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!
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