I'm in Barca, getting sunburned (hopefully) so this is scheduled.

My I-pod is a melting pot. It’s got Britney, the Beatles, funky boybands, Adele, Queen, musical music, The Zutons, a bit of Taylor and a lot of other music. Generally bad. Other people know what music they like and make excellent playlists. I download one and one song and kinda put them together on feeling. As long as it entertains me it is fine. The next song is an example of that. Yes I actually listen to this song. Preferably when it is 8 o’clock in the morning and I’m walking to school, grumpy and in the rain. It cheers me up.

Happy - peppy - this song is crappy.

Barcelona, baby!!

Tomorrow morning at 4.30 a bus is going on the ferry here in Lavik and I have to get on that bus, becaaaaaauuuuussseeeeeee.... I’m going to Barcelona! :D Again. No, I’m kidding, I’m superstoked to go. We’re going with a big group, 48 students, and three teachers. Friday evening we’ll be back, hopefully a little browner and tired.

I’ve constantly checked the weather report this last week, because my biggest fear is walking around in Barcelona, expecting sunshine, and then it rains. I get sweat stains and it messes with my brain. And my feet will get wet.

The weather is kinda mixed, but I'm hoping they messed up at yr.no. Tomorrow I’ll be off with my suitcase full of summer clothes and sunglasses, my nonexistent Spanish skills and a good, but possibly grumpy mood. Seeeya, bloggo.

Marieke = realist.

I’m quite realistic you know. Things I am realistic about:

My cooking and baking skills are rather poor, even though I like to pretend I am a contestant on Masterchef with YEARS of experience, TONS of knowledge and BUTT LOADS of talent. I’m always over-salting and over-peppering things and I can’t remember the last time I baked a cake and actually measured the vanilla sugar and baking powder. I do it on feeling. That’s a thing I’ve got from my impeccable talent for cooking. Which is nonexistent.

My English is above average for being a 17 year old Dutch immigrant who lives in Norway. It sounds awful I know, but I have so many weaknesses that I like to brag about the few positives I actually have. My English is in no way flawless or always grammatical correct, but it is fluent. Nowadays I switch effortlessly from thinking and talking in Dutch or Norwegian to thinking and talking in English. Even though I’m not sure at all, I think that I’ll end up doing something with English, whether it is translating, working as an interpreter or teaching. Kinda scary, I know.

I seriously hate the girl who stands right in front of the instructor at Zumba and who can dance the whole routine flawlessly, always with a proud smirk and a horrible bitchy attitude. She is in the way. I don’t care how nice she looks, I hate her. And maybe there are some little sparks of jealousy when I am in the back struggling with the step-step-clap-jump-step-LINEDANCE.

I’m great at motivating other people. But I suck at motivating myself. For example, the few times I’ve jogged with someone who actually is in worse shape than me, I was excellent at cheering them on. I would jump, shout and laugh, and enjoy being a happy, little cloud of energy. But when I have to jog alone and motivate myself I really suck. I feel pains I don’t have, I need breath when I still have enough and I need water even though I just swallowed half my bottle. It is all in my head. As if my big ass brain is in the way. The same big ass brain who makes me think that I can jog. You see? There I go again. MOTIVATION IS THE KEY TO HAPPINESS. I’ll just have to say positive things to myself to motivate me.

You are NOT boring. Everyone else is boring. You are not stupid. You are just TOO smart. You are not a social failure. You are SPECIAL.

Nice way to do ''4 things you didn't know about me'', right? YES IT WAS, Marieke, you are so creative.

Bumfaceday.

I wanted to go see I Am Number Four today, but all off the sudden everyone was like; I have no money, I don’t feel like it, I’ve seen it, I’ve got homework, I have to wash my hair, I have to take care of my grandma’s schizophrenic cat, blablabla.  It was like getting mentally slapped. I didn't know I stank THAT much. Apparently I do. So now I am all L (Who knew Words had smileys?) and trying to figure out which sunglasses to bring to Barcelona next week. I'm probably gonna bring them all. There was no Glee tonight either, so today is bumfaceday.

L

Norwegian sucks. I should move.

So there I am sitting then. My socks are wet, my arms are cold and my stomach is queasy. I ate the same breakfast I eat every morning, but apparently the glowing excitement over yet another Norwegian preliminary exam in influencing something in there. NICE. In my ears I hear Darren Criss going ‘’I think it is hopeless...’’ and yes Darren, you are right as always, it IS hopeless. The tasks were especially horrible today but I’ve still got to write like 750 words about one of them. SUPAH-NICE.

-.-

:(

o.O

:?

^^

:)

:D

Oh man, you smileys always put me in a good mood again.

Darren is just singing to me about how ‘’love is all we need to make it through.’’ I feel exactly the same way. My burning love for getting home to a cuppa tea, dry socks and a new Glee episode will get me through.

DroolDrawer - I love Darren Criss.

If you don’t know who Darren Criss is:

-- Owmygawd. Are you crazy? As said, you should watch Glee. Look:

If you DO know who Darren Criss is:

-- LAY OFF! He is MINE!

Haha, no way I’m serious. You can have him too. Sometimes. Once in a while.

And it is not even just because he is pretty, cause he IS really pretty, but have you seen that energy?! Yeah, I know, it’s on tv, it’s recorded, bladiebla, but baby, look at him perform. Whoopwhoop.

I went all fangirl on the poor guy and googled him. I’m ashamed. But you know what, I am not the worst fangirl out there... There are blogs and tumblrs and facebook pages and Youtube accounts devoted to him. So I found out that googling his height wasn’t the worst. You know. Btw, he’s something around 1,75 m.

So as you might have picked up, he is on Glee. He plays Blaine Anderson the lead singer of the Warblers and Kurt’s boyfriend. He just swooped right in, and within 30 seconds he was singing an amazing version of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. Yeah sure, it is smooth and cheesy and gaytastic and I generally don’t like guys with parted and gelled hair, but I think that every female Gleek’s heart skipped a beat. The song is also holding the record for the highest first-week sales of any Glee song, so, dude, that Darren Criss must have made quite an impression right? YEAH HE DID.

Other Warblers performances; Hey Soul Sister, When I get you alone, Candles and Animal... Ow and my favourite Klaine (Kurt and Blaine, dude) performance; Baby it’s cold outsideeeeeeeeee

I also googled pictures. I feel.... silly.

"I play guitar when everybody just wants to hang out, and do weird covers of Disney songs! Who does that?"

"There's nothing more badass than being yourself."

MySpace

Ow and LOOK what his yearbook quote was!

I kinda love Star Wars too. I’m telling you, MEANT TO BE.

Sorry for the fangirl overdosis. I'll shut up now and shower.

YES.

I have 7 words for you on this lovely march evening:

The Glee episode this week was amazeballs!!

Really, really fantastic. They did original songs, also known as songs that we’ve neveeeeer heard before! That the writers of Glee wrote! (Or someone back there) It was great. So, if you have never watched Glee before, start now, with this week’s episode. Do it. You might not understand everything but that doesn’t matter because the world will look brighter after watching it. And you’ll have some awesome original Glee songs stuck in your brain for the rest of the night. Ohmygawd, Glee-gasm.

Hallucination cake

On Saturday I made this cake.

I know. It’s FANTASTIC. Not only was it awesome looking, it was actually really good too. Chocolaty. While eating you kind of expect a weird taste, but no taste at all. Except cake taste. The lovely cake taste.

I can hear you whoopwhooping so here is the RECIPE:

180 grams sugar

180 grams butter

Vanilla sugar.

(I kind of throw inn as much as I feel like, but you can measure if you want. Just pick a number.)

Pinch of salt

3 eggs

180 grams flour, sifted

10 grams baking powder

5 different food colours

Beat the sugar, butter, vanilla and salt together until light yellow. Mix in one egg at the time, beat well in between each one. Mix in the flour and the baking powder, and stir until everything is mixed inn. When I was at this point it looked like this.

Now you should try some. Yeah, I’m serious stick in your finger and lick. It is like cookie dough, but better.

Separate the dough into 5 different bowls. I must admit that I used a weight and measured this, but that is your own choice. Basically do whatever you want. Now put a dab of food colouring in each. Remember a little bit goes a loooong way with food colouring. I used two different food colourings. The orange and purple powders I bought in Amsterdam (Yes yes, funny joke, Amsterdam drugs, haha) and red, green and blue gel colours. These are all very concentrated food colours, I tried one I bought in the store (Normal ’’konditor farge’’) but that didn’t work. The orange powder colour turned out yellow, but that is okay. It was the cheap one anyway.

The colours look horrible on this picture, but that is because my camera sucks and my photographing skills suck and the light was all sucky, so you know.

Then you can pour the different colours into the tin, in whatever way you like. I didn’t take a picture of this, but I basically just put them all on top of each other in the middle, flattening it out a bit in between each layer. Then bake it on 135oC for about 60 minutes. Just check if it is done, bladebla, you know.

When done, my cake looked like this.

Delicious ey? Then I cut it in half.

Even better. At this point my family dropped in one by one and said mean things about my cake. Apparently it looks like it is moulding. I didn’t care because they like swallowed it whole when it was done.

NOW, for the chocolate icing:

150g plain chocolate, broken up into small chunks

75g butter, cubed

3 tablespoons milk

225g icing sugar, sifted

Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Gradually beat the melted mixture into the icing sugar until the mixture is smooth. Beat in the milk & mix well. Sandwich the cake with about 1/3 of the icing and spread the rest on the top & sides of cake.

Then it looked like this. I must say, my icing has improved.

Cutting was so much fun, because it looked like this.

And this.

People who ate it went like this.

Ahaaaahhahaaah, delicious.

Let’s repeat the first picture to end it with a drool.

Okay, I need to tell you something. I doubled the recipe for the cake and half-doubled it for the icing. I was planning to make two cakes and put them on top of each other but I could fit all the batter into one tin, so I did that instead. It was the size of a normal cake in the end, so I guess the moving from bowl to bowl does really cost you some batter and in the end it adds up to quite some.

You got your shades on your eyes, and your heels so high that you can't even have a good time

I’m so happy that there are still pop artists out there who make songs that actually don’t make me want to KILL MYSELF. Ahem, lady Gaga, ahem, Miley, ahem, geez there are just too many. I love this song. I love her. I love that she actually can sing.  I love the fact that her wig-like-haircut is real. I love that the acoustic version is great too. You know what I don’t love? That I’ll have to wait for tomorrow night’s glee episode until Wednesday. Ow and the fact that I crave sugar but didn’t buy anything unhealthy today. But I kind love that too. I’m conflicted. Lets listen to the song again.

A bookcase is not just a case of books it is a case of dreams. I'm so deep, I should be totally be a philosopher.

When I grow up I want a house. A pretty one in the city. On the beach. In a French village. At a lake. In the hills. Next to a Nepalese mountain. On Mars. One of those. Or all, because, you know, I’m on my steady way to becoming an billionaire.

In that house I want a slide next to my stairs and a ginourmous kitchen. I also want a room with books. Many books. I’m thinking like the library in Hogwarts. Like this;

Including the dusty ladders to reach the top books.

But I also want some modern bookcases, like this one.

Or this one.

Or these.

Or this one, which needs some explanation. It’s a staircase/bookshelf. The left picture is from the bottom of the staircase the right picture from the top. How friggin cool is that? Dirty, sure, but awesome.

Man, can you image that room? So wonderful and crazy and ugly with all those different bookcases. Right now I have two simple bookcases in my bedroom here at home, and I’ve colour sorted the books. That works so much better for me than sorting them randomly or by name, cause I always know what colour my books are. Like, the Heart of Ink series; 1 = red, 2 = green, 3 = blue, the Dutch versions at least. I totally did that without cheating, and maybe that is kind of crazy. Yeeeah. Not as crazy as wanting a room full of books though. And not as crazy as the guy who’ll have to live with me.

Slulhourse uno & dos

I should be ashamed.

I'll admit something. Ready?

I find myself funny. I genuinely do. You know how I know that? I just spend about ten minutes reading my own blog. It’s horrible. I feel like one of those self-digging egocentric…. people. But you know, I actually know why I like reading my own blog. One of the best tips for a successful blog (Not that mine is... Although the numbers are still on the rise! Well done peeps.) is; write what you yourself would like to read. And how and what I write is what I would like to read myself. I know I sound like an annoying brat, but shut up. It is good for my self esteem. Now I’m gonna go back on this blog to the start of 2009, back when I thought using smileys was supah-cool and my English sucked. Not because it is so fun. But because it is good for my vision on reality.

DroolDream - A must see.

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. - Jim Davis

It's not that chocolates are a substitute for love. Love is a substitute for chocolate. Chocolate is, let's face it, far more reliable than a man. - Miranda Ingram

 

 

The belly rules the mind. - Spanish Proverb

Chocolate is nature’s way of making up for Mondays. - Anonymous

Sometimes I wish I could play in a movie with Helena Bonham Carter, even if the only interaction we have is her torturing me and scarring mudblood in my skin.

I thought I had gotten away. After all it is March, a spring month. I really believed that I would survive this winter without it. But no, that proved too much to ask. It all started on Monday. A headache. A normal headache. I didn’t suspect a thing. How naive. The headache kept on going strong on Tuesday. I went to the gym and spend an hour with a throbbing brain. But whatev’s right? I drank water, ate dairy and went to bed early. The best things to cure a headache. Wednesday i woke up with the same aching temples. Plus something more. A sore throat. That’s when it dawned on me. This was no normal headache. Dammit.

I almost survived this year without it, but in the days that would (hopefully) be the last winter days this school year, I got a cold. So here I am, sniffing, sneezing and coughing my way through Norwegian and Spanish. Washing my hands a lot to prevent me from getting all my classmates sick. Listening half-heartedly to people who talk to me, trying to look them in the face, but I usually end up staring at them with my drooling mouth hanging half open. Delicious, ey? But, the school day is almost over, then I can go the supermarket, sneeze on the veggies, buy groceries, try to walk home, make dinner and then, hopefully, ignoring my homework and the gym, go to bed. Please excuse me now; I am going to continue trying not to scare everyone away. Whoops. I need a tissue.