I'm not labeling these by weeks anymore, because now that would be just confusing.

I'm warning you now, this is going to be long.
Since I have not updated this really at all this month, I think I'm going to just list the things I've done (because I've been pretty busy) and then I'm going to talk about what has been going through my head lately, which may be more or less interesting to you. Today is the first day of my Holiday break, it's about 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and everything is covered in what I'd guess to be 4-65 inches of snow from last night. Which was actually the first time I've really seen it cover the ground.

Woke up to this this morning

December:

1. Exams: I took two of my five exams in the beginning of the month, in Math and English. I ended up getting a 4+ on math and a 6 on English on a scale of 1 to 6. 1 being failing, and 6 being almost perfect. I'm pretty proud of the math, considering to was mainly word problems (in Norwegian) and I had to write (in Norwegian). English was an essay on how American culture impacts the rest of the word and a bit of grammar so yeah.
2. The first weekend of the month I went to a party for two of my friends at my friend Cecilie's house on Trømoya. It was about forty people stuffed into her living room, kitchen, and balcony from eight at night until two in the morning. I really only knew about 8 or nine of the people, because it was a lot of their friends from another school. But I like things like that because I end up meeting a bunch of new people and making friends because a lot of people talk to me because I'm American and therefore "interesting". Though I get called "the American girl" all night. It was really fun and I think there were a few small moments from that night that I'll always remember. Like being a part of huge circle of Norwegians signing "Hjerteknuser" or sitting out on the balcony late at night when it's freezing and you're surrounded by the lights of the city and houses on the other side of the fjord.
3. I slept over after the party and ended up not being able to get home until 3:30 because the ferry back to Arendal doesn't go until late on Sundays. And then I had to walk from the faraway bus stop in the ice while the sunset even though it felt like the day just started. I remember realizing why it seemed to be getting darker and laughing out loud. Then that afternoon I went to my friend Elfi's house. We went to a local handball game, because why not? And then watched Glee and facebook stalked my friends in Florida. It was very nice.
4. The next week was supposed to busy, but ended up me just sleeping a lot. That was when the snow first came, and then washed away, turned Arendal to a giant ice rank (making me fall 3 times in a row the first time I tried to walk down the hill from school), and then melted away to turn Arendal to a giant puddle. The same week with all this fun weather, we decided to do street photography in my Photo class. Which means we were supposed to spend two hours in the cold taking pictures of the people daring  enough to walk on the streets. More like taking pictures for 30 minutes, and then hiding in a cafe.
5. That weekend was my host sister's birthday, so I joined her for her party with her friends on Friday night. On Saturday we went to some kind of Christmas brunch with another family. And on Sunday Eduardo, an exchange student in Kristiansand, was supposed to come visit me, but couldn't last minute, so I went to the gym with my friend Anne. Which we decided to make a bi-weekly thing.
6. This past week was pretty busy too, or at least it feels that way. I think I went to the gym a few times and had to do some shopping. On Wednesday I went to a Christmas dinner party after school at Elfi's house with about 14 friends from school. So that was fun. On Thursday I got sick so I had to cancel going to the gym with Anne and Eduardo couldn't visit that Friday.
7. On Saturday we went up to Sandefjord for a raw beef dinner party. I'm not joking. Imagine a raw hamburger patty on a piece of bread (that you add a bunch of onions, pickles, beets?, and olives to). That is what we ate. I agreed to try it because I'm such a good exchange student willing to try new things no matter how much they gross me out. I got a small one and everyone was proud because I finished it...eventually...with some extra bread. We came home on Sunday and I slept so my cold is almost gone.
8. We had do a project on a country in English, so I chose the US. My teacher got really excited about it because of the cultural information I could provide based off personal experience, and had me wait until a day everyone was in class to present because once again I'm apprently "interesting", as Cecilie put it. Everyone said I did well even though it was really just me "talking about America for like, a half hour straight" as I later put it.
9. This week we went ski clothes shopping on Monday and I went with some friends after school, and yesterday was the Juleball at my school. I'm not going to talk too much about this because there is not much I want to say. I guess it was both a good and a bad night. But it started heavy snowing on the way there and the city was covered in fresh snow. I'm counting this as my first snow because there was so much and it was everywhere. I loved it even though I had to wait outside in it for about 40 minutes waiting to get into the club where they had the ball. 
1. Oh and I want to add in this conversation I had with one of my friends after I met a few people who said they had heard about me from their friends. "People know who I am?" "Of course they do." "They like me?" "Yes of course, you're our exchange student." "I thought everyone thought I was quiet and boring because I can't really talk much in class." "No we think you're really cool. You're our exchange student." I guess it just surprised me because this was from one of the more popular kids at school. In a way it made my Christmas though.

And that's it for my long list of going-on's. I have so much to do and so much planned for the next few weeks and months. I have friends who want to meet up, and new exchange students are coming to Arendal (so I won't be "THE exchange student" for much longer), an old exchange student in Arendal is visiting, so I'm going to meet up with her, Eduardo invited me to Kristiansand for a Christmas light show to make up for his two failed attempts to come to Arendal, my family has a very busy Christmas planned out, my friends are talking about a New Year's party, the old Norwegian outbounds are trying to set up a daytrip with us inbounds sometime after Christmas, the first week of January I'm going skiing with my host family, the last week of January I'm going on a trip to Northern Norway, the second week of February I'm going on a ski trip with the other exchange students, and I might visit Emma in Belgium in between, and then I change families again already. Phew. That doesn't include somethings I have to keep up with regarding getting things ready for when I'm back in Florida. Now can you see why I haven't been updating much. I nap in my free time. Or play Spider Solitaire.

I think I've gotten to a point where I'm genuinely happy with how my life is here. I've always had pretty amazing host families and I haven't had any major problems so far. My biggest challenge when I first got here was making friends. Unlike a lot of other exchange students, I don't have any exchange students in my city or really anywhere closer than an hour bus ride away. So I never had that support that most take advantage of nearby. If I wanted friends, they had to be Norwegians. And Norwegian's are generally shy and cold at first. So it took a couple weeks before I even had people I could rely on to just talk to in class, and a while longer to have friends to do things with after school. But now I feel like I have a good amount of friends, all of which I can go to for help or ask to do something if I'm bored. It took a lot of work to get to this point and I think I'm stronger because of that. A lot of exchange students have others nearby, so they commonly just cling to them rather than making close native friends. I'm glad I was forced to make Norwegian friends, because of this I picked up more of the language and culture. There is no American influence in my life anymore, other than TV and old friends on Facebook. So naturally, a lot of what I see as "normal" now is how the Norwegian's do it.

I'm going to admit that I miss Florida. I'm beginning to understand the meaning of being a product of your environment. I always said I hated Florida, but I guess you don't know what you got until it's gone. Not that I don't love Norway, it's just that I never realized how much of a Florida life was ingrained in me until I set out to live a new kind of one. I miss the little things about home, and I think that's perfectly healthy and fine. I miss everywhere I've ever spent time. Every place I've spent my summers or visited, I miss. That's apart of live, missing things. The only way to avoid it is stay put your whole life. But then is that really even living? Plus leaving makes you appreciate what you had. I think that's a lesson most kids my age don't get to learn for a while.

Um I think that's it for now. I've basically spent the day playing around in the snow, thawing my hands after playing with the snow, writing this, and sleeping on and off because my sleeping patterns are all over the place lately. I'll try to update this more with shorter posts. And to everyone who I need to email back, or promised to talk to, I'll get to that soon. I'm a little busy now, and when I'm not technically doing anything my head is pretty busy. This is a turning point in my year and I'm trying to understand how to deal with it.

I'll try to get some pictures up soon!

And I apologize for any grammar mistakes this has. I don't think my English writing has gotten much worse, but my speaking is. I'm starting to mix up simple things like "on", "in", and "at" when I speak because half of my head is starting to think in Norwegian even though I don't speak much. And in Norwegian grammar those three are the same word, so Norwegians mess them up all the time, and now so do I. Norwegians have started noticing my grammar and phrasing mistakes. That is how you know your English is getting bad.

Yeah okay. The end. For now.

Good morning and welcome to Norway. It's currently 30 degrees outside, and hey look, it's snowing.

So about forty minutes ago I was sitting in class playing Solitaire, when all of the sudden someone yelled "SNØ" (if you really can't figure out the translation for that, head on over to google translate, because I'm just going to continue referring to it as snø). But of course I was like WHAT ARE YOU SERIOUS?! And someone said "Hun har aldri sett snø før", and then of course someone else replied with HVA?! ER DU SERIØS?! And then I looked out the window and there it was, little bits of snø slowly falling out the window. It's not really that unexpected, because the past few days the temperature has dropped below freezing quite a bit. And I've been complaining about how the snø wasn't here yet even though it's been so cold. Seriously I'm freezing. But I consider it my 4 monthversiary gift from Norway, because today I have been here for four months.
That's all for now. But I'll write again about my weekend and stuff later. My head's all over the place right now.

Week 16: Norwegian Thanksgiving and Lutefisk

Happy Week after Thanksgiving! Now you would probably guess that I did not have Thanksgiving this year, because I'm not in the US. But if you guessed that you would be wrong. My host family told me they wanted me to show them how to do Thanksgiving, which is funny to anyone that knows me because I generally can't cook anything except for maybe cereal. But we found some old recipe and went on a few scavenger hunts for ingredients (because they don't have a lot of the stuff we have in the US), which resulted in buying a giant pumpkin for pumpkin pie, going to the next town to stock up on cranberries, and running around the largest grocery store in town (which is probably half the size of the grocery we use in Florida) and Google translating things like "cinnamon" into Norwegian and literally cheering when we finally found pecans.
We celebrated on Friday, rather than Thursday, because that was just easier for everyone. So since I didn't have school on Friday (or most of this week because of exams) and my host mom was off work, we spent the whole day cooking. Starting with cutting up pumpkin on the floor at 10 AM and working until the turkey was carved around 6. But surprisingly, nothing went wrong. My host family had a few guests over and they all loved Thanksgiving. I think they're even considering making it an annual thing for them. Even my "host grandma" (?), who I was told is super picky, liked it. And they decided we're making the cranberry sauce and pecan pie for Christmas. So all in all, it was a good experience.
The next day I went with this family to my first host families house for a lutefisk party, which literally means gelatinous dried and re-hydrated in lye fish party. Sounds fun right? Well it actually was. Not really the actual lutefisk part because lutefisk grosses me out, no one should have ever told me how it is made. But we went over early and made bread in the basement, which I had only been in once when I lived there. And let me tell you, I had completely forgotten how Norwegian countrysidey my first host families host was. Especially the basement, it seriously looks like it came out of some kind of ancient folklore and while we were using a wooden shovel to push bread into a giant oven/fireplace I was expecting a troll or something to burst through the door. But the interesting part of this night was that there was very little English being spoken but I always understood what was being said and what was going on. In the beginning of the year when it was just Norwegian for a long period of time and I was expected to just sit for like an hour or two and not understand I would get anxious after a while, but now it's just fun because I can almost always understand when I want to, and even when people think I can't. But we ate a bunch of fresh bread and then later we had the lutefisk, which I did not finish... And then we hung out at there until like 2 AM. 
On Sunday I think I was supposed to do something but there was a huge storm so I didn't. And this week I only had to go to school for a few hours on Monday morning for a math test.
So now I'll answer some of the questions I was asked!


Was the movie in English or Norwegian? Also, tell us what new classes you are taking now.
Breaking Dawn was in English with Norwegian subtitles, like basically everything geared for kids over the age of 10. And I think I'm still taking the same classes as before. Math 2P, History, History & Philosophy, Sociology & Socio-Anthropology, Gym, Norwegian, Photography & Printing, and International English. 


Are you going to be fluent in Norwegian by the time you get home?
I hope...I can understand a lot now. And yesterday I told my host family I'm cutting off English as of today or else I'll keep kicking myself for not speaking enough Norwegian. And I think I'm expected to speak only Norwegian in my third family.


Are your classes similar to the ones at home in terms of content? Do Norwegian HS students do the same sort of extra-curricular activities that kids do here?
I'm not entirely sure because I just started understanding the lessons, and I still don't pay too much attention. But they same similar, but also easier. Most of my classes didn't have one test until these past few weeks, and there is barely any homework. And we don't do any extra-curriculars through the school, but I think people do a few through the community.


I would love to hear about the island Hisoy.
Well it's basically just a suburb of Arendal. People live all around it, and it has a few grocery stores and a church and an elementary school. It's small and  super close to land, so I take a bus to school. But there's also a ferry. I live closer to the middle of the island and it looks like a regular neighborhood, and the area on the water is very nice. Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His%C3%B8y


I haven't seen breaking dawn yet and looking forward to it, well tell me this, is the movie anything like the book.
Yes, it is exactly like the book. Which be a good thing if the plot line of the book didn't freak me out so much. But that part wasn't the movie-makers faults so I consider it a good movie because the acting has gotten much better and also the soundtrack is very good as always.


Are you going home for christmas? if not, what do you think christmas will be like in Norway? 
And also, what's your favorite thing to do when you don't have homework or any other plans?
No. And I think it will be nice and very busy. I have been told what we're doing for Christmas, but it's so much that I still really have no idea. Just a lot of Christmas parties and travelling. It already is beginning to look a lot like Christmas here. Except the snow is late this year. Hmpf. 
And I never have homework, so I go on my computer and either waste time or get a head start on things for college and scholarships and blah blah blah. Or I watch movies or TV with my host family. Or I sleep. Or go to the town to go to the gym. Or walk around if it's not pitch black outside. 


Do they watch as much tv and sports as we do over here?
Yes to TV but not really much sports. Except for like the huge soccer games earlier in the year between Norway and Denmark and then Norway and Iceland. And actual Norwegian TV is really strange and random. Like the main Norwegian TV Station's primetime shows are documentary and reality shows about mentally handicapped people and one that literally translates to "Dogs at Work". The other day my whole family sat around the TV and watched a show about border control in New Zealand. But aside from Norwegian TV, we watch a lot of CSI Miami here and my last family watched a lot of Simpsons (which taught me lots of fun words in Norwegian).

Weeks 13-15: I don't have an actual title for this again.

So let me just say, I have started to write this about 10 times before. But every time I start and I just don't know what to write and so I never finish. I had one written about 2 weeks ago and it was almost done but I had to catch a bus and I never finished it...and then I went back to reread it and I didn't like it so I deleted it. BUT sorry this took so long. I'll make it up to you with pictures.

My Norway hat

Packing

My face in class everyday.

Before the Vegemite

After the Vegemite

So I guess I'll start with Halloween and work my way through the month. I moved families on the 30th of October. It was basically spending the day packing up my stuff,  a nice dinner with my host family, loading a ridiculous amount of my stuff into the car, and then all of us driving to my next families house. My two families had coffee together and talked, and then my first family left and BOOM I switched families.

The only bad side of the arrangement was really that I moved on Sunday night and didn't really have time to unpack until Monday after school. But to be honest, the changing family thing was way easier than I thought. I just kinda fell into a new routine after a few days, and I get along with this family great.

That Monday was Halloween, and it was basically just another day...except for the fact it was my first day with my new family I guess. I did see a few people walking around town in Halloween costumes...at 9 in the morning. And some kids were out trick-or-treating at night, but not many. One thing I did think was funny though was that there were trick-or-treaters on the Saturday before Halloween. First of all because I lived in the middle of countryside, and it's a pretty good walk to the nearest house. And secondly, it wasn't Halloween. I tried to explain to my host family why this was funny and they didn't get it.

But that week was pretty calm from what I remember. I was just getting used to taking the bus and my new routine. The week after that I was really frustrating because I barely had school. This shouldn't be frustrating though right? Wrong. See, we had all these tests in my classes that I didn't know about. So it was a lot of showing up for class, realizing I didn't have to be there, and then leaving. Also one of my classes was cancelled for two weeks straight. And then uncancelled, and then cancelled. One day I went to my first class, and it was a test so the teacher told me I could leave after 30 minutes. Then my next class was 4 hours later, and I would have taken the bus back home and then come back to school later, but I didn't have a bus card yet and I didn't want to pay. So I waited in the library. Did I mention I was waiting 4 hours to walk back up a hill to go to one 40 minute long class where I literally do nothing except have my name counted on the roll. Yeah well, when I got to class the teacher told us we could have a "study day" and go home. This happened about 3 more times that week, but with milder waits before class. 

Oh I also switched classes that week. Like the main class that I have Norwegian, History, Gym, and Math with. So now most of my classes are at the Barbu school and I don't have to walk back and forth as much.

And last week I barely had school too, but I timed it better so I didn't show up to class if it wasn't happening. The downside to having so many tests I can't take is all my friends have to study for them but I have nothing to do, and since my classes are cancelled or I don't have to show up I never get to see my friends or talk to anyone. But they're basically over now. Thursday, Friday, and all of next week is something like midterms, so I don't have to go to school for 5 days.

Last weekend I went to Tønsberg to visit my friend and roommate from Language Camp Marina. My host dad had to go up there so he dropped me off on Friday and I took a train to where he was staying in Sandelfjord on Saturday. Friday night was Nina's (another exchange student) birthday, so I went with Marina to her party and saw a few other exchange students. I also got to see Tønsberg a bit during the trip. I slept over at Marina's on Friday night and we watched Forest Gump. It was fun.

This past weekend I went to see Breaking Dawn with some friends from my classes. The movie was shown in the biggest theater the cinema has, and it's a little smaller than the smallest one at the Pompano Muvico. And it's assigned seating, so we have to buy tickets together. It was a bit depressing at the end though when I realized by the time the second half of the movie comes out I will be long gone and probably watching it back in the Pompano Muvico with the same friends I've been going to see the Twilight movies with since the first one came out in 2008. That's weird to think about.

On Sunday, my friend Synnøve and I went by the water on Hisøy (the island where I live now) and took pictures.

Well I can't think of anything else to say, except for it's getting colder and darker and I haven't really minded until today. Today I just woke up cold and tired, and it's 1 PM and I still haven't woken up. Yesterday I took the bus at 4:30 and walked home from my stop in the pitch black, with ice on the road. That should give you an idea of what I mean by 'dark'.

If you want me to talk about something in particular then leave a comment and let me know. If I have ideas of what to write, or any feedback at all *hint hint* than it might encourage me to update more often...just saying.

Weeks 11-12: Ungdomskole visits and Opersjon Dagsverk

I guess it's about time I sat down and wrote this. Let me just say that I sat down to write this about 10 different times and by the time I published it I had had parts of it opened on my browser for over a week). For some reason it was so hard to just sit down and write. And when I did it just didn't feel natural. I wasn't planning on waiting over two (and a half by the time I publish it) weeks to update this, but it just happened when last Sunday rolled around and I didn't have much to say. But now since it's been two (+) weeks, I feel like I should have more to say. And I do, I just have to fish it out of my brain.

Well let's start with two weeks ago, Week 11. 

I visited Aase's school on that Tuesday to help with the English classes. I talked to her class (7-8 year olds) and told them about myself and Florida in both English and Norwegian, and then I followed the school's English teacher around and talked to some of the older kids (10-12 year olds). I was impressed by how much the 11 year old could understand me, that kids that young can understand English probably just the same or more than I can understand Norwegian. And I've been living surrounded by Norwegian for almost 3 months, I took Spanish like they're taking English starting when I was 5 and I can't say anything past "Hola!" But anyways, of course I got asked a bunch of questions by Aase's friends. So I answered basically everything from "Have you ever gotten attacked by a shark?" to "What color is your house in Florida?" The fun part was they were asking and I was answering in Norwegian.

Then on Thursday and Friday I didn't have class, so I caught up on some sleep and attempted to start packing to move the following weekend. So other than that, that week I found out that Arendal has Chinese food, went to a barbecue on the rocky beaches of Tromøya with my host family, and learned how to knit.

Now onto this past week. This was my last week on the countryside and with my first host family. I feel like I did something really cool or important but I honestly don't remember. On Thursday there was this thing at school called Operasjon Dagsverk where you get a job for the day and all the money you earn goes to some kind of charity having to do with Africa. I think. I've never had it fully explained to me. But anyways I thought I couldn't participate because I don't speak Norwegian and I thought I signed something agreeing not to work while I'm here and I wasn't sure if this counted. But it turns out I was allowed to participate because it was charity, and one of my friends in my class offered me a job and kind of talked me into taking it. So I worked at the brewery sorting bottles for a few hours with about 10 other students and raised some money for charity. It was one of those things that would only work in a place like Norway because there are so few people. Like, majority of all the teenagers in Arendal were able to find jobs. There are just too many people in South Florida for something like this to work. But all in all, I think I did pretty well organizing bottle at the brewery. I guess that means I could be capable of having a factory job, but I have to admit I have higher ambition than that...

Now lets talk about the weather, because Norwegians seem to really love to do that. It's obviously gotten colder here, and then not so cold, and then just gray, and at the moment it's not so bad, just dark starting at 4:30 in the afternoon. Everyone loves to tell me about how cold it's going to get or that Norway is cold in general, like I didn't know this before I came here. Believe it or not Norwegians, Norway was pretty high on my list when I applied to do this and it was right beside countries like Sweden and Denmark. And while there are Americans who think that Norway is a city in Sweden or located somewhere in the Middle East, I consider myself both not an idiot and pretty good with geography. I have known since I checked off the little boxes next to the Scandinavian countries on my Youth Exchange application that I was going to be cold this year. The fact that it gets cold and snows in Norway is not news to me. I know in about 2 months it will be terribly cold, and wanna know what I have to say to that? Bring. It. On.

Welp, other than that this weekend I went to a Halloween party that my friend invited me to, it was fun and I made some new friends. Oh and I forgot to mention I had to cancel my Halloween weekend with the other exchange students, we forgot to figure in the fact that a bus ticket is $75+ and most of the time exchange students don't have money at the end of the month. But in the end it was way easier to just spend the weekend packing and preparing to move families. WHICH I will talk about in my next post, along with "Norwegian Halloween". 

Week 10: And then you're up.

Well I guess I could have written this last night, I really wasn't doing anything special. But something about the sun starting to come down so early, and then coming up late in the morning, just makes me tired. When I first got here the sun went down around 10 at night, so I was used to going to bed while the sun was going down and then waking up long after it had risen in the morning. Now it goes down around 6:30 or 7, and comes up around 8:15 when school starts. But unlike when the sun would go down early some parts of the year in Florida, here I live on the countryside and when the sun is down here, everything is pitch black and silent.
But anyways, let's talk about last week. Last week was cold, almost everyday the grass was almost white with ice in the morning, as well as the windshield. Some days it dropped below freezing in the morning, and several parts of the country got snow. I also think that last week was one of my best weeks in Arendal since I arrived. I guess I had some sort of renewed sense of confidence when I started back up at school on Monday, because I was talking and joking with people, and was more like myself than I have been since I arrived in Arendal. And it paid off. Before I knew it, friends from school were asking me to do things after class or on the weekend. Not that they weren't doing it before, but it felt more genuine now. More like they really wanted to, rather than they just felt sorry for me because I didn't know anyone. I made a few new friends this week, and got closer to a few of my classmates. I was invited to a party/bonfire, that ended up getting canceled because it was only 2 degrees Celsius outside. But there will be other things like that in the future, which is beginning to really look up. Or maybe I'm just being optimistic.
I like school now. I know a lot exchange students really don't, and just skip all the time. But school, for me at least, is a place where I get to talk with my friends and kind of just relax. I guess I'm lucky to be in Norway, because the school here uses computers 24/7. So if I'm tired or bored or just don't feel like talking I can pull out my computer and put my mind elsewhere. So I'm never really that bored at school.
So this week I did a few things. I joined the gym, because it gives me something to do on days where I previously had nothing to do, I spent a lot of time walking around Arendal during Trykk og Foto taking motion pictures with my class (I think it's cool that we're let loose on the city to take pictures), I went shopping with a girl from my Historie class and bought a hat because I think it's time to get one of those, I went on a walk around Hove (where Arendal hosts a HUGE music festival every summer) on Tromøya with my host mom and Happy, my host dad took Aase, Ole, and I to a modern carnival at the culture center, and I hung out in Arendal with Sunniva from my English and Math class.

Today on the ride home from school, I noticed that everything that used to be green is now orange and red. I had seen a little of this in Drammen and Oslo, but it didn't really stifle my excitement that it really looks like fall now in Arendal. I'm excited for the snow to come, but I can wait a bit if it means I can have a while longer with all this bright orange and red trees.
Tomorrow I'm going to Aase's school for half of the day to help with English class, which I think will be very interesting. This weekend I think I'm visiting my next host family, and then the weekend after is Halloween! Now normally this wouldn't be a big deal in Norway. But I'm having a Halloween party weekend with my exchange student friends! Marina, Mackenzie, Brock, Calvin, and Anne are all coming down to Arendal to stay in the little cottage next to my house with me and watch scary movies and do Halloween stuff. I might also go to a Norwegian Halloween party that weekend, depending on if my friends come on Friday night or Saturday morning. Oh yeah and I move families Sunday afternoon after they all leave. So that should be a busy weekend.

So all is well here, I'm doing good and I think this "cultural adaption" thing is well underway

Week 9 : Høstferie og Drammen

Well here we go, even though I feel like I just wrote one of these, I guess it's time for another update. As I said in my last post, I spent a few days in Drammen with my exchange student friend Mackenzie.
My bus got there early Wednesday afternoon, and Mackenzie and her host sister met me at the stop. We walked into the middle of Drammen to catch another bus to her house, and we bought hair bleach on the way on impulse. We spent the day at her house, not including a bicycle ride to the store (we actually walked the bikes half the hills and we didn't feel bad about it because we scaled a mountain last week) and a failed attempt to get kebab at 11 o'clock at night. It was nice though because Drammen's pretty in a different way than Arendal. I love how every place I have been in Norway is the same and different at the same time. I can't even tell you how many "wtf?" moments I've had since I've gotten here. Like on the way to the store we passed through a neighborhood that looked exactly like typical suburbian America. Or at least what you would expect that to look like, but probably only exists in movies. Going through Drammen also made me feel like I had taken a time machine back to the 90's, because it reminded me of old cartoons. Except for that the whole city smells like beer. But I swear sometimes it feels like Norway is 15 years behind, and also 20 years ahead.
On Wednesday night we decided to bleach parts of our hair, mostly on impulse. So we grabbed the bleach (which direction's were in Swedish, Finnish, and German, no English) and went into the bathroom. I only really touched up the part of my hair that I had bleached last year, Mackenzie went for what she called "borderline what the hell did she do" look. Later we told everyone it was the bleach fumes that made us throw bleach at her head until it turned orange... We also decided we could never live together because we would have no one sane to keep us from doing stupid stuff.
Anyways, on Thursday Mackenzie and I went into Drammen. We spent a good hour walking around looking for food. We found an Asian market and I bought Pad Thai for later, and ended up carrying it around all day. We were going to get kebab but we saw a sign for a 10kr cheeseburger at McDonald's and ended up in there staring at the menu for fifteen minutes until one of Mackenzie's friends met us and convinced us to go somewhere with better hamburgers. So of course, we split a kebab at the hamburger place, and then went to a cafe to get coffee and sit where it was warm. During the 3 hours we spent in the coffee shop, we met a famous Norwegian who had been on Eurovision and took a picture with him, Mackenzie's friend's friend joined us, and Mackenzie and I told them stories about Language Camp until they probably thought we were crazy. After that, we hung out in Drammen by the water, bought another kebab (they're the cheapest food you can get a.k.a. $12-21) hung out in the library, and walked around a lot until about 9. Then we went back to Mackenzie's house, watched Gilmore Girls and Glee online, and fell asleep.
On Friday her host mom and sister took us to Oslo. We saw the Opera House, Frognerparken, and shopped on the Main Street. We also found one of the only Mexican food restaurants in Norway, which was very exciting for both of us. And by the end of the day Mackenzie had bought over $100's worth of socks, and we both had matching Oslo shirts, Norwegian flag underwear, and Norwegian flag socks.

On Saturday I took another 3 hour bus back to Arendal and slept most of the day, excluding taking a walk because the weather has been really nice. Today it's been rainy, but I still went on a 2 hour walk in the woods with my host mom, Aase, and Aase's friend. We may or may not have gotten lost, I'm not sure. All I know is that we spent a good amount of time not walking on trails.
Things are getting busier and busier though. My host parents told me I could host a "Halloweenfest helge med andre utvekslingsstudentene" go Google translate that if you can't figure it out. I'm switching families soon after that, and my friends and I have planned a weekend in Oslo, I may be back in Drammen for Mackenzie's birthday, another Rotary weekend, and maybe a trip to Denmark sooner or later.






All's well for now, and I'm actually excited to go back to school tomorrow. Now just to remember what my classes were again...

Week 8 : Language Camp

Hei there, it's been a while since I've wrote. I know I'm later than I said I'd be with this, but I had been so busy, and hten just so worn out. Right now I have just gotten on a bus to Drammen to visit my friend Mackenzie, and I'm really happy because the bus ticket was $20 less than I was expecting.
From what I remember, I left off here on Friday the night before I left for Kristiansand. On Saturday morning my host mom drove me to Kristiansand, where I would stay with Brock, an exchange student from Canada, before we took the bus to language camp the next day. The day went something like this: I got to Kristiansand around noon. We took a 30 minute bus back to his house, walked 15 minutes, dropped my stuff off at his house, and another 45 minutes back to Kristiansand. He showed around the city, we went shopping and I tried not to spend to much money but bought a $25 dollar scarf anyways. We met up with his friend and went to a cafe, I tried not to spend to much money again but probably spent over $20 on food during the day. We spent an hour in McDonald's because it was warm and 10x nicer than any McDonalds in the US or Canada, then we took a bus to a youth group because I wasn't old enough to go to the party that afternoon. We played a game about North America with a bunch of Norwegians. And lost. Badly. I accidently started reading Danish and translating it to English. We had to wait 40 minutes in the cold for a bus. I decided I like the bus better at night in Norway.
We stopped in Kristiansand, where we had to wait another 30 minutes for a bus. And we passed by the party I'm not old enough to go into and heard "Ellen why aren't you 18 yet? It's okay. But why couldn't you just be 18?" for the rest of the night. Then we took another 30 minutes back to Brock's house, and 15 minutes walking in the dark in a creepy farm town. A dog started barking at us and I made the mistake of telling Brock I'm afraid of the dark. Then we went to bed and woke up 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave in the morning.
We rushed to the bus and got on it to go to Odda, the other exchange student in Kristiansand, Eduardo, wasn't there when he was supposed to be. But luckily he got on the bus an hour into the verrrrry long trip. We had 4 hours to Haukeli, and a 2 hour wait for cthe next bus there. In Haukeli we all paid ~$25 for the worst hamburger I have ever eater. It tasted like old people. Then we got on the second bus to Odda where we met up with 8 other exchange students! 6 of the other newbies in our district, and Mackenzie, who was the first person I ever talked to via facebook who was also going to Norway, and Anne, who I flew to Oslo with. Then it was about 2 hours to Odda, and I can guarentee the rest of the bus hated us. Norwegian buses, no matter how full, are always dead silent. One girl on the bus told us she would never forget that bus ride. We all got stuck in Odda for about 2 hours because the bus they told us to get on didn't exist, and finally they sent someone to pick us up and take us the 1 to Kinsarvik where the hotel was. So we started at 8:30 in the morning and got to Kinsarvik around 7:30 at night. Needless to say, we were all tired and hungry when it was time to meet the other exchange students.
So all I remember from the first night of camp was that the food was so bad I didn't even eat it, and we found a really creep gas station that was open late and had lefsa and Solo. And when I say creepy I mean it, it felt like I was back in America. The first full day of language camp two important things happened. 1) I realized I was not going to learn anything new when the teacher wrote 1-10 on the board and started slowly saying "en, to, tre, fire". 2) Calvin let Mackenzie, Anne, and I into his and Brock's room. So of course we pushed their bed together and found Brock's colone and sprayed it on ourselves as a joke. The entire day we smelled like Brock, and his room smelled like a 60 year old man until they cracked a window open. The colone was Obsession by Beyonce, I feel like this is important to add in. This may also have been the day where we thought we were in the middle of nowhere and the nearest actual town was over an hour away, but we stumbled into a village of small children at 11 o'clock at night. There were 10 year old's running around the streets and having little parties in cabins with no sign of adults anywhere. It was the freakest thing ever because we kept trying to speak to them in Norwegian but they ran past us like they couldn't hear us. Eventually we corned them and asked them questions in Norwegian and they answered in Enlish and ran away cursing at us.
On Tuesday I don't remember much, except for that we took a three hour hike to a waterfall in the afternoon with My partner was Gustavo, who is from Brazil but has a French accent when he speaks English. At the waterfall we took a bunch of pictures and then switched partners to walk back with. At first I was paired with Calvin until I told him "Jeg skal snakker bare norsk til deg hvis du er med meg." Then I switched to Imogene from Northern California. On tuesday we also found a store with actual food and I made a bet with Mackenzie about how many apples I could eat in an hour during class. I ate seven and threw them up later. And that night we started a trend of staying in each others rooms until 2 A.M., which continued even when they started telling us to be in bed at 10:30 and ended when 3 of us were found in a shower and one under a bed on that last night.
On Wednesday we just had more class and hung around the hotel, some of us opted out of swimming in the afternoon and played Go Fish or Gå På Fiske Tur in Norwegian. On Thursday we went on a trip to go for a BBQ and Go-Karting in the mountains in the afternoon. It was fun to see the people who had never driven before ending up in the grass after one loop, or Mackenzie who hit a tire so I stopped my car to point and laugh at her and then drive away.
On Thursday we had class and played weird Norwegian ballon and stick games outside. On Friday the oldies came for the Conference. We also visited a silverware making factory and jumped into the freezing fjord. On Saturday we scaled a mountain and more. In the morning they told us we were going on a hike, but then we got on the bus and they told us we were not going on a hike. Then we got to this place where they gave us harnesses and helmets and still did not tell us what we were doing. Then they brought us to these pipes going straight up the mountain and told us we were going to climb up. So we scaled the part that wasn't straight up using ropes and wires (it was pretty steep though). And when we got half way up we stopped at the point where it literally became a straight up and down rock. From there we climbed about 150 feet up a wooden latter attached to the rock while attached to a wire. Then we got up to this platform attached to the rock face, the guide pointed at a bunch a staples going vertical across the rock face and said we'll go across that. So we spent about 45 minutes climbing across that. And Mackenzie and I were the most afraid of heights, so of course we went first. But the guide said we did good and after 15 minutes I got comfortable with the fact I was attached to a rock face with nothing below me. Oh and did I mention we were on the edge of the most beautiful fjord in Norway and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.
It was one of those things you never forget. And sadly I don't have a picture of myself, but I stole a picture of Ane doing it to give you the basic idea of what I'm talking about here. When we finished climbing up the rock we hiked some more through a cave and to the top to eat lunch. We hung out there for a while and then hiked a trail back down to the bus. We just hung out for the rest of the night and ran around the hotel. At one point I refused to speak English and had a 30 minute conversation with the Rotarians in Norwegian.
On Sunday we went to the Rotary Conference to do this presentation we spent all week working on. Everyone sang a song or danced. I sang "Alt for Norge" with some other Americans and Candanians. Mackenzie and Anne rapped, the French girls sang a song in French, the Brazilians danced, the Argentinians and Ecuadorian danced, the Austrailians sang about Vegemite, the girl from Taiwan sang a song in Mandarin, and everyone ese acted out the Norwegian version of "Little Red Riding Hood".
After that it was time for all of us to go home, which was really sad because we probably won't see each other until March, and we may never see some of the oldies again. A lot of people cried. I'm not gonna lie I teared up a bit, which was the first time I cried in Norway not counting that time I got mascara in my eye. You forget how easy it is to talk and joke with people when they are native to English. Norwegian's are great and everything but they have a different sense of humor and I'm just beginning to understand everything that's going on easily. So before, if I didn't pay close attention, I could easily drift off in my own little world for hours. And it's not that difficult to go a day without laughing once.
We went with the other exchange students on South Coast to Haukeli, and of course we had an hour and a half back in Odda to get candy and kebabs. When Brock, Eduardo, and I said our goodbyes to the last of the exchange students it was sad. The last 4 hours of the bus trip Eduardo slept and Brock and I looked at all my pictures and talked about how awesome everyone is. And when I bought a hot dog at the rest stop and had to tell the lady what I wanted in Norwegian without her switching to English I felt like I had come farther with my Norwegian this week. Especially when we met someone on the bus who spoke no English and I started translating what Brock and Eduardo were trying to say to her. So I'd like to say I came out of this week a little different then I went into it.
So spending a week with exchange students, who all relate to you in so many ways it's crazy, makes everything suddenly feel easy again. And you feel more like yourself than you have in months, you can basically say whatever you'd like again. No one cares. But then saying goodbye is hard, knowing you're going back to real life is hard. Because everyday life here is an effort. And me saying that is in no way me implying that I don't love Norway and love my life here. But it is difficult because none of this is easy, and every moment is a new opportunity to push yourself and it's important to take advantage of that. But then you spend a week laughing and talking more than you have in the entire 7 weeks I had spent in Norway prior to camp and then you have to realize it's over. You get a taste of how easy everything is, and then you to go back to a place where it's simply not and it's hard. But I know I'm still adjusting to school and my life here. I can see how far I've come and how worth it it all is. Every difficult moment is a new opportunity to grow.
And I can see how much this place has changed me, I'm a different person than I was before I spent that month in New York. And I'm a different person than I was when I stepped on that plane to come to Norway. I've been exposed to more things than a 16 year old normally is. I feel more mature now, I actually do not have any friends here or from New York that aren't at least 7 months older than me, most of them are at least a year. But most of them say they don't even notice how young I am, and some don't even know. Every person I've met since I've been here has changed me a little bit, gave me something to thing about, and altered the way I see things a little bit more. And I am happy with this.
Well now I'm still sitting on this bus to Drammen to spend 4 days with Mackenzie hanging out and maybe a day in Oslo. I've been planning a few trips to friends in Norway, and some out of Norway. But we'll see how that goes. I start school back up on Monday and I'm excited to see how it goes now that I can speak more Norwegian. Things are starting to calm down and speed up at the same time.
1 hour down, 2 more to go. And wow I just found out this bus has wifi.
I'll write again this week when I'm back from Drammen.

Here are some videos from Language Camp:









And my pictures are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2315321676932.285731.1066157508&type=3




Ellen

Week 7 : I can't think of a title so I'm just not going to have one.

So I decided to write this a few days early because I doubt I'll get a chance to do it on time. Next week is my Språkkurs (Language Course) with all the other new exchange students in Norway. It's on fjord, basically in the middle of nowhere, in a place called Kinsarvik. Tomorrow morning I'm going to Kristiansand to hang out with Brock (an exchange student from Canada) and stay with his family for the night, so we can catch the bus out of Kristiansand to language camp on Sunday morning. Then we have about 6-8 hours on buses through the mountains to Kinsarvik, which is a little east of Bergen. Then I have 6 days of language camp, and then 2 or 3 for another Rotary Conference.
So this week nothing happened, well maybe something did but I don't remember. I went on a walk with my host sisters choir/club and it was very nice, and I went to another Rotary meeting, and I was very tired all week for whatever reason.
Since I have nothing to really report on, I'm going to talk about Norwegian school. School here is much more relaxed than American school. There's not many real rules, and if you don't show up to class they don't really mind. School is your responsibility here, kinda like college. Oh and we get to use computers during school "to take notes" (well that's actually what we use them for, but I don't take that many notes because 1. I can't read the handwriting and 2. I won't understand much of them and I'm never tested anyways). Like right now I'm in Norwegian class typing this while the rest of my class writes essay in Norwegian. I really don't have to do much in school here.
These are the classes that I'm taking:
Math 2P: This is the easiest kind of math in Norwegian school. The reason I was put in the easiest math when I was supposed to be in AP Calculus this year in Florida is because when they first asked me if I'd like to have Math I said "not particularly", but then they needed to have more hours in my original schedule so they just threw it in there and said "we'll just give you the easy one then". So now I'm seriously learning what I learned in 7th Grade Algebra. It's really easy even if I don't understand what the teacher is actually saying, I just lok at the number and know what to do. We had a test today in that class and I finished an hour early, and all the problems were in Norwegian (the way they right numbers is a bit different and their were word problems).
History and Philosophy: This is one of those classes that I don't understand most of the time, unless I listen really hard. But I basically just read my Norwegian book in class unless it's some rare occasion where we have a handout in English (and therefore I have to explain some phrases), or where we do group discussion and my group wants to speak in English.
International English: I like this class a lot because it's really interesting to me to learn about America and English speaking people and countries from a Norwegian point of view. The class is in English so I always know what's going on, and I can do the work really easily. I try to help sometimes, but it's getting more difficult to spot grammar mistakes and know what sounds right because of all the Norwegian I'm taking in. But I obviously still do pretty well in that class, and it's nice to understand something a few hours a week. This week we had a substitute and I decided to see if I could go the week without her figuring out I was an exchange student, and maybe get her to compliment my English or something. Yeah...it didn't work. I guess with my accent, being able to pronounce every word correctly, and answer almost every question is a give away. She figured out that I knew all the vocab after about 10 minutes and asked me what nationality was when someone else didn't know. When I answered she took the opportunity to ask me what my nationality was, which I answered with "me?" *nods* "I'm American." She didn't look surprised.
Photography and Printing: I also like this class because I it's one of those classes I can actually participate in. We take pictures of certain things and learn how to edit them. Right now it's not really a challenge because we're basically learning Photoshop, which I've been using for years both in class and at home. So far we've done a self portrait and now we're making labels for apple products.
Sociology: I just switched into this class from Spanish this week, and I've only been to one hour of it. The teacher doesn't even know I'm in the class yet or that I'm an exchange student. So really have no idea what this class is like yet.
Norwegian: I obviously can't participate in this class. I think we're learning about Nynorsk (the other writen form of Norwegian), or Icelandic, or Old Norse or something that confuses me so much when I try to understand. So I read my Norwegian books in this class.
History: I don't understand this class either so I read my Norwegian books some more. This class, gym, and Norwegian I have with my "real class" 2STTE, which I guess kind of relates to a homeroom class except for I don't see them everyday, only when I have one of those classes.
Gym: I prefer Gym here to the one I had to take back home. We play confusing games that I have to have my classmates explain to me in English after the teacher explains them in Norwegian, but it's kind of fun. The Gym I had in Florida was literally running around a track or practicing sit-ups for an hour everyday. Here I have an hour a week of playing a game or doing aerobic kind of things. Last week we played "a Danish ball game" that was basically every man for himself dodgeball in a small in-closed gym. You just ran after the ball and tried to hit as many people as possible with it, which was kind of scary because there are more boys in my class than girls and they hit hard. If you got hit then you go jump rope on the side until the person that hit you got out. We also did fitness testing. This consisted of: seeing how high you can reach when you jump, how far you could skip in three moves, sit-ups, and push-ups. Unlike American gym, I did pretty okay in this.  On the Norwegian scale of 1-6 (1 basically being a 0%, and 6 a 100%) I got 3 5's and a 2 on push ups (of course...).
Other than these classes, I used to have Visual Art and Architecture but I switched out for my own reasons after about a week. I also had Spanish until this week, but I switched because it's extremely difficult to learn a language I don't remember anything of in Norwegian. I ended up getting the two confused a lot, and most of the time didn't even know what language the lesson was being taught in. Also the teacher was a little crazy and didn't understand that I couldn't understand the lessons and didn't remember any of the Spanish I had taken before, and he was one of those teachers that's gets angry when someone doesn't understand (not just me, but everyone else too). So I'm happy to be out of there, because by the time I did understand the Norwegian part, I would have been super behind in the Spanish part of the class.

So I guess that's it for this week, I'll probably update again after language camp unless I find the time during it.

Week 6 : A Turn Around

Since I didn't really do anything worth writing about this week, I'm just going to focus most of this on things about Norway that I want to talk about. But I am going to say that I started off the week in a bad mood; I was tired but I couldn't sleep, and just basically annoyed by everything. But around Wednesday night, I got sick of being in a bad mood and constantly mentally complaining to myself about dumb things. So I guess I decided I was going to do something to turn my mood around, and start off the next day as a good day. When I woke up on Thursday morning I saw that I had made a list on my computer about what I can do to be a better exchange student. So I made that day a good day, and I made the next day a better day. And even though I didn't do much this weekend, it was still a good weekend.

But anyways, time to talk about some aspects of Norwegian culture I find interesting or different.

Language: Norwegian is a very...interesting language. It looks very strange to someone like me, who really only knows English, and a little Spanish. It's a whole bunch of K's and J's and V's, and Ø's and Æ's and Å's of course. I would say pronunciation is the hardest part, and it's taken me until about last week to get a good grip on it. This has become confusing because I now I can look at an English word and almost immediately think of the Norwegian pronunciation. Sometimes I can hear a word in Norwegian be able to work out the spelling, which you would know is very difficult to do if you've ever seen a Norwegian word and then heard it. But the cool thing about Norwegian is that it is closely related to Swedish and Danish, and Icelandic (kind of, Icelandic is techinically Old Norse). So closely related in fact, I can understand some Danish and Swedish already. 

The other day my family and I were watching this show, and they were speaking something that sounded like a very strange dialect with regular Bokmål Norwegian subtitles. I could understand all the subtitles, but understanding the spoken part was difficult. Just as I was getting ready to mentally complain about how I can read Norwegian perfectly hard but listening to it so hard, my host mom told me it was actually Danish. Then I got excited because I was understanding some Danish. It sounds funny though, Norwegians describe it as 'it sounds like they are speaking with a potato in their mouth'. 

Also, this week my Norwegian class watched a movie in Icelandic with Swedish subtitles. That's what I mean about the languages being so interchangable. I could understand some of the Swedish, and a tiny bit of the Icelandic was familiar, but I gave up after 5 minutes because I didn't want to confuse Swedish with Norwegian.

Although this week I was kinda lazy with my Norwegian (I'm not really sure why...) I'm going to be asking my host family to stop speaking English with me soon. I know enough that I think I'll be able to manage. I'll probably still speak a good bit of English at school though. Right now all my friends speak Norwegian to me and to each other at lunch or during class, because generally I can understand. I'm free to join in and speak in English or Norwegian, and they'll answer me in Norwegian. Like the other day I sat outside with some girls from my class and they had a 30 minute conversation in Norwegian, and I could tell you at almost every point in the conversation what they were talking about. I call that progress!

Food: A month and a half in and I'm still confused by Norwegian food. It's very different from American food but I can't exactly explain how. They don't have snacks like we have, if you're hungry you have a sandwich. The food is healthy in general though. I'm not sure how to explain this, so I'm just going to go through the day describing how we eat. 

For breakfast I have yogurt, but you can also have smørbrød. Smørbrød literally translates to 'butter bread', and is basically a piece of bread with butter and a topping. The toppings range from liverpaste, cheese, jam, shrimp, fish, salami, ham, nutella, peanut butter, ect. 

This is also what you have for lunch in your matpakke. I usually have 2 smørbrød's with cheese, wrapped up in greaseproof paper. My school cafeteria also has sandwiches you can buy, 'pizza' (it doesn't really look like pizza), fruit, and yogurt. My favorite kind of yogurt here is called Go' Morgen, and it's some kind of yogurt with a topping on the side that you dunk in.

If I get hungry during the day sometimes I'll go get a yogurt at the grocery store, and every once in a while chocolate. Norwegian chocolate is amazing, so good in fact, I don't think I'll ever be able to eat American chocolate again. In comparison, American chocolate sucks.

Within an hour of when I get home we eat dinner. This is different every night, but it usually is fish and potatoes. I think I eat potatoes at least 6 out of 7 nights a week. I am not exaggerating.

Other 'typical' Norwegian foods include: brunost, knekkebrød, Norwegian cheese, and some others that I don't remember. Brunost is brown cheese, but somehow isn't technically cheese at all. It doesn't taste like cheese at all though. I can't describe the taste, but some people say it is like caramel and peanut butter. Brunost is a hit or miss with both exchange students and Norwegians, you either love it or hate it. I have decided I like it. knekkebrød is dried bread that you put butter and a topping on like smørbrød. It's loud and hard, and also healthy, but I like it. And then there is ACTUAL cheese, which I have been told is called Norwegian cheese. It tastes exactly like Swiss cheese and even has holes. Either the Swiss or Norwegians are confused.

Also I have to mention that milk is a really big deal here. I think my family buys more milk than bread, and that's saying something. And school people go buy these tall milk cartons in the cafeteria and take it back to class and drink it like it's the coolest thing in the world to do. I explained it to Emma over Skype today as "people carry cartons of milk around here like it's their swag or something". I think that was the perfect description. 

One more thing, before I came here I read that Norway is largest consumer of frozen pizza in the world. After having been here for a month and a half I would like to confirm that. I was also not surprised when I found out that the average Norwegian consumes more pizza than any other those of any other country in the world.

There are way more, but these are the ones that have been on my mind the most lately. If I can next week I'll write about prices and school and such. It's late here and I'm going to bed. Or maybe I'll come back and add more to this tomorrow during my free period. We'll see how it goes.

Week 5 : Oslo

Well this is the first time that I've sat down to write one of these and had no idea where to start. It's hard to have to write this on Monday because since it is a new week, it feels like last week is over and at the back of mind. Sunday afternoons are perfect because I'm writing about that week, but it's so close to being over that I don't feel like the post will be missing anything. But I didn't have the choice to do it yesterday because I didn't get back from Oslo until 10 at night. Now I feel like I have to dig back to remember what last week was like. It was a busy week last week, or at least it feels that way.

The week actually started off with me writing my last post on Monday night (duh if your someone like my parents who I know reads this every week you probably already knew that) ANYWAYS I'm mentioning this because something significant happened when I finished writing that. I went downstairs because I was hungry and I felt like I had been isolating myself in my room (writing that journal) for too long. So I cut myself a piece of bread and brown cheese with the special cheese cutter thing that looks like a shovel, and went to go eat it at the kitchen table. While I was eating my smørbrød (pretty sure that's what it's called...), ignoring the loud Norwegian coming from the other room, and looking out the window at the little red and yellow houses across the fjord (that's what I call it, I don't actually know what it is) as the sun began to go down, I realized that I now live in Norway and my life has become pretty Norwegian. Yes, it took me almost a full month of living here to realize that. And I can't explain what I mean when I say "my life has become Norwegian". Trust me I just tried to type it out 3 times but it just won't come out the right way. All I can really say is that I feel like I've adapted to the Norwegian ways of doing things, and do a lot of them now without a second thought.

Moving on, three things stick out in my mind when I think about last week. 1. I was very tired, probably from barely sleeping at the Conference that weekend. 2. All the classes in the Barbu building of my school were moved to the other one. This made me late for some classes, and "accidently" miss some others because the only teacher that said anything about it, said it in Norwegian. Also I had to walk up the steepest hill ever more times in one day than anyone should ever have to. 3. I studied A LOT of Norwegian. I reached a point where I realized I knew more than I thought I did, and that I could understand a lot of written Norwegian and some spoken. Then I figured out I could write in Norwegian and I was so excited I just wanted to learn more and practice all the time. So I started having small Norwegian conversations at school, spending all my classes hardcore studying my Norwegian books because suddenly they were so much easier to get through since Norwegian was becoming more familiar to me, and spending all my free hours in the library reading and translating Norwegian books. I've started translating my thoughts into Norwegian sometimes, and even automatically think some things in Norwegian now.

However I've sadly backpedaled a bit in the last few days with Norwegian because I was in Oslo. I practiced some whenever I spoke to Aase because I have to speak Norwegian (and she just realized I can understand her and speak the other day) but that's really it because I was so tired. Learning a language takes a lot of focus and effort, it can be very exhausting. For instance today I am so tired I didn't even try to study my books, I made it a "trying to understand spoken Norwegian day" a.k.a. listen to my teachers for 10 minutes and then spend the next 20 zoning out and so on. 

ANYWAYS, I went to Oslo this weekend with my host family because Ole had a sailing competition in Oslofjorden. We stayed at my host mom's brothers house (though she didn't come because she is in Scotland) because he lives right outside the city. We spent most of Friday afternoon driving to Oslo and dropping Ole's sailboat off at the place where the competition is held. On Saturday and Sunday, my host dad, Aase, my host mom's brother's family, and I toured through Oslo. We saw almost everything, from the roof of the Opera House to the main street to the new castle and the old fortress. Oslo is very unique. The city has so much variety. Every area of the city is different, it's a nice mixture of very old buildings, and very new, modern ones. Other than saying that I can't even begin to describe it. Oslo is just so different from any city I have ever been too.

There's actually a lot more I'd like to say, but I think I'll wrap this up here. I really want to comment on things such as Norwegian food and restaurants, school, prices, ect. but I think I'll save that for another time when I haven't already written so much.

Week 4 : Valg og District Conference

Hei hei. Dette uke jeg har vært til Langesund for en Rotary konferanse. Jeg møtter alle utvekslingsstudentene i mitt distrikt. Der har også en lokalvalg i Arendal. Jeg har også møtter min tredje vertsfamilie.

Yay I can make sentences now! I'm not sure if that's right but at least I tried. But anyways a lot has been going on this past week. It is local election time in Arendal so the campaigns are in full swing. Last Wednesday we had this thing at school where representatives from all the political parties (there are A LOT) set up tables in the gym, they walked around passing out pamphlets with information about their party and all the students could go around and ask them questions and stuff. Of course I just followed my friends around and nodded like I understood when someone told me something about their party. But I took all the pamphlets because they may be interesting to read one day when I can understand them. Now there were some students who genuinely cared about the elections, and others who just collect candy. All the parties have baskets of candy they give out and from what I understand students go around collecting the candy, and basically the party with the best candy wins the school elections. Anyways on Thursday my class had the school election instead of gym, and this long survey thing after. I just voted for the party in the middle of left and right (by the way Democrats are generally more conservative than the most conservative Norwegian party) because I didn't understand anything about the different parties. And then I had to take a 20 page long political survey...in Norwegian. Someone offered to translate for me, but it turned out that I actually understood about 90% of it.

Then on Friday during lunch one of my friend invited me to join this thing called Grønn Barbu, which I don't complete understand but I think it has to do with something environmental and political. It was basically just everyone putting a green hand print on a really big poster.

Friday afternoon I left for my Rotary District Conference in Langesund. There I met all the other exchange students in Southeastern Norway and some Rebounds. Suprisingly I am the only American in my district. There are 3 Canadians, 2 Australians, 2 Brazilians, 2 from France, 1 Mexican, 1 Argentinean, and me. But most of the Rebounds were Norwegians that had gone to the US, 1 to Florida, 1 to New Hampshire, and 2 to California. And then 1 to France, 1 to Canada, and 2 to Australia.

It was a fun weekend. On Friday afternoon we just all hung out and got to know each other. We stayed in the back of the lobby and played games like ninja. On Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast, which  confused me at first because they had a really good and varied Norwegian breakfast when I'm used to really gross American continental breakfasts that consist of stale bagels and cream cheese packets. After breakfast we had to prepare our presentation for the Conference. We learned 2 songs in Norwegian and practiced introductions (also in Norwegian) and then it was time for lunch. After lunch we put on our Rotary blazers and did our presentation. We started off by walking in carrying flags from countries all over the world (since I'm the only American I didn't have to fight for mine), we set them down and began our introductions. It wasn't too hard, we basically just said our name, age, country we're from, where we live in Norway, and the club that's hosting us in our native languages and then Norwegian. Then the oldies (people from the S. Hemisphere that arrived in January) did speeches in Norwegians, and also some of the Rebounds spoke about their years. Then we sung "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" in Norwegian, because the older Rotarians get really happy when they see young foreigners attempt to do things in Norwegian. And then we sung some kind of famous Norwegian song. And we finished off by singing "It's a Small World After All" and carrying our flags out.

And that was the end of our Rotary obligations for the weekend. In the afternoon we all went on a trip into the open sea on an Old Rescue Boat. It was very wet and wavy and some people got really sick, but it was fun and had a really great view. When we got back to the hotel we went swimming in this huge pool that the hotel is famous for. It had a few slides, a wave pool, and a couple hot tubs. Part of the pool was even outside, which was cold. Then we had dinner and went back to the lobby to hang out and play games for most of the night. I don't think anyone went to bed until about 2 AM. And the thing was, was that neither did the Rotarians. They all stayed out in the lobby until very late. At one point a bunch of us went back to the rooms to hang out because answering the same questions about how we like Norway and school gets old fast.

In the morning we had breakfast and hung out in the game rooms and some in the pool until it was time to go home (our homes in Norway that is). It was a good weekend and I'm excited to see everyone again at language camp at the end of this month, along with the rest of the inbounds in Norway. I also met some people that are kind of close to me, so I can take a bus to hang out with them some weekend. There's one rebound to California in the town right next to Arendal, and 2 inbounds in Kristiansand about 50 minutes away by bus.

My third host dad took me home with him because my current host family were at a reunion near Oslo. So I got to meet his wife and son who is my age. It was a really nice afternoon and I'm sure I'm going to like living with them. They're all really nice and fun, and live a 5 minute ferry ride from the city. You can actually see the town across the water. We watched this show that's new here in Norway called "Alt For Norge", it's a game show where Norwegian-Americans come to Norway to compete to have a chance to meet with their Norwegian family. All the tasks are them having to do typically Norwegian things, which is really funny for both Norwegians and myself. Firstly, because they all flip out at most of the things and refuse to believe it could be considered "typical". And secondly, because they found some of the most ridiculous Americans I have ever seen.

But to sum this up, it's been a good week and a fun weekend. And now I am very tired because I've barely gotten any sleep. I'm going to Oslo this weekend, so like this week, I won't have a post by Sunday.

Ha det for nå!

Week 3 : More Skole

Halllo. Well another week has gone by and not too much has happened, which is kinda nice because everything's beginning to feel very normal.
As far as school goes, I moved out of my Architecture class and into History and Philosophy and Spanish. I don't mind it this way because now I get to have a "normal" Norwegian schedule (with people closer to my age) which is what I came here to do.
I was also put into an International English class. The class is part of the regular Norwegian school (there's also an IB program here) but is taught in English. It's nice having this class because for 5 hours a week I actually understand what is going on. It's also funny because in the class they talk about things like American customs and news. For instance, my last lesson was all about small talk. You see, in Scandinavia, people typically keep to themselves. They don't just start talking to a stranger, even if you're both standing next to each other waiting for a bus or something for 20 minutes. If you've ever been on a bus or in an airport or a restaurant here, you'll notice it's much quieter than buses or airports or restaurants in the USA. So anyways, my class learned about what small talk is, when you use it, and what is appropriate and inappropriate to talk about when having said small talk. It's really funny to watch because they'll ask me "Do they really do this in America?" It's also interesting because it's reminding me of all the differences between Norway and the US after I've already adjusted to them. The first day I was in the class everybody had to say what they thought of when they thought of the United States. Most people said things like fat people, Obama, tall buildings, and fast food. I hadn't even noticed that they're are like no fast food places here (except for the McDonalds in the center of town where you can buy an $8 hamburger).
Anyways, I'm becoming happier with school, even though I usually don't know what's going on in my classes until my teacher says something like "by the way we learned about the Ice Age today" as I am about to walk out the door. It was hard at first to make friends because Scandinavians are shy when you first meet them, and I felt bad making them speak English. But apparently they like "practicing" their English on me. And a lot of people will tell me what's going on now, or translate part of the lesson for me (even though I don't think I'm expected to do homework). I mean I understand some Norwegian, but not enough to keep up with lessons. Gym is the most confusing, because the coach screams out directions on games I've never heard of.
Other than school, this week I have gone to the movies twice, and to a museum tour thing of this Iron Factory (where the guide spoke all Norwegian and I gave up on trying to understand after 20 minutes). Next weekend is the District Conference for Rotary, where I will meet the other 11 exchange students living in my area. So I probably won't update this until after that, unless I have something to say.

Also my residence permit stuff finally came in the mail, so I'm living here legally now! Yay!