From the Forest

Hey guys!

Long time, no update. I have a incredibly bad internet connection at the U.S. Forest Service cabin called Frederick's, up at Fallen Leaf Lake, California. It is right next to two of the most beautiful lakes in the world, Lake Tahoe and Lake Aloha (someone must have been to Hawaii). The latter is in the middle of Desolation Wilderness, which is a designated "wilderness" area, where no road is allowed. However, I have felt much more in the wilderness in the mountains in Norway, Lake Aloha is dammed and you can see the dam, and a little bit before getting to the lake you can just about see cars in the distant, parked. But ey, I am not complaining. On the way down from Lake Aloha we saw some huge clouds in the sky ( I thought they were pointing towards something that looked like a cave in the mountain-side) , and then we realised. FIRE. 255 homes burnt down, and over 3000 acres gone, we were evacuated for 6 days, from sunday to this saturday. When we got back on Saturday we were met with 4 bottles of Champagne -- the cabin wasn't damaged at all, and we were all together again, after having spent a week in different places all around lake Tahoe. It is very strange indeed, but we have only known each other for two weeks now (one week when the fire started) and it was just so so weird to be separated like that after living in tents in the forest next to Fallen Leaf Lake for a week. The crowd is great, the selection committee did an amazing job selecting us, the participants. There are hardly any that can be described as more than a little bit annoying. :) I share a tent with Venera from Mongolia and Tanya from Severobaikals, Siberia. Then there is our chef, Vince, that know Julia that I spent 3 days during Christmas with, together with Karlis. Vince just graduated from Whitman College, and even though he went to college with Karlis for two years, they didn't speak more than 20 minutes on a porch, once. But he also know Jason, and Amber, at least know of. And Sid, that is here, also has some friends at Whitman. the World is small ( On that note -- a girl that I got to know when I was 16, i.e. 5 years ago, home in Norway spent some time in Australia and before she went home ( I think) she went by LA just before I did, and then to England with a friend of hers, where she stayed with my friend Elisabeth and discovered a picture of me on her wall, and got quite startled! :) I love it when these things happen).

As our internet connection is pretty bad, I am not able to upload things on my blog at all as often as I would like to. But know that I am good, practicing my poor, poor russian.

Here are some pictures of the last month in my life.