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.