Halden, Ski, Larvik

The rest of the week was pretty low key...  Class all day...  Food every few hours...  Watching a few Norsk, Swedish or American films... (unfortunately, they were scary movies, one was literally called "Kvinnen i Kjøleskapet" or "The Woman in the Fridge") And then staying up late (learning how to do "the worm"?).  We went down into town a few more times, did a little bit of shopping, and got ice cream.  On Friday, we met Gunter (who I had met at my welcoming party one month ago) and he told us what we had planned for the big district conference.  Jørn og Gunter put most of us on the train to Ski and drove the rest.  I sat with Lauren and we both ended up falling asleep.  I think everyone's late nights and daily hikes were beginning to catch up. 

We got off the train at the Ski Stasjon and walked, literally across the street, to our hotel called, "Thon Hotel Ski".  Now, as you can imagine, many of us were confused with the title of this city and our hotel and what the weekend was about.  Everytime I recieved an email, I just couldn't understand how or where we were going skiing!  But, my host family explained it to me and it was just the town's name.  :):)

Inside the hotel, we met all of the other Australian kids and I was reunited with my wallet!  Tusen takk, Boaz og Tone!!!  I was now roommates with Jessica.  We had a room to ourselves, whereas most people had rooms to share with two or three others.  I think one room even had five boys in it!  Either way, we were happy to be in a nice hotel and no longer a hostell.  By the way, our hotel was connected to a shopping mall.  Uh oh... ;)

We all ate pizza in the restaurant attached to the hotel (where we would eat our remaining meals on the trip) and celebrated one girl's 18th birthday.  Good thing we learned the happy birthday song in Norwegian at language camp!  Even at the hotel we continued our late night routines. 

The next day was filled with the actual conference.  We were split up into continental groups: North America, South America, and Australia/Japan.  In these groups we made up routines for our portion of the conference.  First we all walked in with our flags (I got to carry in the American flag, lucky me!) and then went back to work.  When it came time to perform, the Aussies performed their national anthem, and gave many thank-yous to Rotary.  On our turn, we sang the Canadian and American national anthems, performed a few raps about our countries ("..to live, to work, to love, to be - come visit us in the land of the free!"), and showed a slideshow of each city or town we came from.  Mine was a lovely picture of Killington at night.  After that, we all did the "Cha-Cha-Slide" which the Rotarians seemed to like.  Then South America performed many dances and talked in Norsk.  After everyone was done, the rotarians had asked me to perform a song because they heard about my performance at the 2290 district conference.  So, naturally I just got up there and played "Piano Man" on a keyboard they rented for me.  It was great because this time, with more Americans and people who knew the song, I had a few people singing along with the chorus. 

During our free-time, we all went shopping.  It made life SO MUCH easier to have my wallet back.  I bought a dress from my new favorite Norwegian store: Ginatricot, some tights, and a few things I needed.  We had a very fancy dinner (the boys were even wearing ties without complaining!  Wow!) with great food.  After dinner, we had a dance...  with '50s music...  So we all got bored and decided to go upstairs. 

Yesterday, we were told that we were going on a hike, but we ended up going on a steam boat (awesome!) that was 100 years old.  We had a great lunch, went fishing for crayfish and shot a cannon.  Then we all went home.  My district was lucky, because we all had rides home from rotarians.  Gunter and his drove Nick and me home.  On the way, we went on the same ferry that I took on our way back from Sweden and met up with Michael, Kelly, Zak, and Zoe for the last time.

I ended up staying home from school today because all of our busy days finally caught up with me.  I could barely open my eyes this morning and I knew that if I went to school, I would not be able to function.

(Okay, so these pictures are out of order: first picture is Lauren, Michael and me on Sunday; second: trip on the steamboat; third: my table at the fancy district conference dinner; fourth: Kate and me eating dessert.)
**I also took these pictures from facebook!!  They aren't mine haha.

It was also Merete's birthday when I arrived home!  We had a nice dinner and cake to celebrate.  She also had a surprise party that Kristian threw for her on Saturday.  It is so great to be back in Larvik :):)