Volleyball Middag + Mer Snø

On Monday my volleyball team had a team dinner to celebrate Christmas (go Reima!) and we went to a pizza place. Yes, they do have good ol' Hawaiian and pepperoni but they also had Kebab pizza. It was the messiest pizza I've ever seen! Good, though. Here are some pictures of it:

 While we were there, it started snowing for the first time in quite a while. A Norway while, not a Longview while.

Of course I immediately jumped up and made Marie come outside with me to get some pictures. It was cold and wet but I only have 5 or 6 more months of snow left before I go home!

I still think it's so hard to get up and go to school even after watching it snow and knowing it will keep coming down all night. I told some people in my class that the first time I had ever been in school while there was snow on the ground was this year. I think it was pretty hard to believe, for them. If Trondheim had snow days, the make up days would extend into the next year's snow days! I had to take a picture from my classroom window even though you can't see any snowflakes falling so you'll just have to take my word for it.

That's all for now!

Jeg Har Spist et Reinsdyr!

 I still definitely have plans to eat reindeer in another form, but today I got to try reindeer sausage! It didn't taste as cool as I thought it would but it wasn't bad either. It tasted a lot like any other sausage, I guess. I do sort of feel bad about eating one so close to Christmas...but Santa doesn't need ALL his reindeer, right?

Thanksgiving

Turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry relish, stuffing, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, more pumpkin pie, apple cider, the "kids table," even MORE pumpkin pie. Sound familiar? I thought so.

This was my first family holiday that I missed on this exchange. It was a little weird, but I wasn't feeling all depressed like some of then other exchangers said they were (sorry mom!) I really wanted pumpkin pie so i decided to make it myself. Easier said than done, here! My host parents and I went to the biggest grocery store and asked around for some pumpkins. They didn't have any canned, but they did have some in the produce section. When we got there, they didn't look like they could be baked into a pie. But, we decided to give it a go. Six and 1/2 hours, 5 pans, and 17 google searches later, the pie was finished! Did we eat it immediately? No. The sad part of this story is that since it took so long, it was 12:30am by the end and no one wanted pie. The GOOD news is that I took a bunch of pictures! Take a look :)

First we have the ingredients I started with

'Nuff said.

Yes, my pie was made using viking milk and a hammer

Cooking the pumpkin!

Yummmmm ;)

Finally cooked and peeled

Almost ready to eat...Can you tell? :)

"Look tough, like you just made a pie"

    

Everyday Life

It is November 21st and the sun goes down at about 3:00pm and doesn't rise until 9am! Right now, we're losing about 6 minutes of daylight per day. It's crazy having it be dark all the time!

I was reading back through my first post and I've changed my mind about the weird meal times. It's pretty much the same here, if not a little earlier.

Some Pictures from the Last Few Months

Making paper cups in class so we could drink the soda someone brought in

At Fairytale Cupcakes with Sophie

 

Class Party

Summary

So I know I haven't updated this in a while (since I got here, in fact) but I'm going to try and make an effort to do that a little more often.

Here's a little recap of my stay so far:

First month-

• Started school at Adolf Øiens videregående skole
• Thought Norway was so nice and warm
• Moved in with 1st host family
• Learned how to ride the buses--and had to run to catch them a lot! 

Second month-

• Really started making closer friends
• Considered joining a fotball (soccer) team but then realized that volleyball would be so much nicer, as it is an indoor sport
• Still thought Norway had nice weather...for the first half of the month
• Starting to understand more Norwegian
• Snow in October??????????????????

Third month-

• My friends tried to start speaking only Norwegian to me. I can understand a lot, but only if they speak slowly
• I'm able to put together words to form coherent sentences! Sometimes.
• Everyone who told me that I'll just "pick up the language in a month or two" was WRONG. You don't just "pick up" a language! It takes a lot of work, a lot of questions and a lot of saying things that make no sense whatsoever. And it takes a lot more time than just a month or two.
• I joined a gym so I could run inside (there's a good 3 inches of solid ice covering the ground now, with some snow on top) and so I could take zumba classes! It's sort of hard not being able to understand what the instructor says but I'm getting pretty good at directions and counting now!
• Finally learned the ABCs! Not just in order, but so that I can spell things too. Pretty sure people in Trondheim think I'm crazy because I walked around with my Norwegian friends, quietly singing the alphabet.

Fourth Month-

• Just started!
• WHAT?!? My exchange is nearly 1/3 over! Time flies! :D

I'm Here!

I made it safely to Norway! All of my host families met me at the airport in Trondheim and we went to my first family's home to talk for about an hour. After that, I stayed with my exchange counselor Knut Wanvik for about 2 days so he could help me set up a bank account and get a bus pass. I moved into my first family's house (the Haddelund/Dahl family) yesterday and I really like it here. I have met Anne (Ann-eh), Jan (Yawn), and Torbjørn (Tor-byooern) so far and I will meet Ida (Ee-dah) today. Vegard (Veh-gerd) is at a football (I will be calling soccer football now since american football isn't really played here) camp and I'm not sure when he will be home. My second host family's daughter is in California right now and her name is Solveig (Sool-vay.)

Meals are eaten much later here. Yesterday we had lunch at 2 and dinner at about 9:30. We made pizza for dinner and I learned some norwegian words for things around the kitchen.

Ingvil,  friend of Torbjørn's, is coming over soon to meet me and we are going to play volleyball. Also, there is a neighbor who will be going to school very close to where I am going so we can take the bus together.