ideas, and now I feel that I should either make a limitiation so that the blog has a kind of theme or thread or frame, - OR that I should make it a really true and personal blog about everything in my daily life. At the moment it is mostly the last (a personal blog about everything), but at the same time it is not, because I have so many limitations in what I want to share with (theoretically) everybody in the world. I dont really feel the need to have a detailed personal diary either. I love reading personal blogs myself, and I think that if I write a personal blog with lots of limitations and censur it is not very interesting for anybody, not even myself.

So, I am not blogging much at the moment. I thought I would give it a break, until I know exactly what I want to blog about. In the meantime I will enjoy reading all my of favourite blogs, which has become a long list now. My two main favourite "blogframes"  at the moment are intercultural relationships (Especially western + Nepal) and personal blogs about homesteading & art.

I have many blogs to recommend in relation to this (I dont know if my favourite list is visible in my blog?) Some of them are the following:

http://nepalilovestory.com
https://whitegirlinasari.wordpress.com

http://smilerynker.blogspot.dk
http://woolymossroots.com

Hope you will enjoy any of them as well.


PS: I am still waiting for the baby. He will probably arrive in about three weeks. :-)

Names

If this was a blog only about how I am spending my days right now, it would be a quite boring read to most people. It would go something like this: Changed my sons diaper again, then made him food, then fed him,  felt really tired because of lack of sleep, changed his diaper again, bla bla bla. Highlights would be information about his new tooth (It looks so cuuuute) and his new skill: Raising himself up everywhere (He is so clever. And cute) Sometimes the practical repetitions are boring even for me, but the fact that he is so cute and lovely makes it kind of wonderful anyway.

Look! New tooth!

Anyway, this means that most of the adventorous stuff in my life is happening inside my brain. Lots of less adventorous things are happening there too, like LISTS. As I have written about before, I love making lists..One of my favourite lists at the moments is the name-list. As you know, we are expecting a new baby in february, and this little person is going to have a name. We also recently found out that we are expecting another boy. :-) So now it is more concrete, and feels more real.

So, I made some lists, with boys names. (Not that I hadnt done before. I think I started it already 15 years ago, haha. But now I made a new one, where I tried to shorten it down a bit..)
Luckily my husband thinks it is my task & pleasure to find the name, and as long as he has nothing against the name it is all ok for him.

I dont know why, but boys names are just so much more difficult to find than girls names. I have names ready for 20 daughters already. But for boys it seems as if you have to choose between a not nice name, or a nice name which is too common. Since we are an international couple we also have some "rules" to follow. One rule is that it needs to be possible to pronounce it in both Norwegain, Danish, English and Nepali. And this creates another rule: The name should not have an R in it, and it shall not end with a J.

Finally I had a list with four names, and in  addition I found a Nepalese name which I liked. (After a long search, because even there it was more difficult finding nice boys names than girls names) When I told my husband the Nepalese name I had found he told me that name is almost too common, even though I have never heard it before. He said that if we named our son that, and then gave him his fathers surname, he would sound like a very average and traditional Nepalese person. We then decided it could be a middle name, and find another main name/first name.

I then went back to my list with four names:
S or I or V or D.
(Sorry, I am a little bit supersticious, so I cant tell you the whole names until he is born)

S =  Maybe my favourite among the four. But I dont know if it sounds weird in other languages/countries, I could just imagine it would sound really weird when being pronounced by Nepalese people. In addition this name didnt fit well with the second name (The nepalese one) When I said them both together it sounded weird.
I: Ok, but not my favourite. But this sounded really nice and right with the Nepalese name.
V: Deleted because it ended with the same letter as the second name started with, and it sounded weird.
D (Dante) Deleted, because when I told my husband about this name he said it is basically the same as tooth in Nepali! (Danta)

So, we ended up with I, because it sounded nice with the second one, and harmonious, and so on, and could be pronounced in all languages.

Then....two weeks later my husband suddenly said: Is the name really finalized? Because I really want all of my children to start with an S. Cant you find a name starting with an S? (He has a daughter from before, and her name by coincidence also starts with an S) The funny thing is that the only name on my list which was not deleted was actually starting with an S. This was also my favourite from the beginning. He repeated it and surprisingly it did not sound weird from the mouth of a nepalese at all. So, now that is finalized! His first name will be S, and it will sound weird together with the second name, but at least it will sound nice with Silas, and thats what we will hear in our daily speaking.


I promise that my next blogpost will be either shorter, or more interesting, or at least not include codes and secret names.

Nepalweather and good news

Today we have Nepal weather. That`s what I call it when the sky is without any cloud, and the air is bright but misty at the same time. My husband calls it dashain weather, because it`s the weather they have in Nepal during the month of dashain, which is one of the biggest festivals there. (Comparable to our christmas)

This weather always makes me want to travel to Nepal again, and as the situation is now, my best way to travel is through youtube. My favourite video is this one here, - Nepal in a nutshell in seven minutes. It has everything I remember from my first and longest travel in Nepal: Steep and hilly way to school. Blue plastic sandals. Scary kitchen knife. Eating rice with the hand. The special light of a Nepalese morning. Dangerous traffic. Children playing with the leaves from a plant. Beutiful people.

By watching this video I can almost feel that fresh morning air and the smell of nepalese food.

And now, the good news: I am pregnant! :-) If everything goes well, little Silas will be a big brother in february 2015.

Silas Nimai

I have been quite busy lately, so havent written in a while, but now I`m back. One of the things which has taken my time has been planning the name celebration for Silas. It ended up being a really nice day. As I told you in my previous post Silas Nimai means forrest/tree + light/shining, so we celebrated his arrival in this world and his name with a lantern party in the forrest. Unfortunately I almost forgot to take photos, so I only have a few.

The party was held in a cottage in the forrest. Both Silas and his father were wearing traditional Nepalese clothes, and I was wearing my Norwegian national costume.

After welcoming people and introducing the guests, we started off with making lanterns. Everybody was asked to make their own, as a symbol of giving him light and make this concrete. After making the lanterns we had a short kind of ceremony, where we wished Silas welcome to the world with the help from a nice song (I`ll add the youtube video, but its in Swedish, and as the words are the most important thing in the song, it might not make so much sense to everybody) The song is about wishing a small baby welcome to this world and giving him love.

At the same time as playing the song, I started sending a flame from my candle around the table. With my candle I lit the the next persons candle, and so it continued around the whole table, so that everybody got light from the person sitting next to them. Eventyually we were sitting in a circle of light, and then we lightened the lanterns. With the lights we wished Silas a bright and happy future, and we sang a song which I had made for him about this.

After the light ceremony we had delicious nepalese food, brought out to us in the forrest, from a nepalese & tibetan restaurant.

Later we were supposed to have a quiz walk in the forrest, but as the weather was not so good at this time we did it in and around the cottage instead. Everybody had got a colour on the back of their name sign, and everybody with the same colour were on the same team. I had hidden the posts, and the questions they were supposed to find and answer were about Silas and things related to him.

We also sang a lot of songs, while my brother played the guitar. Silas will be able to read about this all in some years, as we had brought a book for everybody to write and paint in.

In the evening we had cakes and coffee, and in the later evening we put all the lanterns outside, to see them glow in the dark. They looked really nice while standing there and shining through the darkness, as a symbol of all the happy wishes we have made for him and his future.

Name, life, lanterns

In august we are going to have a party, to celebrate that Silas has arrived in this world, and that he has got a name.

His first name means "tree/forrest/the one who came from the forrest" His second name means "filled with light" Because of this, we will fill the forrest with light, by arranging a lantern party. Since it will be in august, both the day and the night will be bright. So lanterns are maybe not a very logical option. But we decided to make it anyway, and call it a lightparty, where we will involve all kinds of lights. Lanterns, bonfire, candles, the sun...and it will all start off with all of us making lanterns together. The lanterns will be used later, as a way to wish Silas a bright and happy life.

These days I am spending some time on planning the details and getting things settled. The other day I decided to make a couple of simple lanterns, just as a test to find out some things about the process, and to have a couple of examples. It was quite fun.

Nepali

Each time I am in Nepal I regret I didnt learn nepali before I came. And each time I promise myself that when I come home I will study it intensely, so that I am able to communicate in nepali on my next trip. It still hasn’t happened, but recently I decided to give it a new try, and in a new way:

I chose a few sentences (and other things related to the language) which I wanted to learn, and asked my husband to tell me the translation and how to pronounce it. Then I wrote the sentences down on my blackboard wall. (Sometimes with my own fonetic language instead of (or in addition to) the correct spelling, so that I will remember the pronunciation) The plan is that I will read it every time I pass, and then practise it in my head right after having passed it. When I have finally got the sentences stored in my memory, and always remember them without looking at the wall, I will find some new sentences. And so on. 

 

 

 

Painting with babies

 

Painting with children can be quite nice. At least when I think about it. You can get cheap big art on your wall in exactly the colours your room needs, it might look like modern art, and when people ask if you made it yourself you don’t need to reply yes, but can almost truly tell them it was made by a child. The process is usually fun too.

 

Last time I did this was together with the two sweet twins Bjørn and Birk:

 

 

This time I wanted to make a painting where Silas hands were in focus. I have seen so many parents making things with their childrens hands, but I rarely found it very beautiful. There must be a good reason why people make these thing though, since so many are doing it, and of course I can see the point too. So I wanted to make something using his hands, and which could be stored for the future.

 

When I was pregnant with Silas I started having a lot of wonderful dreams about butterflies. The dreams were so special and lively, and the butterflies were more beautiful and magic than you can ever imagine. So, I decided I would make a painting where his hands turned into butterflies. You know, - put paint on his hands and then put his hands on the sheet, and one hand is one butterfly wing. Can you imagine? So could I. I concluded though, that I should probably wait for someone to join me, so that one of us could put his hands on the painting and the other could prevent him from eating the paint. So I waited, but then I got impatient almost right after having started waiting, and decided I could probably do it myself anyway. Then I again concluded I couldn’t, but was still impatient, so I decided that during the process of waiting I would make something else to the painting where I also were using hands as butterflies. I decided to make these butterflies by just drawing around his hands. Well, let me just say that this wasn’t as easy as it sounds either. I put him on the stomach on the top of the painting, but suddenly he forgot how to hold his head.. (I should have painted his nose) Nothing happened though, he was happy again after some seconds. But the result is that I still have a half painted thing standing in my livingroom, wich includes some strange drawings with a pencil, and which I cant even lie about when people ask me who painted it