First I guess I'll talk a bit about Christmas (even though that was a month and a half ago...). Christmas in Norway is very different from the typical American Christmas. There's this crazy lead up to Christmas for months and months before... Christmas food, Christmas cleaning, Christmas star in the window (no extravagant American-esque Christmas lights, though), Christmas present shopping, etc. A few weeks before Christmas most people have what's called julebord (translates to Christmas table). Most people have it with their job but my family also went to one on Jøa! Everybody eats lots of food, drinks, dances, and has an all around good time! Lots of jokes and laughing (which means I pretend I know what they're saying and laugh) and is apparently a pretty traditional thing everybody does around Christmas. Then on the 24th (julaften in Norwegian) you get dressed up all nice for Christmas dinner that is generally with your family. We went to my mormor and morfar's house (grandparents on the mother's side) where lots of family was staying and had a lovely night. Ate food, opened presents (there are lots of presents under the Norwegian Christmas tree), and did some more pretending that I understood what people were laughing at!! But Christmas doesn't just stop after that. After Christmas the days have names. First Christmas day (the 25th), second Christmas day (the 26th), and I think you can figure out the rest. These "Christmas days" are filled with lots of parties and some more family dinners. These Christmas days all lead up to the New Year! Essentially Christmas break in Norway is two weeks filled with food and partying (a surefire way for everybody to put on a few pounds..). Lots of fun though! I would have to say one of the best parts was actually having snow on Christmas. Made everything a million times prettier and totally gave a traditional Christmas feel that you definitely don't get in LA.
Now I guess I can tell you guys about my (extremely successful..) winter sports adventures. So far I've only tried cross country skiing and ice-skating/hockey (in gym class..) but I'm hoping to try down hill skiing soon! First I'll tell you a bit about cross country skiing in Norway (since I know you all want to know!). It's a super popular sport and pretty much everybody does it and is pretty good at it. There's a saying in Norway that babies are born with skis on their feet. Since there's lots of snow in winter it's pretty easy to go cross country skiing without having to drive very far (or even without having to drive anywhere at all). When babies are too young to ski their parents get a carriage-type-thing (think the children carriers that can go behind bicycles but for skis) and take the baby along with them! And once kids can stand and walk they have no choice but to ski also. They also watch skiing on TV allllll the time. They told me it's only in Winter but I'm pretty convinced that winter is 10 months out of the year here soooo I'm pretty tired of watching skiing on TV now...But back to my skiing adventures now! The first (and only time so far) that I've done cross country skiing wasn't exactly what you would call successful. Silje and I started by getting on our hundreds of layers of clothes (as the Norwegians say "there's no bad weather only bad clothes!!!") and then went outside to ski. Now, when you fall walking on the way to go skiing you might think that this is not going to be the best time ever but, nope, I just kept going!!! So we get to the place where we are going to ski, put the skiis on, start going, and then I fall within 30 seconds or so of standing up. When I got up again to start skiing I realized that my ski pole was bent. Go me! So I frantically called to Silje and, long story short, the ski pole broke into two pieces. This all resulted in Silje doing the rest of our ski trip with one ski pole and me with two. I don't think I stood up for more than 30 seconds without falling (I didn't know how to stop either so my method of stopping when I got going too fast was to fall). However, in my defense, the ground was more ice than snow! Anyways, I think our 300 meter trip took us about 45 minutes considering I couldn't make it up the tiny tiny hill and had to work on that for 20 minutes. All in all I would NOT recommend trying cross country skiing for the first time on ice. The next escapade in winter sports was the lovely (*eye roll*) day we had to play hockey in gym! The ice skating rink here is outside (it's cold enough to maintain it) which means that when it snows it snows on the ice and makes everything really really bumpy. I could barely make it across the rink without falling before having to play hockey, but once we started playing everything started to go a little down hill. Sometimes I couldn't hold on to the hockey stick and it would just fly out of my hand but most of the time I would just attempt to hit the ball and fall instead. This resulted in me having nasty bruises all over my legs but hey, you know, no pain no gain!! In this case I wouldn't recommend playing hockey unless you have flat ice to skate on... Sledding is also lots of fun! We have one sled you can "drive" (with a bit of a sketchy steering wheel) so we decided to take this down the hill big hill leading to where I live (in Fossbrenna). It was a bit sketchy when a car would come (don't worry mom and mormor we were safe!!) but it was a lot of fun and it was late at night so there were very few cars. I also went "swimming" (run in, scream, run out) in the ocean on the first of January and went "snøbading" (snow bathing) with my friends a few weeks back! In snow bathing you just run outside in a bikini or something and roll around in the snow and then run as fast as you can back inside. Lots of screaming here, too! It was definitely cold but maybe I can qualify as a viking now?? Overall winter has been lots of fun!
Weather here also seems to be something I'm asked about a lot (considering it's reeeally different than in the states) so I'll talk a bit about that now! I can sum it up in pretty much two words: It's cold. Now, it IS cold but you actually get pretty used to it! In the beginning I thought that 5 or 10 degrees celsius (40 or 50 fahrenheit) was cold but now that's a pretty warm day. It's averaged around -5-0 celsius (20-32 fahrenheit) this winter so it hasn't been too brutal but it's not so fun when it gets down to -20/-25 celsius (-4/-13 fahrenheit). The Norwegians say "there's no bad weather, only bad clothes", though, so as long as you have enough clothes you shouldn't be all that cold! In the winter we had very few hours of sun (from around 11 or 12 until 3 pm) and a majority of the time that sun was covered by clouds. However the sun is starting to come back and make everything a lot nicer looking and in the summer we'll start to have the midnight sun! When there's lots of snow and sun, though, everything is insanely bright so you have to be careful about snow blindness. We also have gotten quite a bit (by my terms) of snow here. Currently we have about knee deep snow but they're really good aboout plowing everyday so the roads and sidewalks are always clear. Before the winter came (and I'm assuming after it goes, too) we got a lot of rain. We've gotten rain during the winter, too, and it's really gross when it rains on top of the snow! Everything turns slushy and icy and slippery and really the last thing I want to do in those conditions is go outside. We've had pretty nice weather as of late, though. It's currently around -9 celsius (15 fahrenheit) but we have sun! Coming back to LA in July is going to be pretty miserable as far as extreme weather change goes, though, so I'm hoping it gets a bit warm here before I come home so I can get used to it again!
Last but not least I'll talk about school and language and all that good stuff! School here is very different from school in the states. They get a lot more funding from the government, I believe, and it makes a huge difference. Everybody has their own laptops that you use in class and science classes and the like have a lot more money to buy supplies for experiments. Schools are also inside (obviously..) and a lot more relaxed about many things! You can leave school whenever you want, without having to call your parents from the office, and the schedules are a bit more like college schedules. You don't have the same classes everyday and some days you start or end early. For examply on Mondays I start at 9:50, have two lessons of english, lunch, two lessons of math, and then am done at 1:30. On Tuesdays, though, I start at 8 have two lessons of marketing, two of Norwegian, lunch, two of psychology, and then two of gym so I'm done at 3:20. Everyday is a bit different which, I've found, keeps you from getting too bored with the same routine everyday. Some classes also require more time than others. For example, we only have two hours of gym a week whereas I have 5 of math and 4 of Norwegian. Each class requires a different amount of time. The grading system is also in numbers (1-6) instead of letters and there are only semester grades (no quarter grades). The other big difference is that there are different types of school (for lack of better words) that you can choose. This way you get to start your career early (i.e. if you want to be a construction worker you have two years of training in high school, then an internship for a few years after where you get paid half wages or so, and then after you can be a full on construction worker). There are different "lines" of school you can go such as cooking, hair cutting/coloring/etc., ambulance, health and social, music and dance, and many more. This gives quite an advantage to people because they get to have a headstart on their career before they even get to university! A bit about language, now. My Norwegian is coming along (not as fast as I'd like) buuut my family and most of my friends speak only Norwegian to me and I try to speak only Norwegian back! Sometimes I have to speak what I call "Norwenglish" (a Norwegian sentence with a few English words thrown in) if I don't know the word in Norwegian but it works. Before, though, I would get so excited when I could understand what someone said to me and then respond in Norwegian, but now I just think about how ridiculously NOT Norwegian I sound. I guess this could be considered progress in some sick twisted way, though, so baby steps! It seems as though my Norwegian is learned in really big steps. I'll be at the same level for a while and all the sudden, out of nowhere, I seem to get significantly (to some extent) better. The language is still a bit difficult in class as the teachers talk reeeeeeeally fast... I can also read from the book but it takes me about 10 times longer than everybody else. Most of my teachers are pretty understanding of this, though, so I'm glad about that. Another thing I've noticed is that I'm starting to be able to hear when people are speaking different dialects (there are 498576395703 different dialects in the Norwegian language) which I definitely could not before. I got pretty excited about that (it's the little things when you're an exchange student...) so the language is coming along! Skyping people from home is always a bit of a challenge as well. There are some words that I always say in Norwegian (yes, no, maybe, etc.) even if I'm speaking English which I tend to carry over when I speak English to family and friends back home! This usually ends up a bit like "Nei..faan..no æ har ikke... FAAN I haven't done that yet". Oh, exchange student problems. I'm loving it here, though, and couldn't have asked for a better year so far!
Hadet bra and until next time!
Rachael
