Secret Santa

For years and years, my Norwegian friends and I have exchanged holiday gifts via the pseudonym Secret Santa.

Since there are so many of us (I think there were 15 participants in this last one), we decided long ago to opt to give one larger, useful, well-thought-out gift to one person rather than 15 tiny, useless ones to all 15 people, even though everybody loves everyone else just as much.

One designated individual, the only one who knows the whole spiel, usually draws names out of a hat and links them to the receiving end sometime in early December. On December 22nd or thereabouts, the whole gang gets together. Each person puts their parcel into a huge burlap sack, making sure no-one else is watching to see what kind of wrapping paper he or she used, and then the gifts are distributed, but not opened. Everyone must wait two more days until Christmas Eve to open the gift at the proper time. Secret Santa is not a game.

Barcelona!

As earlier advertised, I just spent 3 marvelous days in Barcelona visiting my two friends, Tesse and Stefan, who're studying there this year.

Absolutely everybody I talked to about Barcelona before I went is crazy for the city, and raved about how beautiful, gorgeous, and amazing it is. And it turns out, I wholeheartedly agree. I fell in love with the city at first sight. And first taste.

Pre Barcelona Tapas

Today I leave for 3 days in Barcelona, then two and a half weeks in Norway for the holidays!

How is this happening when I'm without a steady job and my savings are depleted? I ask myself the same thing.

Edible Happiness

A friend of mine has a few weeks off from working this month, and has taken the opportunity to explore what New York has to offer in the form of activities. He's been to meditation groups, free yoga (suggested donation of $5, apparently), taken up voice lessons, the works.

Today, after work (yes! I'm working for PAY this week...), I met up with him for another event he wanted to try out, a group called Rooftop Films. They arrange screenings of films (sometimes short, sometimes feature length, sometimes fiction, sometimes documentary, sometimes somewhere inbetween) that aren't distributed through other channels. It's a great opportunity for the filmmakers they select to get an audience and create some hype around their films.

The Thanksgiving Post

Thanksgiving is probably, most definitely the absolute greatest holiday ever. An entire holiday dedicated to eating! It’s not religious, so it doesn’t make me feel awkward for pretending to be, or rather for not being, religious myself, and although I guess I could feel awkward about what Americans (colonists?) did to the Native Americans way back when, none of my family was in America at that time. And anyway, what my ancestors did is not what I did. Plus why search for something to feel awkward about when you could be stuffing yourself with a turkey and 5 different kinds of pies?

The other part of Thanksgiving is, of course, all about family, which I also think is great. The thought of gizillions of families all over the country stopping (For An Entire Day!) to share a meal together and keep traditions going and creating new ones. This is a nice thought.

My family, like all families, is crazy.

Visits and the search for Key Lime Pie

Last week, my friend, Hilde, was in from Norway visiting. She knows the city well and has a much more passionate love affair with it than I'll ever have. While living here last spring, she fell hard for the big apple, resulting in her coming back to visit just 5 months after she last left. Walking around last week, she would point out all of the pretty and fun things about New York, things I tend to overlook. I guess I've been so busy trying to get settled in New York, that I forgot to look around and take in a lot of the great things about it. The visit was kind of like having a sleepover continuously for 12 days, of course with a whole bunch of food and fun and NYC mixed in.

Although there was a lot of great (and luckily cheap!) food involved in Hilde's visit, the best food day was last Monday when we went on an adventure with Alex Jones: on a quest in search of the allegedly best key lime pie in the city, possibly the world. Alex Jones had been talking about this pie for at least a month, and we had designated the day to find it.

New York Night

A couple weeks ago, I was hanging out with my friend, Tishon, looking through the Norwegian newspapers online, when I came across an article, "Verdens Beste Burger Finnes i New York" or "The World's Best Burger is in New York" directly translated. It was an article about Jean Luc Naret, the director of the famous Michelin guide, a company which is not just known for tires and big squishy marshmellow men, but also for awarding stars to the best restaurants in the world. He knows his stuff, in other words. The article goes over some of the things that are special about him, like that he can't cook, he eats out 365 days a year, he never eats on planes and that, yes, he does eat junkfood from time to time and finally names a place called "Burger Joint" in New York as the best burger in the world.

"The best burger in the world?" I said excitedly and told Tishon what the article said.

"I've eaten there!" he said, "It's the kind of place you need to know about to find. We should go."

And go we did.