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".