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aurora, piteå

Aurora Borealis

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Last night at around 9:30, Charles and I were just chilling out here in Piteå.  Then we suddenly got a text from our friend saying “Aurora!”  We dropped everything and put on coats and walked out.  We could see the aurora faintly from our building, but wanted to see better.  We went to the field outside the university.  Even there was quite bright, but standing in the middle of a snowy field was darker than anywhere else we could think of.
The field is covered in about a metre of snow.  There’s a path through the middle that’s raised and made of compacted snow.  If you stray even one centimetre off the path, you step into snow up to your bum. 

 On the way out of the field, we saw another path that would be a shortcut.  Bad choice!  It was super deep snow and NOT a path, and I fell over about 6 times.  Not a shortcut, but pretty fun!

The big pole of light is a spire at the concert hall.  It’s cute that we got it in the photos – makes the photos very Piteå-y.  A nice romantic evening in the presence of magnetically charged particles!

dress, polyvore, victorian maiden

I bought a dress!

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Victorian Maiden has a new series of dress released today – the British Check series.  There’s a one piece, a jumperskirt, and a skirt.  I really like all the pieces!  They all come in red, grey, or yellow tartan. I bought the jumperskirt in grey!
The OP is very demure with a nice long skirt.  I’m not that fond of this colourway because it looks so much like Christmas.
I adored this dress as soon as I saw it months ago.  It seems like I’m fond of underbust jumperskirts!  This will be my second.
I really like the skirt, but it seems to me like the hemlines are creeping upwards ever so slowly!  It’s still beautiful.
I bought the grey jumperskirt through Gosurori Order today.  They’ve been aware of my intentions to buy the dress for weeks now, because it was sold out in reserve when I first contacted them.  We’ve been working together checking the site for updates and finally the dress was released!  And we POUNCED.
I’ve ordered through Gosurori Order before – that’s how I got my VM Adele Bustier dress.  It’s a good fast service, and apparently they’re good at avoiding customs fees (in Australia that’s not a problem).
Because I’ve been so excited about this dress for so long, I’ve even started thinking up ways to wear it.  I went on Polyvore and had a play around with coordinates, using pictures of clothes I already have.  These are two I came up with:
VM Dress Co-Ord 2

(I don’t actually have that jacket, but I’m sure I could find something similar)
and
VM dress Co-ord 1
(I have a similar jacket that would work well, but not quite the same.  Mine has little red spots!)
I’m sure I’ll think of lots of other interesting ways to wear this dress.  It’s being sent to my house in Australia, so it’ll be there when I get home in 2 weeks exactly!  That’s another thing to welcome me home.  I really don’t want to go home!  My new life here is wonderful!
Uncategorized

Today I went for a walk on a river.

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Today was lovely and sunny so we went for a walk along the river.  And when I say along the river, I really do mean along the river.

Big paths have been cleared on the river for people to skate and walk along.  Maybe cars sometimes drive on the river too.  There were also lots of snow-mobiles driving along the snow that hadn’t been cleared away.  Charles took some of these photos too.

There are cracks in the ice, but they only make you realise how thick the ice is – some cracks you could see down a metre at least.  I think there must be no flowing water in all of Sweden.

We packed a picnic lunch not really knowing where we’d eat.  Obviously every picnic table ever is covered in a foot of snow and is inaccessible.  So Charles just sat down on the ice to eat delicious biscuits and drink delicious coffee!  He even stuck his thermos in the snow.  I thought he was super cute.

Later, he lost his beanie.  Aww.
There were lots of people walking their dogs on the river and I saw a Sheltie that had eyes just like Titan.  He came up to me and I patted him.  Then I turned away and cried!  It was weird!  But sort of lovely?
The river wound into town, so we had a chance to go to the big supermarket!  We bought SO MUCH food and then had to carry it 45 minutes home.  I made a delicious pie so everything is right with the world.
Here’s another youtube video I took of our adventure!
This is a crazy alien world!
piteå

View from outside our window

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This is the view from outside our front door in Piteå.  Snow everywhere!  Giant piles of snow!  It’s quite pretty, but it’s mostly overcast.  I’d been looking forward to seeing the Aurora, but now I don’t think it’ll happen.  I’ve been keeping a lookout!

I’ve been having a nice domestic sort of holiday.  Baking lots of biscuits and cooking lots of soups.  It’s hard for us to get around since we don’t have a car and there’s not easy public transport.  We walk everywhere.  We go to uni daily where Charles works on stuff and I practice.  I have access to practice rooms and instruments!  So I’m working on repertoire for my Honours (I totally got accepted into Honours).  Sometimes we go to friends’ houses for dinner which is lovely!

Last week we had a day that was -28 degrees.  That was a day we chose to walk into town!  Oh gosh we nearly died.  Even though we had all our warm clothes on, the air attacks your face and your breath freezes on your cheeks and in your nose.  My gloves are only knitted, so they were practically useless.  My boots, although warm, couldn’t stand the cold and my feet turned into blocks of ice.  It was crazy cold!  It’s usually only about -12 so it’s quite okay.  I’m going to have way different definitions of cold from now on.

We’ve been taking photos with the Diana Mini and we’re going to walk into town (45 minutes ugh) to get them developed tomorrow!  I hope!

I took a video of us walking into uni the other day.  It’s not that interesting if you’ve lived with snow!  But for my Australian friends, it’s kind of bizarre.

london

Recent Adventures: London!

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On the evening of the 30th of December, Charles, Lisa, and I took the Eurostar chunnel train to London.  Pretty cool!  We stayed at a youth hostel type place LITERALLY one street away from Buckingham Palace.

London was marred by a bad cold for me.  I bought lots of cold drugs (all super cheap and easy to obtain in London) and soldiered on as well as I could.  Like Paris, in London we went to a bunch of museums – Tate Modern Art Museum, Natural History Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.  They were all really huge and we didn’t see all of any of them!  I particularly liked the V&A Museum because they had lots of old textiles and lace, as well as theatre costumes.  It was really interesting!  I also liked the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum.
While we were in London, Charles and I took a day trip to see my family-in-law who live in Greater London.  It was so good to finally meet them!  My parents haven’t even met my sister-in-law’s parents.
Shopping in London was fun!  We went to two markets: Portobello Road markets, and Camden Town markets.  We didn’t buy anything at Portobello Road, but it was a great market and lots to look at.  All the houses were painted different pastel colours.  Cute!  Camden Town markets were amazing.  Lots and lots of stalls selling dresses that all looked like they were straight out of Modcloth.com.  I bought two dresses there!
Another great shopping area is Oxford street.  We went there on Jan. 3rd, which was the last day before Britain raised the VAT (some GST type tax), and there were New Year’s Sales, and as a result the shops were SUPER crowded.  Lisa bought two jackets there.  I was pretty sick that day, but managed to enjoy myself by going to a Vivienne Westwood shop.  It was amazing!  All completely out of my price range.  The clothes were gorgeous creations and the shoes were bizarre and the bags were cute.  Great!  That day I also bought my Irregular Choice shoes.  Awesome.
Food was a bit of a problem since some days the supermarkets were inconveniently closed.  We sometimes struggled to find a good place to eat, and it was especially hard because I was sick – by dinner time I was so tired I just wanted to grab a salad and go home.  Couldn’t always do that!  But the best place we found to eat was called Pret a Manger – amazing organic fresh food.  Delicious!
London is quite clean at the moment because they’re hosting the Olympics in 2012.  I guess that means they want to tidy up the place for the visitors.  There were lots of policemen about too – making me think of the Bill theme song.  Their hats are tall!
The best thing about London was that I could talk to people in English.