Andre's Diaries Andre Johnsen

One of my favorite human's, Jonathan Mylvaganam went on a 10 day silent retreat in Sweden. That is a Vipassana 10 day course of meditiation. ENJOY 3

We’re finally back with a pod and boy this one got deep.

One of my oldest friends and cousin Sarky is one of many young people who got caught up in opiods. He’ll be 4 years sober in February and we finally got a chance to catch up when I was in the States recently. Sarky talks about how it all started, how bad it got and how he got clean. This is his farewell story; open letter. Love you dude

Andre's thoughts:
Growing up in both the US and Norway I’ve experienced the vastly different cultures teenagers have towards alcohol and drugs. In Norway, smoking weed in your teens is quite rare and considered taboo, although drinking alcohol by 16 is considered normal. In the states it is quite the opposite and I’ve always thought this is due to the drinking age being 21 and therefore making weed and other drugs more accessible. In general drugs are much more accessible in the US compared to Norway, especially pharmaceuticals. Pills in particular are something I never saw nor heard of in Norway in my teens or even in college, yet it was a regular thing to see at parties in the US. Opioids are much more addicting than alcohol and other drugs and when the illicit opioid fentanyl was introduced to the US market in 2013 opioid addiction and overdoses dramatically increased (2013 - 2016 +80%).

In 2018 I was left to celebrate Chrismin alone by my dear family. Luckily, Zac was kind enough to invite me to Isreal to celebrate with him while he was on his Jewish Birthright voyage to the holy lands. We visit Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Bethlehem on Jesus' birthday. We also travel to Hebron in Palestine and Petra in Jordan, one the 7 Wonders of the World.  

On our trip we stepped foot in some of the holiest places in the world such as the Holy Scepter where a guy named Jesus was resurrected and floated back to his dad. Temple Mount where a guy named Muhammad ascended back to Allah on his mythical beast Al-Buraq. The Wailing Wall where Jewish people head bang and pray to Yahweh. 

Boy oh boy do people love the mystery man upstairs.

Visste du at det finnes nordmenn som har vokst opp på Granca? Hanna droppa innom for å fortelle hvordan hun og hennes tvillingbror bodde 10 år på et hotell på nordmenns mest besøkte øy fra de var 5 til 15 år! Videre forteller hun om livet som skater, veien til å bli jurist, jobbåret i JURK og internshipet hennes på ambassaden i Chile i 2019 under de verste opptøyene i chilensk historie. For en dame og for noen lange setninger.

Lurer du på hvordan du skal forhandle leilighetspris med en selger? Med litt hjelp av Moa, Sondre og meg selv viser Jonathan oss hvordan leilighetsforhandlinger virkelig skal utføres, og det med bare en time på klokken til å close dealen!

Den vakre Karianne forteller meg hvorfor magen hennes har blitt så stor. Jeg hadde åpenbart lite peiling på graviditet og lærte nye begreper som utflod og rier og at prevensjon kan erstattes med en app som tracker eggløsning helt frem til den ikke gjør det lenger!