Today is Sunday, May 29th, 2011. On this day, I have been an exchange student for 290 days! I'm not sure if I have done anything else for that long consecutively... except maybe... being alive? Either way, this is a huge accomplishment! I am so proud of myself. Two hundred ninety-one days ago, I would have never been able to imagine this day. This may not be my favorite day of my whole exchange, as I'm spending it at home keeping it low-key, but this is something I'm going to miss in 46 days as I'm sitting on my Icelandair flight home.
At about the middle of my exchange, I started realizing that this amazing year that I have been looking forward to is on it's way out. When I signed up for this program almost two years ago, I understood that saying goodbye and the winding down of my year was going to be difficult, but it is almost impossible to understand the feeling without having experienced it. It was hard to say goodbye to my Italian host family in 2008 after spending four weeks with them, but I can tell that will never be as difficult as saying goodbye to my three host families, the rotarians and all of my friends after 48 weeks; that's 12 times as long!
Instead of thinking about the end of my year and how much I'm dreading it, I may as well think about what I have accomplished and the eclectic people I have met along the way.
I'll start this new way of thinking with a short blurb about my week -
I didn't have very much school this week because of exams, but one day I came to my classmates' exams and I was blown away. They had to perform between 15 to 20 minutes worth of music on their main instrument for an audience and for a judge. They held themselves really well on stage - alone and with some other classmates on certain songs. There were definitely a few times were my eyes felt moist because of the beauty of their music and beacuse of how proud I was of them, but I can't even imagine seeing it from their own point of views. They have all been together for three years and possibly more, so you can just imagine their reactions.
That same night was a Rotary night for me. The evening was actually quite funny. First, I thought we were supposed to leave at six o'clock, so I was already waiting downstairs at around 5:45, wondering where my host dad was. I finally called upstairs and he said we didn't have to be there until 6:30. Then we pulled up to the building and I had a bad feeling in the back of my head that we were at the wrong meeting, but I didn't say anything, because maybe I had my meetings mixed up. Then, as we got inside, I had been expecting to see Kristian (my first host father) and Helle (my second host mom), but instead I saw Merete (my first host mom) which meant we were at the Larvik Rotaryklubb meeting and not the Larvik Øst Rotaryklubb meeting. So, I visited with Merete and had planned to duck out and go walk into town to the correct meeting, but the Larvik meeting started before I could leave. Soon, my phone was ringing from Helle and I sent her a message saying that I was at the wrong meeting. As soon as there was a lull in the meeting, I quickly got out of my seat and called Helle back. As I called her, Eva (my counselor) walked through the door to fetch me and bring me to the correct meeting. The whole reason that I was going to this meeting was to meet some ladies from Memphis, TN who were on a group study exchange around Norway. And, of course, I accidentally spoke to them in Norwegian instead of English... And then I gave a presentation after then in English so that everyone could understand.
Yesterday I went with Line K to see her mom perform in a chorus at Bølgen which was fun, and I'm spending the rest of my day watching the house and walking the dog.
Something really cool that happened this week was that Sondre complimented me on my Norwegian!! I know that sounds silly, but it is almost impossible to get him to say anything except critical things about my progress haha. He's my own personal Norwegian teacher and I don't know what I would have done without him. He told me, "Jeg liker norsken din; den er ikke perfekt, men den er forståelig og morsom," which translates to, "I like your Norweigan; it's not perfect, but it's understandable and funny." I take what I can get! :D Thanks, Sondre!!
Here's a picture of Helle and me from the meeting on Wednesday:
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