December... bam!

Ok, so I'm going to knock over the entire month of December up until my departure on the great German/Austrian Christmas Adventure. I'm going to struggle to remember everything. We had our marketing Christmas party on the 8th, which was ok. X Factor finished up and Little Mix beat Marcus Collins. I watched the finale at Carina's place and we got some amazing Thai. I met up with Bek's friend Angelene and her mate Catherine and went to Hillsong Christmas service with them. I'm not going to discuss my thoughts on the service here. If you want to know you can ask me.
I had a great night hanging out with Cat & Keith at their place just before Christmas. The night before my holidays I went to see the National Ballet perform The Nutcracker. It was brilliant, althouth there was a little girl in front of me talking and coughing. After about 10 minutes the father took her home. The main ballerina fell flat on her face... although she made it look incredibly graceful! Then the 2 semi-main ballerinas were always half a second out with each other. It was always the same one. But it was a lovely show. Wow, a whole 3 weeks wrapped up in 1 paragraph. No doubt I've missed something!

The Nutcracker - National English Ballet

I'm on top of the world!

Oh dear. I've let this blogging thing get away from me again. So, back to the start of December:
1 - 4 December - Arctic Circle
I headed up to Norway on a fabulous adventure. Unfortunatelty at the start of the day a cold started and by the time I left work for the airport I was propper sick... and heading into a very cold area to say the least. I spent the night in an airport hotel in Oslo. Norway is so expensive! My first realisation was the £23 cab fare from the airport to the airport hotel! Then there was the simple Thai dish up in Tromsø that was £20. On my first day in Tromsø I was still sick so I just wandered around the town and took it easy. It was pretty much 24hr darkness. The most light it was was like sunset/sunrise. I asked my driver on a tour if it was sunrise or sunset and he said 'yes, it's beautiful'. I think he didnt understand but I think he gave the right answer.
I was supposed to go on a husky sledding tour but there wasn't enough snow so they changed it to a hike with a few huskies instead. I didn't really mind. The centre have about 200 dogs as they race them and use them for loads of activities. However, due to the lack of enough snow by Dedcember they still hadn't started their winter activities which they normally begin in October. So you can imagine what happened when someone walks into a yard of 200 dogs with 3 leashes! Every dog wanted to be the lucky one to get to go for the walk. It was so funny I couldn't stop laughing and when I got a dog it was out of control. I basically ran up a mountain, had a rest and then ran back down. There were creeks to cross and uneven surfaces and the dogs don't care that you might need to get your footing. I fell over about 5 times! In my case it pretty much was husky sledding, just not on a sled!
That evening I had booked a photography tour of the Northern Lights. It was brilliant and I got some great shots. There were only 3 of us and it's run by a local couple. We had dinner in their house before the photography. It was such a great cultural experience! I had a great experience and nothing like anything I've ever done before!

Hiking with Huskies in Tromsø