First Week of December

I really had a great weekend; I went to something traditionally Norwegian activity on Friday and had a great time and I meet some lovely people. In ths blog I am sure everyone has realised that I have not only made it my travel blog but also a discussion blog. I enjoy writing this blog because it lets me share my experience with so many different people, but over and above that it also shows realistic experiences and challenges when living in a foreign country. I continually make sure that I am forever honest in this blog because I know that when I have left Norway it is I who will read it.

Humour/Jokes, such a great word and something that we all need from time to time to keep us going. But humour/jokes as great as it is if used the incorrect way can be the most insulting, de-grading and embarrassing way of attacking another human being. My dad always you to say ‘Every joke has its meaning’, whether this is true or not I still stand to find out. I have come to learn of a different form of humour in my time here in Norway, and that is sarcasm and irony. This is a great way of joking and at times I have found it more humorous then most jokes that people have to tell or say. In between all this laughter though, I have also experienced that there is a fine line between humour and being down right of offensive.

I have ask myself the question of so where is the line between these two different dynamics and how does one know when they have crossed it or stepped on to you. I have been thought and learned for myself that one should think before they something to another person. This can go as far as re-capping those words like they are coming to you personally from someone else and ask yourself how they would make you feel. Now this is extremely difficult to do especially when having a flowing conversation between two different people and getting lost in the moment as I always say. So I have given myself guidelines and precautions when it comes to humour, I believe that humour should not contain offensive or laughable information about a person’s religion, culture, race, gender, background and sometimes most importantly history. I choose these guidelines because I believe that they are factors that interlink with the individual holistically. These are aspects one can not change because these are factors that make the individual who they are, and so humour linked with them is similar if not exactly the same as making fun of the individual themselves.

I know some people might say I should take a ‘chill pill’ or just ‘loosen up’. But my culture, my country, my race and background have been the source of many criticism, humiliation and de-grading for many previous years and some aspects till currently. I will be the first to admit that these reasons have in some way made me sensitive, but also in other ways they have made me the person I am today. I carry these internal scars with me wherever I go, they have been inseminated in my mind and therefore I cannot just shut them off. I guess one of the reasons why I immediately take a disliking to humour that has to do with race, gender, culture, religion ect is because of the country that I come from, where it is utterly not tolerated for one to be humours about those aspects because of the history we have and how fresh and new the scars are still to many people. I share this with you because I want to hear your views about this broad and funny topic called humour, I want to hear what your boundaries are when it comes to humour.

In the work front, we were handing out HIV/AIDS badges to the public today at Karl Johan Street. It was a very entertaining morning, and I would like to thank everyone who participated in this great course. My invitation letter will be getting sent out very soon, so I am looking forward to meeting all the different groups and sharing a bit of my country with them. February is slowly creeping in, and that is during my trip to London, I really can’t wait. We will be having our first committee meeting on the second week of Decembers, where we will discuss potential activities that will take place during the trip and other logistics.

Its already December and we are just a few days away from Christmas, I really cant believe it. I will be spending Christmas with one of my colleague’s family, and I look forward to experiencing my first Norwegian Christmas and hopefully a white Christmas. I am also going to Bergen, for the coming weekend to visits a friend. I am really looking forward to that and I think it will be a truly entertaining weekend filled with lots of laughter. My December holidays seemed to be filled with a lot of different activities so I am really looking forward to this month.