holiday | ny2no

29
Nov
2019

Creating My First Thanksgiving Abroad

With Thanksgiving being a huge tradition, I’ve surprisingly never had the opportunity to cook it! I have always been invited to the house of friends or family, and never actually prepared a turkey.

This year, since I’ve moved abroad, I wanted to be able to remind myself a little bit of home. Unfortunately, my fiancé is abroad for work, so there wasn’t an opportunity to share the holiday with him, so I decided to make my own “test Thanksgiving” to see if I could knock it out of the park before maybe inviting over some friends next year! From start to finish, I managed to cook Thanksgiving dinner in just under 2 hours. (Note: this does exclude some veggie chopping the night before, marinading overnight, and the cornbread I baked the day before. I also built a rough time table in advance so that I could get it all done!)

Curious to see how my first-time Thanksgiving cooking fared? Keep reading.

Click here to see more pictures and details of my first Thanksgiving abroad.!

29
Dec
2016

5 Tips for Finding the Most Affordable Flights to Norway

categories: Norway, Travel

Going back and forth from Norway can be pricey, especially if done frequently. Whether you’re interested in going for a one-time trip or travelling back and forth, there are ways of finding more affordable pricing– even including direct flights!– if that’s what you’re looking for. Here are some of my tricks for finding the most affordable airfares. Read on to see my 5 top tips for finding affordable flights to Norway!

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15
Dec
2016

Preparing for My First Jul, Part II

categories: Norway

My trip to Oslo is fast approaching, and Jul is just around the corner. While I’ve been informed that I’m missing all sorts of preparations that are exciting, such as the advent calendars and decorations going up, I can’t help but still remain starry-eyed myself at the idea of my first Norwegian Christmas!

Today I tried my first attempt to wrap gifts. Let’s just say that my family isn’t really known for being gift-givers. While I was very spoiled with food, love, and even material possessions, once a person is past a certain age, my parents didn’t really see the necessity to provide lots of wrapped presents. Now, despite being an artist and having gone to college, my horrible wrapping genes appear to have overtaken any ability I may have ever had, and after about 20 minutes between me and a half-wasted roll of gift wrapping paper, I found myself saying into my phone, “OK, Google. Wikihow how to wrap gifts.”

Needless to say the resulting gift-wrapping wasn’t very impressive, and in fact is quite laughable. However, it was still incredibly enjoyable to be frustrated by such a minor, trivial thing. I’m incredibly lucky to have someone I want to shower with gifts that are wrapped in pretty paper, so despite all the frustrations, I am just glad to have this experience. I also put up snowflake twinkle lights in my bedroom to get me into the mood a bit more, to my boyfriend’s response of “That’s so American!”

Guilty!

14
Dec
2016

Preparing for My First Jul, Part I

categories: Norway, Travel

So I’m finally going back to Norway, to spend my first Jul, or Christmas, with my boyfriend and his family. Yes, that’s right, I’ve never celebrated Christmas before! I’m Jewish, and growing up I wasn’t allowed to help my friends decorate their Christmas trees, and I was carefully instructed by my parents to not inform all the other kids that Santa wasn’t real. It was a little intimidating thinking of having my first Jul overall, but the fact that I’ll be meeting more of my boyfriend’s family for the first time is a little scary (and exciting, too!)

Being me, a million thoughts ran through my head. Norway in winter? I mean, I guess I have to get used to it eventually. But damn, isn’t it supposed to be insanely cold? Thankfully, I was relieved to find that in Oslo, it’s not actually that much colder than New York City most of the time– it tends to hover around the freezing level the majority of the winter. It is, however, much more of a wintry wonderland cast in snow, as opposed to the dreary streets of a cold New York that occasionally get shrouded in a dirtied, blackened snowy mush.

In my head I’ve begun to romanticize it; the snowball fights and the warm, cozy Norwegian sweaters (okay, so I still have to get one of these) and warming up with some Akvavit or wine. Watching kids’ faces as they open up their presents and excitedly play with them, and of course, huge family meals. My boyfriend, knowing my curious palate as he does, has generously painted word pictures of foods that might be seen: special Jul sausages, ground pork patties in sauce (medisterkaker), reindeer (reinsdyr!), Jul sodas (Jul brus), chocolates, and liquors. I’ll be bringing along a little Menorah to have a part of tradition and home with me while I’m there, and get to share it with him. Maybe if he’s lucky, I’ll have room for latke mix in my suitcase that I can share with him as well.

In the meantime, I’ve been stocking up on socks, tights, leggings, and other thermalwear! I plan on getting some appropriate boots once I’m there, since mine are a bit lacking, to help safeguard me from wintry doom. I’m getting very excited for my first Christmas, and my first Norwegian Jul. 🙂

Tag: holiday