Finally studying! For FREE!!

A couple of months ago one of my friends on Facebook posted about MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), a website offering FREE online courses! Of course I had to check this out since I've been wanting to study for ages, but either not knowing what I wanted to study or just not had the money to actually study a chosen subject.

I got a bit too excited about all the interesting free courses and signed up for 5 at once! Normally each course is only supposed to take up a few hours of your time each week, I have been stuck inside on my laptop every free minute I've had! So take it from me: don't sign up for more than one or two courses at a time!!

Although studying has been taking up most of my time for the past 4 weeks, I am absolutely loving it! It's been really nice to have something to do other than veg out in front of the TV when I'm at home.

The great thing about these courses being free is that if you find that the course isn't for you, or that you don't have time to finish it, you haven't lost anything. You haven't wasted a chunk of your money and you haven't wasted time because time spent learning something new is time well spent.

We are never done learning.

I only signed up for one course at first, one that didn't offer a certificate of achievement. I just wanted to see if I was even able to study at home on my own. Then, after I had spent one day doing the first module of that course, and loved it, I signed up for another 4 starting the next week... A tad too ambitious, but when I saw a course I liked the look of I just wasn't able to leave it and wait for the next time it would start.

I am now in the last week of my courses, I need to finish them all by Tuesday. So far I have finished 3, I've only got 2 left, the "problem" is that I've got 2 weeks of catching-up to do on both and they are the toughest ones, I think anyway. I still love them though.

The courses I signed up for are:

• Fairy Tales: the origins and evolution of princess stories - Finished. This is the one I started with that offers no certificate, very interesting
• Climate Change - Finished
• Writing for the web - Finished
• The art of photography
• Food, nutrition & your health

They are all very interesting subjects, I might write more about some of them in a separate blog post.

Take my advice though; although I know I will be able to finish all 5 courses before Tuesday I would (hopefully) not sign up for 5 at a time again, I need to limit myself to 1 or 2 so that I can also have a social life as well as be able to have some "me" time.

We can never learn too much.

The courses might not offer academic credit but it might help you find out a bit more about what you like, what you might want to study for academic credit, what you might want to work with... Or it might just be a bit of fun learning.

1940's Weekend - Life on the Home Front

I usually walk past the Chesterfield Museum and Art Gallery every day on my way to work. 

As I walked past on Saturday I noticed some lovely 40's cars parked outside, I took some quick pictures but as I was heading to work I didn't have time to explore more. I was quite upset I didn't know about the exhibition that caused the cars to be there but it's only my own fault for not paying more attention to what goes on in town.

As soon as I got home from work Saturday night I found out that the exhibition was on for the whole weekend and as I was off on Sunday I decided to go then. 

Chesterfield Museum and Art Gallery is very small so it wasn't a huge exhibition but they did have a lot of interesting things concerning life on the Home Front in the 1940's. 

Unfortunately they didn't have as many of the gorgeous 40's cars outside on the Sunday so I didn't get any more pictures of them.

It's not going to be easy...

I have PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome). Not really a huge deal but it's also not something that can't be cured.

I haven't really read a lot about PCOS other than when I happened upon an article about it in Cosmo which made me get checked out for it, which is nearly 10 years ago now, although I didn't find out that I actually have it until a few months ago. So I decided to do some reading about it to find some other way of controlling it than having to be on the pill all the time.

Turns out that, like with most things, I can control it by diet and exercise. So now I have a whole list of foods I am supposed to avoid. I have however decided that, while I will avoid the foods on the list when I'm at home, when I go out for meal with friends I will eat whatever I feel like.

The stuff I'm supposed to stay away from is; crisps, chocolate, biscuits, potatoes, white rice, pasta, dairy, frozen ready meals, rice cakes, soy and gluten.

After hearing the list quite a lot of people have said: "You're already vegetarian! You won't be able to eat anything now!"

It is true that the items on the list makes eating a lot easier, especially pasta and things with gluten like bread and cereal, but there is still plenty of things to eat. Instead of having toast or cereal for breakfast I have a smoothie, which also helps me getting some of my 5 a day.

It's an adjustment. It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change. I'm not saying it's easy, far from it! It's especially difficult when I'm at work and see all the chocolate, biscuits, baked-goods and ready-meals I should stay away from. The cravings are a nightmare!! How do people manage not to give in to their cravings?! I must admit I've had some dark chocolate a couple of times to satisfy the cravings, justified by telling myself at least it doesn't have dairy in it.

In a strange way I'm kind of happy I have to stay away from all of those things though, it forces me to eat healthier, something I've been meaning to do for years. I mean, how can a home made meal every night with healthy ingredients and lots of fruit and vegetables be bad for you? At least now I might actually get my 5 a day every day.

Now I just hope that I will be able to stay away from the things I'm supposed to stay away from and that maybe the cravings will ease up, or that I will at least have the willpower to stay away from them unless I go out for dinner.

Vestnes

Last week I was back in Norway for a few days. It was really nice to see some of my family and friends again, and there was even a little bit of snow!

Asterix

One of my friends who lives in Trondheim had travelled down to Molde for a few days so I was very happy to see her for a few hours on Tuesday before she had to head back north. 

Before I left the UK I had already decided that I wanted to walk up one of the small mountains and watch the sun rise over the mountains, weather permitting. As my mum was off work I managed to convince her to come with me. I'll admit, when I woke up Wednesday morning I was kind of hoping for an overcast sky so I could go back to sleep but as soon as I saw the stars when looking through the blinds I was happy to get out of bed.

When we parked at the parking lot for the mountain we were nervous we were going to miss the sunrise as the sky was already pink above the mountaintops, so we walked fairly quickly to the top… Which isn't really that quick when there is snow on the ground and you're very unfit.

When we got to the top the sun luckily hadn't come up over the mountains yet so we found a nice place with a view to sit down and have some tea and "tjukklefse" (a local snack). 

How we didn't loose our fingers to frostbite I don't know! The sun took its sweet time getting all the way over the mountains. In the paper it had said sunrise would be at 9.45, but as we came to realise that means the sea-level sunrise, not the mountaintop sunrise. 

It was still completely worth it though and we both got some very nice pictures, I only had my phone camera to take pictures with as I didn't pack my DSLR for this trip to Norway.

Although I had things planned for every day I was in Vestnes I din't feel like I was rushing about at all, it still felt like a relaxing vacation, but then again it's more like going home than anything else, and I don't have to go to work!

The best game in the world!

Whirly Wednesday

Suck it, Nerds!

Been a while since I've done a meme now, but the title of this was just so funny; how could I not do it? As usual I got it from Sunday Stealing. Feel free to join in!

What would you totally eat right now? Chocolate!

Do you always wear a certain piece of jewellery? Although I'm not Catholic I always wear the St Christopher necklace a friend gave me while I was in Australia.

What kind of jeans do you like? I'm extremely picky when it comes to buying a new pair of jeans, but I tend to go for bootcut.

What's something on your want list? A holiday

Is animal print tacky? Depends on how much you're wearing and how.

Give me a good quote that you like? I'm not great at remembering quotes but I do like Tesco's "Every little helps", because it's true.

Do you bite your nails? No.

What kind of smells do you like? Clean clothes that have been hanging outside to dry in the summer.

Do you wear perfume or cologne? Perfume but if I'm not working I don't put perfume on if I washed my hair that morning.

What do you think is overrated? 50 Shades of Grey.

Next movie you want to see? The next hobbit movie.

Would you change your eye colour if you could? Depends if I could change it back again if I didn't like it or if I could change it whenever I would, that could be cool; change your eye colour depending on your makeup and what clothes you're wearing, without spending money on coloured lenses.

What are your goals for the remainder of this year? Try not to kill the customers at work.

When is the last time you were at the hospital? About 5-6 months ago for a scan.

Who introduced you to your current significant other? If you're single, who introduced you to your last ex? Met my last ex at a party, neither of us knew the host but had been brought to the party by friends, who also didn't know each other. 

10 Lake Spectacular Winter Tour

On Friday I had booked the 10 Lake Spectacular Winter tour with Mountain Goat through GetYourGuide. I had actually booked it for Thursday but right after I booked  it they told me that one was full, luckily, since I was still planning to be in Windermere on Friday, they offered to move me onto that tour instead. 

The minibus picked me up from my B&B and once everyone was picked up we were 6 passengers on the minibus. Our guide for the day was Tony, who I have to say have a perfect voice for being a guide, he spoke clearly and not too fast, he also seemed very knowledgeable as well as interested in what he was telling us about, as all good guides should be.

I'm not going to tell you about every step of the tour as I think you should go and experience it for yourselves if you can. I also don't have pictures of every single lake anyway as sometimes the minibus stopped in places where we couldn't get out to take pictures. It might be just as well though as I think sometimes I get too focused on looking through the camera lens and I don't actually see what's around me.

The first place we stopped was Kirkstone pass, with its 500meters it's the highest pass in the Lake District, going up it was kind of like going up a steep mountain road in Norway. The view was amazing and I bet it's even more so when the sky is clear, but at least it was dry on Friday, and seeing the top of the fells hiding in the clouds is pretty cool as well.

With the high fells and big lakes driving through the Lake District was a lot like driving through Norway, until we came to the very typical small british villages; some of them very small but packed with character! Some places along the road there were flood markers, apparently the water sometimes get as high as 3 feet!

One of the best views on the tour was from the lookout named Surprise View, where we could see Derwent Water and Bassenthwaite Lake in the distance. Apparently even prettier in summer but I really liked it with all the pretty autumn colours. A little bit down the road from Surprise view is Ashness Bridge, built in the 1600's and apparently the most photographed bridge in England.

We stopped for lunch in Keswick, I have been there before, in 2009 but couldn't really remember much other than Moot Hall. It's a nice village to wander around in, we had just over an hour for lunch and since I just grabbed a sandwich from an independent sandwich shop I had plenty of time to do just that. There are a lot of shops selling hiking equipment (not surprising when you consider where you are) and also a lot of sweet, chocolate and fudge shops. There was even a Norwegian store.

After lunch we stopped at Castlerigg stone circle which is about 4000-5000 years old, the stones are smaller than the ones at Stonehenge but like Stonehenge they don't really know what it was used for. Part of it is called the Sanctuary, and I kind of wonder if that's a name they have come up with in later times, as I find it strange if they know what part of it was called but not what it was used for… Why would only the name of part of it be preserved through history but nothing else?

The reservoir that provides Manchester with water, Thirlmere, is also in the Lake District, a long way to go just to get some water. Two villages were lost when they created the reservoir, but at least it looks pretty.

We also stopped in Grasmere for half an hour, this is where the Wordsworth graves are. The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop is of course there, it is over 100 years old, stepping inside it is a bit like stepping back in time, definitely worth a visit for more than the special gingerbread, which tastes a lot more of actual ginger than the usual gingerbread you get at Christmas.

In all the 10 Lake Spectacular Winter Tour was good, I learned a lot and saw lots of beautiful places.