My year in Norway: March 2013

So this time I've decided that I'm going to write this post 2 weeks instead of 2 months after what I'm writing about and I've forgotten nearly everything! Progress? Maybe? No? Anyways, I guess I'll just jump right into it. Here in Norway we have less single days off than in the states (no President's Day, MLK day, Columbus Day, etc.) and, instead, we have a few more week long breaks! Although I do, admittedly, get slightly jealous when I see everybody at home having their days off EVERY week (not quite that often but for drama's sake) it is really great when the whole week off finally comes! For winter break my family planned to travel to our "hytte" (the equivalent of a sort of a little cabin in english) for the last half week and, on the last day, to go downhill skiing. I had been to the cabin once before (in Autumn) but this time the lake in front of it would be frozen over and, instead of driving a car and boat there, we would have to get 5 people, our dog, the food, clothes, and everything else we were bringing there on a snow scooter... We had a kind of sled that we could hook onto the back of the snow scooter that we loaded the food, clothes, and myself and Mariana (mariana being another exchange student in Norway from Portugal) onto. This was a slightly "sketchy", for lack of better words, set up, and if any turn was a bit too sharp then Mariana and I could easily fall off.. But more on that later. Trygve (our driver) and Mamma sat on the actual snow scooter (oh the luxuries of having bought the snow scooter themselves..), and Silje was being pulled on the back on skiis. After finally getting everything packed onto our snow scooter we were off! At the beginning, there were some tracks from where another snow scooter had driven before us and, even with this relatively smooth driving, Mariana and I were holding on for dear life as not to fall off. Then came the point where we were driving on the snow that hadn't been driven on before and this is where it got a bit more difficult. I did, actually, manage to fall off (with the bag with the eggs inside!!!) once but all the snow cushioned the fall! However, both the eggs and myself survived and once we got readjusted we were off again! We noticed, though, that the snow scooter seemed to be struggling to pull us all when we got to the hills so Mariana, Mamma, and myself were kicked off (cue the sad violin music now?) and were told that Silje and Trygve would drive to the cabin, drop of the stuff, and then come back to get us. We decided to walk a bit in order to keep warm which was, as it turns out, quite a bit more difficult than it sounds. Every step you took you sunk into the snow and would have to pull your foot out again. This makes you pretty tired after a while. Apparently, though, I was the best at not sinking and making good footprints so I was put in the front for quite a while. It seemed to be taking them a lot longer than we thought to get to the cabin and eventually we saw they had dropped off three of our backpacks on the side of the "road". Lucky us, one of them had påskeeggs (a chocolate easter egg with cream filling) in it and after eating those we were on our way again. We continued walking, and walking, and walking, and walking until we heard our dog barking and Silje talking! We called to them to see what had happened and they said they had crashed the snow scooter. We got a bit of a laugh out of this because we didn't know what they could've crashed with.. the snow, a moose? When we got to them, though, it turned out the scooter had gotten out of control on the slippery snow and went off the side, down the hill, and into the trees. Luckily, though, nobody but the scooter was hurt. This did however mean that we would have to leave all the bags and most of the food and walk/ski the rest of the way to the cabin but, luckily, our grandparents would come the next day to pick up our stuff with their snow scooter. After a long, long, LONG walk in the snow we were finally almost to the cabin and, unfortunately, completely out of energy but myself and Mariana remembered that we had chocolate in the backpack we had with us! We sat in the snow and "regained our energy" (ha...) and made the final 200 meter treck to the cabin. It turns out it's a pretty fun story to tell and it wasn't as horribly traumatizing as I've made it sound. The rest of the weekend was spent playing card games, roasting hot dogs on the fire, snow scootering, and skiing on the back of the snow scooter. Then that friday Trygve's son and his girlfriend came to spend the last night with us! A fun long weekend but on Saturday we made our way home (2+dog on the scooter, 3 on the sled in the back, and 2 holding on and skiing).

(Silje and Johan skiing on the back of the scooter)

(Our dog Mizzy getting carried in the backpack to the hytte)

(Mariana and myself roasting hotdogs on the fire)

(Being a true viking and chopping wood for our fire)

("Toilet" at the hytte)

(Crashed snow scooter)

The last day of break we had planned to go downhill skiing (for my first time ever!!). This ended up being a pretty interesting day. First of all, do you know how uncomfortable and difficult to walk in downhill skiing shoes are?? Really, really uncomfortable and difficult to walk in. It turns out that the place we went to (Bjørgan-hoping all you Americans have a fun time trying to pronounce that) doesn't really get a lot of people that are learning to ski (except for the little little kids) and even they seemed to fall less than me when they don't have ski poles.... Trygve and I made our way to the ski lift which, much to my dismay, was NOT a chair lift but rather this thing that you put behind you while you kept your skiis on the ground and it just pulls you up. I did, however, make it to the top but then managed to fall when getting off the lift. When I finally could get up we (slowly) made our way down the hill (and almost broke every bone in my body in the process). We did this a few more times, each time a bit better than the last, but I'm pretty sure everybody knew about the ridiculous American in the red jacket that could not ski. Then my family decided I was good enough to be on my own (not true) and said they were going to the big hill. Silje convinced me to tag along which turned out also not being a fabulous idea. I was super exhausted from all day of skiing but we made our way to the bigger lift and immediately (within seconds) managed to fall and get all tangled up together when we tried to go up. Once we finally got on the lift i made it about half way up (probably more like 1/4 of the way but 1/2 for my dignity's sake...) and then I fell off... with a bunch of people behind me... all staring at me.. Slightly embarassing, yes. I kind of crawled/walked to the side and made the executive decision that I really was done with skiing for the day. Silje got off the lift, thank god, when she got to where I had fallen off and we made it to the smaller (almost just wrote "littler".. I can speak english?) hill and went up and down that one more time. After that, however, I was done. We ate dinner, went home, and I slept really well that night. I'm hoping that nobody I knew was there to see my fantastic skiing skills but with the masks and hats and all it's a bit hard to know..

(A rare moment in my downhill skiing career of actually standing up)

(The ski lift at Bjørgan-those anchor looking things are what you sat on)

The rest of life here is going well! Time is flying and I can't believe I've been in Norway for over a half of a year. Time flies when you're having fun! My language is coming along.. I speak almost completely Norwegian at home (aside from when I'm asking what a word is in Norwegian) and I seem to be thinking more in Norwegian than English. I find it difficult to speak English with people at home because I subconsciously (not unconsciously...) say Norwegian words as well. I forget English words a lot, too, which can be a bit of an embarassment when I have to ask people in English class to help me remember an English word. Oh well, the life of an exchange student! Aside from that, the sun is coming back, it's starting to warm up a bit, and spring will be coming soon! And I think to end it here I'll give you all a quote by the lovely Dr. Suess that pretty much sums up my feelings about the fact I have less than 3 1/2 months left here... "How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?"