Warning! By reading this post you may be exposing yourself to extreme cuteness!

Last week I was, as I am wont to do, updating myself on recent cute discoveries on Cute Overload, when I discovered that there is EXTREME CUTENESS going on right here in Norway.

Kristiansand Zoo, in the south of Norway, has recently been blessed with the arrival of four new baby lion cubs named Nala, Lea, Kiara and Akira. But that’s not the best part (or the dangerous part!)… the best part is that they’ve set up a live webcam so that you can watch the little cubbies 24 hours a day live on the internet!
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Today a new bill was passed in Norwegian Parliament allowing gay couples to marry. Hooray! Norway is the sixth country in the world to legalise gay marriage. Previously Norway allowed same-sex couples to become legally registered partners, allowing them many of the same protections as married couples. However, the new law will give gay couples equal standing in applications for child adoption, and will allow lesbian couples to both be listed on birth certificates as parents from the start of their child’s life.

Read more about the legislation in this article from Aftenposten from March this year.

Norway joins Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, South Africa and Canada in granting gay people full marriage rights.

Today I called the immigration police here in Oslo to ask (for what seems like the hundredth time) about the status of my visa application. They told me my application was approved at the end of last week and that I can come down any time to have my new permit stamped into my passport! Hooray!

This might not seem like a very big deal, especially for those who have never applied for a work and/or residence permit in a foreign country, but since I’ve been here in Norway for two years now, and have technically been a “working holiday maker” for most of that time, it’s a massive relief.

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I really love to cook, and I’m always looking for new recipes to try out, especially soup recipes; I just love a good soup. In fact, if there weren’t already so many, many, many food and recipe blogs out there, I might have considered making one of my own. But instead, I like to leave that up to the people who have time to try out a new recipe every day (see Smitten Kitchen for a good example of this) and write it up and take fantastic photos and so on and so forth. I’m happy to just post a recipe now and then when I find a great one.

With all this in mind, you can imagine that I often search the internet for recipes when I can’t find inspiration in a book. So what really burns me is how many recipes that I find online that are more like something you would find on the back of a packet mix for how to make said packet mix more interesting.

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Now that I’ve finished a whole month of detoxing and I’m on a bit of a fitness jag, I thought it was as good a time as any to talk about self-image.

It really irritates me that from such a young age women are conditioned to believe that one of the most important things about them is the way they look. These days it’s getting even harder to attain the kind of images we see in the media, what with photoshopping, ridiculously underweight models everywhere and now we’re faced with competition with women who don’t even exist; women created entirely on a computer. Even Angelina Jolie can’t compete with her own cgi-twin from the movie Beowulf.

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Wii Fit was released in Europe on Friday and I bought a copy right away. I had preordered it, even though I don’t think it’s going to sell as well in Norway as it will (and has) everywhere else; Norwegians generally prefer to get their exercise outside. This leads me to think it might have been smarter for Nintendo to release it in winter.

But in any case, I am not Norwegian, and don’t fit into the stereotypical sport-loving Australian persona either. I generally struggle to maintain any kind of exercise or fitness regime in the long term, and would usually be happier inside with a book, movie or computer game.

So those happy little elves over at Nintendo tapped right into my needs and desires with the Wii Fit balance board and game. I can exercise daily with fun activities without having to leave the comfort and privacy of my loungeroom, and I can keep track of how well I’m doing with my weight, balance and activity level and mark my success (or lack thereof) on a calendar. SO COOL!

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