Christina Swan

Camping!!

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:59:28 +0200

A few days ago I got back from a week of camping in the south of Norway. At a Christian music festival, with my youths from Tananger church and 4500 other people.

It was good! The day we arrived the rain poured down, and it kept raining and raining and raining... fortunately we put our tent up in one of the few remaining camping areas: on a mountain top... so even though we had to climb a while to get there, and go through the mud that accumulated as more and more people stepped on the rainy grass areas, we remained dry.

I made some interesting experiences that week:

1) Even though I was dreading having to camp for a whole week, I actually started to enjoy it mid-way through the week. Camping is wonderful. There is something very special about lying in a small tent when rain drops hit the shell of the tent, the birds sing in the morning, and the blueberry forest is just outside your tent opening. I ate a lot of blue berries that week.

2) I spent some time working as a journalist for the festival newspaper. That was great fun. I got to interview the famous US band "Day of Fire" (which, despite their fame, I had never heard about before), and attend a press conference with Andrae Crouch - the king of Gospel. Crouch, the man behind Gospel classics such as "Soon and very soon", "The blood that Jesus shed for me", "Jesus is the answer", etc, who's written songs that Elvis has sung, who's arranged music for Michael Jackson, Madonna and Elton John, and in films like Lion King, Free Willy etc. I told him that Ed and I are going to have one of his songs in our wedding. He asked which one and said "God bless you". What a wonderful and humble man, despite his fame and his long career as one of The world's biggest Gospel singers.

A fun week with fun people :-)

And next week I'm getting married. Eeek!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Christina

My little red car

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:48:11 +0200

I have just sent my car to the biannual EU-control... and it's not looking good :( there are quite a few things that STILL need to be fixed, grr. Since I bought it in October I've spent around 10 000 kroner (about £1000) just on fixing it. :( and that is excluding road tax, toll, insurance, etc etc etc.

Before I had a car, life was beautiful

The birds sang and prices were reasonable

I bought a red car, how exciting, eek!

But before too long it started to leak.

I tended its wounds,

I gave it a name

But it looked at me funny

"Let's play a game"

And since then it has never stopped playing with my head

From the moment I wake until it's time for bed

I miss Ed...

... and I wish I had a car that was working!

Oh well, on the bright side:

- the car gets me from A to B, and from B to C

- Ed is soon going to own the car as much as me... with all the problems entailed in owning that car

- better to be rich and healthy than to be poor and sick.

Ed's gone for a month to the UK, my family is gone for three weeks to the US and A, I am getting married in three weeks' time, and am alone... deserted... with my red car!!!

Christina

Some news...

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Fri, 11 May 2007 11:14:16 +0200

I'm predicting it. The end of the blogosphere. Facebook is the new online friends' network, and I have noticed a significant downfall in people's blogging habits lately. Anyway. That is not to say that I will stop blogging, but I think I can say with reasonable certainty that I won't blog as often as I used to anymore. There are more interesting things to do in life :-)

As a little update, though, some interesting things have happened since last time I wrote. I have finished this terms' exams! Yohoo! No more education - until I'll be taking a few courses (on teaching, and maybe also Spanish) next year. I have a new job. That means I will stop working as a youth worker in Tananger church, and start working as information manager / administration secretary for Mercy Ships in Norway. A nice office job that will hopefully reduce the evening and weeend work I've had this year.

And: I'm getting married!!! We finally decided on a date... 21st of July 2007. That's in less than two and a half months. Yikes.

Ed and I have set up a new wedding blog. So keep checking that for updates if I'm not so good at updating this blog!

http://edandchristinaswedding.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

Christina

The value of a human life

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:27:15 +0200

Which life is more worth?

An African mother with many children, whose life has been cut short by Aids? An African child who dies of malaria but never realistically had a chance to live anyway? An Iraqi intellectual killed in a car bomb in the market place? It happens every day, and we see it on the news every day, but our ears eventually grow deaf to hearing about it. 170 Iraqis killed in one day seems to be a much more acceptable occurence than 33 American college students killed with guns that the State allows.

Which life is more worth? A Sri Lankan fisherman dead in a tsunami, leaving a hungry wife and kids behind? A prisoner on death row, forced to die early because of something he's done? An American college student shot and killed in the classroom in front of terrified co-students? Saddam Hussein?

Show me the most honourable way of dying, and I will tell you which person was the most worth...

They say you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Like the value of life itself is never truly appreciated until you die. And your worth is communicated to the outside world according to how you died. What colour your skin is. Where in the world you live. Whether you live in the West or what they call the non-West, or should I say the "axis of evil", mr. Bush?

If your fifteen minutes of fame happen to come after you die, you can be assured that you were most likely a very likeable person indeed. And you were most likely white.

A black man dying of malaria - no one cares. But put the white man into the same situation, and it becomes "unnatural" and outrageous - suddenly the idea of free mosquito nets for all seems a good idea after all... An Iraqi woman killed by a market bomb in the name of peace - no one outside Baghdad notices, and her name never makes the news. If she just happened to be a white woman, however, say for example a white journalist, incidentally at the wrong place at the wrong time, the newspapers wouldn't stop writing about it until they'd exhausted every single angle of the case.

Like Barbara Bush, the mother of the US president, said in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina when visiting the crowded out stadium where refugees from Hurricane Katrine were seeking shelter amid intolerable stench, absolute poverty and mounting anarchic violence: "They were underprivileged before the hurricane came, so it isn't that bad for them".

No, it can't be that bad for them. But it's bad for us - us whities, us richies, us people who own the media and run society in many of the Western countries - the same countries that "matter" to us. Death is a sensational topic, and the number one bestseller in the tabloid newspapers. And when we're not concentrating on death, let us all turn our collective focus back to the time Britney Spears went out without underwear, in the hope that it brings up good memories of the times that have passed. For the times that are coming aren't any better.

Or are they?

Christina

You know your room is messy when...

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:03:14 +0200

- your entire selection of clothes is outside your wardrobe and not inside it

- you can't find the things you need, but the things you find you don't need

- visitors need a map of your room to find their way through it

- you have to watch your step lest you step on some dvds, or clothes, or videos, or cd-covers, and break them

- you seriously consider paying your little brother an hour's wage to tidy it up

- your Mum refuses to go in there

- all you want to do in your room is sleep

- you wonder if they've invented clothe finders, cd finders or key finders

- you wonder if they've invented a room GPS

- you need a metal detector to find your electronics

- your name is Christina...

... or perhaps I just own too many things?

Ps. This is unfortunately not my room...

A fantastic trip to a fantastic island!

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:20:41 +0100

Well, what can I say? I'm back in the cold and grey "homeland" (?) of Norway, and right now it doesn't feel like it compares to the amazing, warm, friendly island called Sri Lanka where I felt equally at home.

I had an amazing time. I don't think I've ever been to a place where people have been so friendly and smiley - if I have, I have forgotten about it.

We did more "local" stuff the days we were alone than the week we were with the rest of the group. However, our fears of the rest of our holiday turning too touristy were quickly relieved when we met the group we were going to be travelling with. The group consisted of 13 other Norwegians, in the ages of 12 to 60 (?), a fun bunch of people whom we got to know quite well as the days went on. Okay - we were tourists to an extent. We did stay in fancy hotels with swimming pools and beaches (some hotels were a little too fancy, if you ask me). We did spent lots of time relaxing in the sun, we did have nice hotel buffets bordering the unnecessary, and we did travel around a bunch of white people on a tour bus with air condition.

However, the highlights of our trip weren't these aspects of the holiday, but rather our visits to the Strømme foundation's projects on the island. We visited microfinance women's groups where a bunch of women had gone together in different loan groups and where women had set up their own businesses (from making notebooks to making thread, blankets and fishing nets) in the middle of their difficult life situation. One woman had a husband who was in prison on a life sentence due to charges of murder; the same woman struggled to support four children through her making and selling of notebooks to school children. Others had lost their relatives or homes in the tsunami, and struggled on as they tried to build themselves a new life. When the tsunami swept across the Indian ocean two years ago, 30 000 people died on Sri Lanka alone. The physical traces of the tsunami are represented in the many ruined houses and buildings we saw. What we didn't see so much was the invisible grief and the psychological problems the tsunami brought to many people.

What we saw was hope. We saw children playing and laughing in their schools. We saw diligent and intelligent women running their homes and little businesses with enviable integrity. We saw people on the street smiling, happy to be taken pictures of, happy to help us foreigners, just happy in general. And incredibly hospitable. Despite the many difficulties that life - and the tsunami - has thrown their way.

We also saw loads of money being poured into the Buddhist temples in front of gold-painted Buddhas, while people outside were begging for money for food... frustrating and upsetting, but what can one do?

What I will remember most is the hope that we saw. This hope could teach many Norwegians about the joy of just living, I'm sure. Regardless of how much or how little you have in this world. :-) Thank you Sri Lanka for a wonderful experience and a wonderful people, thank you for having me, and thank you Strømme foundation for taking me there!

Smileys from Christina

A trip to the village in Monaragala, Sri Lanka

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:14:33 +0100

Let me tell you about the highlight of the first part of my Sri Lanka trip, when I was travelling alone with Britt Celine. The highlight was definitely visiting a village in the eastern part of Sri Lanka. After having been driven for 8 hours on a bumpy traficky road by a Sri Lankan driver (25 years old, so we got along quite well), we came to a very green and remote village with a few houses scattered among the trees. Britt Celine hadn't told the people we very visiting that we were coming, because they don't have a phone in the village, so we hoped they'd be in. What joy on their faces when they recognised her white face and understood that she'd come to visit them in their remote village, all the way from Norway! I nodded and smiled and looked around the room as they spoke in Singalese. I tried to make the nine-year old girl in the house, Reno, my friend by making her my Singalese teacher while pointing to things, and by scraping coconut with her for the evening's dinner.

The house had no running water, so we had to get water from a nearby well. The toilet was a fancy long drop in a small building outside the house. The food - rice and curry and poppodum, milked rice for breakfast, and lots of coconut in different varieties - was eaten with our hands. We visited the many houses in the village the next day, played with the children, sang with the children, chased after the children, learned Singalese from the children, and drank tea. Lots of tea. Whenever we entered a new house on our mission of visiting the people BC once knew, we were offered a cup of tea. I had four cups of tea with lots of sugar that day - an achievement!!

Seeing as the house we stayed in had no running water, we bathed in the nearby brown lake to wash ourselves. This was the same lake that women wash their clothes in. We wore only a long skirt pulled up under our arms to bathe, and felt the many fish in the lake bite our calves in the water. What an experience! The day we were in that village was great, and the way home was equally entertaining.

Our Sri Lankan driver allowed us to drive the minibus ourselves - so I drove first, on the bumpy Sri Lankan road, past police crossings (the police just looked surprised, at me - a white female driver - and laughed!). Apparently we could get into trouble if the police caught us without a Sri lankan driving licence, but that was no problem said our driver, as he would be the one who was in trouble. After a while of being a jelly-legged and nervous driver, with a proper Sri Lankan driver sitting next to me, his hand on the handbreak just in case, we realised that we would get back to Colombo much quicker if we only let the driver drive. Darkness fell, and we made a wrong turn on a road on our way to the capital. After having driven over a new bridge, the driver realised we were on the wrong way, and was going to turn back on an old bridge just beside the new one. As we were driving towards the old bridge, the other way, the driver stopped the car as his mobile phone rang. Britt Celine and I sat in the back seat when we noticed a car - another minibus - creeping up beside us in the dark, the car's lights switched off, and stopping right next to our car. Lots of policemen stormed out of the car and went towards the driver's side of our car. Driver winds down the window, police asks him what it is we're doing, driver explains we took the wrong turn to Colombo and are turning back, and the police looks at him with suspicion. "Yeah right". It was dark, our young Sri Lankan driver had stopped the car in an area where no cars usually drive - the old bridge (why drive on an old bridge when you can drive on a new one?), and there were two blonde young women in the back. It certainly didn't help that a sign in the bushes next to us said "WOMEN AGAINST RAPE" in big letters. The police didn't believe the truth of our driver's statement, so they turned to us and said "no problem?" We gave the driver's version to them again, they looked skeptical and said "your passports, please". Yikes, heart pounding in chest, it's bad to be Norwegian on Sri Lanka, and we're here in the dark, but we can trust the police can't we, if they're the right Sri Lankan ethnicity - okay, we show them our passports, they shine their torches into the back of the car to see if we're smuggling weapons or drugs or anything else bad... they let us drive on. Phew!

After that curious incident, our driver became extra courteous of us, bought us buns with sugar on and the local chocolate malt drink MILO when we became hungry, and stoppe the car by the road, "cleared it" of suspicious men in the bushes, and let us squat next to the car in the dark when our bladders desperately needed relieving :-) We got back to Colombo late evening, where the house we were going to stay in (with people Britt Celine knew) was full of people and drink and food and loud singing. A Sri Lanka party for the whole neighbourhood, cool!

Living with locals was cool. See part two (above) for more information on our trip!

Christina