Longest blog post ever. Read fast to finish by the end of next month!

Hello!!!!!!!! I haven't posted in over a month and a lot has happened. Here's a quick summary, in list form, in case you don't want to read this whole thing.

1. Got a new bus card that's good until June 25, the day my parents come to Norway. Now everyday when I take the bus to school I see a little countdown of how many days left in my exchange. 88 :(

2. Volleyball tournament! We lost all our games, but that's not important, right?

3. Taylor Swift concert in Oslo with my new host sister, Andrea, and host cousin, Mari.

4. World Ski Championships in Oslo with all the exchange students. We saw the ski jumping.

5. I've switched host families for the 3rd and final time! Everyone asks why we have to change, and I don't really know. It's just a Rotary rule.

6. It's starting to become spring (or so I thought) but we had a big snowstorm a couple days ago and now we're leaving March and entering April with a good foot of snow still on the ground. This makes over 6 consecutive months with snow!

And now time for the slightly extended, marginally more descriptive versions of all those things listed above. And pictures!

 Volleyball!

We had two teams go to the tournament. It was in Ålesund, which is about 6 hours south of Trondheim. We took a bus which was a little boring but we tried to make a video for me to post on here! I'll have to edit it and upload it so it'll probably be on this blog in my next post...which could mean about 3 weeks, haha. We stayed in the Blindheim senter which is a rec center in Ålesund. There were about 10 teams staying there, I think. Also, I know an exchange student from Australia who is living in Ålesund right now so he came to one of the games and learned our cheers.

Go Reima!

Taylor Swift concert!

On march 9, my host sister, host cousin, and host dad went to Oslo (capital of Norway) to see Taylor Swift. It was really fun and was sold out. Waiting in line for an hour in the freezing cold wasn't so fun tho! Partway through her show, Taylor walked through the crowd and Andrea (host sister) went to go meet her. We both got to touch her hand! Yayyyyy haha.

 World Ski Championships!

It's always fun to get together with the other exchange students and hang out, and the Oslo weekend didn't disappoint!  We stayed just outside of the city in a sort of youth hostel-ish thing and went on tours of the viking museum, a ship museum, and a museum of something that I don't remember because I was too focused on the large pile of dried fish in the middle of the floor. Yum, Norwegian food! On Saturday I think it was, we went to the big ski jump to watch the competition. Norway was edged out by Austria but they still took 2nd place. As for the good ol' USA? We didn't even have a team there! It was a good chance to pretend to actually be Norwegian and dress up with lots of red and blue and flags and paint our faces red and blue and with flags, etc. See for yourself!

Nina (australia), me, Victoria (argentina)

The helmet was a little big...thus I have no eyes in this pic

 

Francisco (equador)

New Host Family!

I've now moved to my 3rd and final family! I have 2 little sisters now; Nora is turning 10 next week and Andrea is 14. In Norway when you turn 14 you have your Confirmation in the spring and you get a Bunad, or traditional Norwegian costume. Andrea just got hers recently and put it on right away.

Coming Soon!

Next up is Easter break which is a week long like our spring break is. Then the day my friends go back to school, I leave for EuroTour with the other exchange students! Two weeks, six countries, and no school? Yes please!

For anyone who was wondering why I temporarily changed my name from Jessica JohansOn to Jessica JohansEn on Facebook, it was just because that's how they usually spell it in Norway. JohansOn is a little more Swedish. But I'm back to my real name now; I just like it more.

And just for the record, I know I said I was going to update more often but that's really not going to happen. It's just not. But hey, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? You'll all LOVE me by the time I get back!

Ha det bra!
-Jessica JohansOn  ;)

Winter Camp and Cheese in a Tube

Last week I went to this thing called winter camp. It's for all the Rotary exchange students in Norway to get together and ski, snowboard, go sledding, and go cross country skiing. For the most part, it was pretty fun. I know I don't really write very much but it's hard to figure out what to say and I'd rather just post pictures. SO! first off we have winter camp:

This is Norway: mountains, sun setting at noon, snow and trees

Other exchange students! Jourdy (Australia), Rikou (Japan), and Flavio (Brazil)

Me sledding...ouch

...but I lived!

Victoria :)   (Argentina)

On our cross country ski trip. We did 11 km. Kate (Canada), Connie (Canada), Noellen (USA), Jan? (Norway), Sara (USA), Abby (USA)

Sara (USA), Abby (USA), Monica (Brazil)

Pudding

Ok, in Norway they have this stuff that they think is pudding. And they think it's good. But it's not. The closest thing I can compare it to is maybe like chocolate flavored Jell-o that has maybe gotten old or something. You can't quite see how strange it looks unless you see it in person. I think it moves on it's own sometimes! The vanilla sauce that goes with it is really good though!

Skiing

Eating dinner

Alyssa (Canada) crashed during our cross country ski trip

And now moving on to the cheese in a tube. There is this stuff here that is literally flavored cheese in a tube. It's really common to eat for breakfast and lunch. A lot of the girls in my class bring it and crackers to school so they can make lunch. Some of the flavors are Jalapeno, bacon, ham, or fish. I've tried the jalapeno and ham flavors and they're actually pretty good. I don't like cheese that much so I'm not a huge fan of it but it wasn't as bad as it looked.

 

Bursdags Festen!!!

As you might know, my birthday was last month. I had some friends over to watch a movie and eat pizza and, because we're in Norway, braid each others' hair. There was also this really big storm that night with lots of wind, a little lightning, and lots and lots of rain.

The fjord during the storm, just across the street from my house

 
 

Birthday cards!

Opening presents

Marie's "waterfall" braid (by me)

 

My fishtail braid (by Hanna)

Marie, Ingvild, Sigrid, Hanna, Mathilde, Sofie, Ingvild, og meg

This one isn't actually from my birthday, but I forgot to put it up a long time ago. Sigrid, Marie and I went out for sushi. Yummm!

Masse Nye Bilder! Også min reise til Oslo

I know I've been slacking on this whole "updating my blog" thing. It's just not very high up on my to-do list! Most of my friends and I read the blog of a girl from Norway who's living in California this year and she updates almost every other day. That's never going to happen here, but I'm going to start trying to post something at least once a week. "Try" being the key word here.

This post is going to be some more pictures from around Christmas-time and will tell about my trip to Oslo (the capital, and the only big city) so I could take the SAT.

First some more pictures from Christmas/Winter break:

Rawr!



Baby Axel!




A bear...eating my foot




Awww




Hotel Britannia in Trondheim




I went searching for some X-mas lights. This was the best I could find

 AAAAND now on to the new stuff. I went to Oslo last weekend because I needed to take the SAT (a college admissions test in the USA, for all you norwegians reading this) and I think I did pretty well...we'll see. I stayed with my first host mom's sister's daughter, Hanna, who goes to the University of Olso. *note: not the university I was testing at*

It was kind of nerve wracking trying to get to the testing center in the morning. My admission ticket told me to be there at 8:00am sharp so I planned to be there around 7:30 to give me some time to get lost and then un-lost and then lost again, etc.. Unfortunately, I asked for directions from the wrong person and was told that I took the wrong train and needed to go back. Once I went back the way I came, I had to ask again where to go from there and was told to go back the way I had gone in the first place. Luckily, on that train I met a woman who works at the school I was going to and she told me which stop to get off at. I know all this sounds like it probably took a lot of time but it really didn't. It's a high speed tram and it just stops for a couple seconds at a time. And I wasn't really going very far so doing all of this puts me at about 7:55. Five minutes to spare and I can see the university. Plenty of time, right?

Wrong.

Since I was really REALLY lucky that day, the testing center was in a building that had just been renamed and I only had the new name. For future reference, Lucy Smiths Hus is the same place as the old administration building. None of the maps were updated yet and no one was walking around the campus before 8 on a Saturday morning. Of course, in Norway it's still pitch black at 8am so that didn't help. I walked around looking for any lights that were on and finally found some. I walked in about 10 minutes late and asked if this was the testing center. Yes it was, and they hadn't even started checking people in yet so it was fine that I was late. It ended up not starting until about 9:30 anyway.

I was surprised at how many people were there; I would guess about 40. I even met a guy who was an exchange student in Spokane last year and was taking the test to go back for college. After finishing the test, I had the rest of the day and Sunday morning to look around Oslo.

I had planned to put my pictures in this post but I just realized that I haven't put them on my computer yet. When I get around to doing that, I'll either update this one or make a new one.

And one last thing: MIN BURSDAG ER LØRDAG!  My birthday is Saturday :) :)

Jul i Norge!

Det er den tiden igjen, tid for jul! Fordi jeg har vært her i 5 måneder, jeg synes at det er tid for meg å skrive litt norsk til alle hjem. Men siden du forstår ikke denne (hvis du bor ikke på norge) jeg skal stoppe her. Og jeg skrivet på bokmål, ikke trøndersk, så at du kan oversetter med Google Translate :)

Christmas time! This is sort of a long one. I haven't updated anything in a while because I figured it would kind of be a waste of time to do before Christmas. But then I forgot my camera-computer connector when we went to Sweden so I couldn't post anything until I got home. Sweden? Yes! My family has a cabin in Åre, Sweden and they spend Christmas there every year. It's just over the border so it's only about a 2-2 1/2 hour drive from Trondheim. But it's really cold there! The temperature reached about -35 fahrenheit on some days...wayyyyy too cold for me.




I got to try cross country skiing for the first time and I loved it! It's a lot more work with your arms than I was expecting but it was also a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

As soon as we got to the house, we went out on snowmobiles to cut down a Christmas tree. In Norway they celebrate on the night of the 24th, not on the morning of the 25th like us.


Me, standing outside when it's -30!



Host siblings! from L-R: Simen, Ida, me

Ida and I decorating the tree

Haha good job to whoever made this one...

Welcome to Duved! (in Sweden)

I'll put up some more pictures sometime but right now I need to go to sleep. God natt, god jul, og god nyttår!