Week 1 : The Beginning

Well since I've offically been in Norway for one week as of 20 minutes from when I started writing this, I thought it's about time to update this.
Last Saturday I left Fort Lauderdale airport around 1 in the afternoon. I had a 3 hour flight to Newark, then a 4 hour layover before my 8 hour flight to Oslo. It was a long layover but I met Anna from Colorado, whose also going to Norway with Rotary, while we were waiting for our plane. Since we had so much downtime, we walked around the international section of the Newark airport for about 2 hours trying to find some other exchange students. But most of the flights that probably had exchange students on them had probably left earlier in the day, and we only found one boy who was going to Denmark.
Unfortunately I didn't sit next Anna on the flight to Oslo. I sat next to some older couple who may or may not have been foreign. I couldn't tell. It was interesting though, because I have never been on an international flight before. People were speaking different languages (well technically the Newark international terminal had been like that too) and they were passing out Norwegian newspapers, and about half of the passengers were blond.

Anyways I slept for about 5 hours on the plane, which is pretty good. I arrived in Oslo 9:45 local time (3:45 AM Florida time). I made my way through customs and luckily all my baggage arrived with me. By the way, the Oslo airport is really cool looking, the path from customs to baggage claim was  a glass walled walkway that looked over the rest of the airport. Also it smelled like Ikea.
After I got my bags I met my host dad and counselor, Håkon Weierholt. From the airport we drove about 3 or 4 hours to his house, which is 10 kilometers outside of Arendal. It was raining most of the drive but it was still very nice, everything was green and hilly. And the minute we reached the city limits the sun came out.
When we got to the house I met my host mom Camilla, and my host brothers and sister, Peder, Ole, and Aase.
The Weierholt's house is very nice, they live on the countryside right on the water. Surrounding us are forests, a river (that my host family swims in), and some kind of body of water (it looks like a lake but I'm pretty sure it's connected to the ocean, fjord maybe?). It's very pretty here.
But anyways, I'm pretty sure most people that have gone on exchange would agree with me. The first day always feels kinda weird. It's not a bad thing, it's just the way it is. You're jet lagged, and you're dealing with culture shock and language barriers.
My first day wasn't too bad though. My host sister Aase is only 8, so she really doesn't speak any English. But honestly, she's my greatest asset when it comes to learning Norwegian because I have to struggle through speaking in Norwegian when I want to talk to her. The first day she taught me the Norwegian alphabet and how to count to 30, along with some words like 'dog' and 'chair'.
My second day I went into Arendal with Håkon and Peder so I could submit my Residence Permit application at the local police station. After they parked the car in this parking garage inside a mountain and took me for a tour of Arendal. They showed me the City Hall, my school, the mall, and much more. The city is a little small but it's very nice and pleasant. Everything is close together and near the water, which will be nice because I can walk anywhere in town after school.

The dog (hund) Happy

That afternoon I went with my host family to a goodbye party for Peder (who is doing an exchange to close to where I live in Florida) at their Grandma's house. We took the boat there, because I'm pretty sure everything here is connected by water, and halfway there the boat kinda...stopped...in the middle of the fjord (?). So we paddled the boat (it's just a small motorboat) to shore and started walking up this hill until we reached the road. Then their family came to pick us up and that was that. They said it had never happened before, so that shouldn't be regular occurrence...
Anyways on Tuesday I didn't really do anything. It was Peder's last day in Arendal, he and Håkon left for Oslo after dinner. And I got a small driving tour of an island across the fjord from Arendal called Tromøy when we went to go pick up Ole from sailing. It was a very nice island, and apparently my next host family lives on it.
On Wednesday I went with Ole and his friends to this zoo/amusement park in Kristiansand, which is about an hour bus ride south of Arendal. They were 2 years younger than me, which I guess is a little strange, but it was fun and they helped me with some of my Norwegian. The zoo had a variety of animals and a few small rollercoasters. My host mom told me people from all over Scandinavia come to it.
On Thursday I went with Ole and Aase to Aase's sailing lessons on this small island near town. The island is basically two gaint rocks with a big dock between them, and you have to go by boat to get there. It was really cool, but I realized when I got there that I had forgotten my memory card for my camera...so no pictures. While we were waiting for Aase to finish sailing, Ole and I went to this famous island, Merdø. It was very pretty and there were a lot of nice summer homes there. We walked around the island for a while and went to the top of it, then we went to this little museum on it. The museum used to be a captain's house. Det var fint og gammel.
That afternoon I went to to my host club's Rotary meeting at this Hotel on the water in Arendal. There I met my other two host dads, they seem really nice. They both live on islands so I will be taking a ferry to school half the year, but that should be cool!
On Friday I really didn't do anything except for hang around the house and walk the dog. It was a nice day so I read my Norwegian books outside. And at night my host parents went to a house warming party for some of their friends. So Ole, Aase, and I had pizza and watched movies. I like watching TV here because they don't have dubbing except for children's shows, so I can read the Norwegian subtitles and learn new words.
And yesterday my host family and I went to town to buy school supplies. School starts for Ole and Aase tomorrow, but I have until Wednesday. We walked around this big mall in town and ate lunch at a cafe by the water. There was a world championship rock climbing competition going on in the harbor area that a bunch of people were watching. I thought it was kind of random.
And last night my host mom took me to this show thing in this theater made out of red granite on the top of a small mountain, that you have to walk up to get to. It was very nice.
And today in between writing this I went on a long walk through the forest near our house with my host family. It was very fun even though it rained a bit, and apparently a regular Sunday activity in Norway. And that is why it took five hours to write this post.

And not all of them are going to be this long, I'm planning on updating this once or twice a week.

Takk for lesing,
Ellen