Last week I finally finished my thesis, and can now proudly add the Siviløkonom (or just Siv. øk.) title to my (future) business card! Here are the stats: my thesis has 99 pages, 26,777 words, 174,017 characters, contains the results from 4,888,880 simulation iterations, and I pity the two fools that actually have to read it (my supervisor and an external sensor). I do not envy James who will have to start working on his in about 6 weeks time, but at least he will have a great office in our beautiful new home to work in.
After the graduation ceremony Friday evening, James and I took the funicular up one of Bergen's seven mountains, Fløyen (425 metres), and had a lovely meal at the mountain-top restaurant. What a magnificent view, and a great way to celebrate the completion of my education.
The last few weeks have been crazy, and have involved a couple of return trips to Bergen. The 8-hour car trip over the mountains is really scenic and beautiful though, and here are some highlights:
Out of the last 2 weeks prior to completing my thesis (and James finishing his exams) I only spent one day with Isabelle, and it was really nice to return home and be able to relax and have fun with my little girl. The weather over the last couple of days have been beautiful, hitting 30 degrees today, which means Isabelle has been loving her little plastic pool out in the garden. James snatched this photo a couple of days ago when she was having a warm shower after playing outside in the cold water for hours - I think it clearly shows just how much she's enjoying summer!
Yesterday, James, Isabelle and I rode to Pernille's place (my brother's girlfriend) in Sandefjord (we have a bicycle-trailer for the little one) for Midsummer celebrations, called Sankthansaften/St. John's Eve or Jonsok/John's Wake; the eve of celebration before the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist, although it has been celebrated since the times of the Vikings. It was the day where the medieval wise men and women (the doctors of that time) would gather special herbs that they needed for the rest of the year to cure people. Bonfires on the beach, speeches, picnics and songs are traditional, although bonfires are built in many other places where beaches may not be close by (i.e. on the shores of lakes and other waterways, parks, etc.). Here is a photo of the bonfire at Granholmen, which is really close to Pernille's house:
The bonfire was lit at 10 pm, and Isabelle the lucky girl got to stay up late and participate in the festivities. It is generally a bit difficult to convince her that it is bed-time nowadays, as she will often respond: "men det er ikke mørkt ute!" - it is not dark outside. I think we will have to teach her how to tell time as soon as possible so we can more easily convince her that is is actually quite late, even if it is light outside. On the way back from the beach Isabelle picked some flowers, and she was singing to them the whole way home. She even kissed them at one stage, and I was lucky enough to catch the moment!
Hope you are all well, we will hopefully be much better at updating the blog over summer as we have a bit more time on our hands. We are hoping to go to Denmark for a short holiday next week, if I can get some reasonable priced tickets with the ferry. I'm going to book them tomorrow, and since Pernille's sister works at bookings and can offer a friends-discount, I think we'll be in luck! Beyond this trip we're planning on spending the summer holiday organising all of our stuff and preparing the big move. We get the keys on July 18, which is only 3.5 weeks away now - and we are so excited about it! We can't wait to have some of you come over and visit us in the near future...
