The next morning, I was off to Nesbyen on a train at kl 9.00! The week in Nesbyen is quite like the Killington Ski Weekend, but with cross country skiing added.
When I caught my connection train in Drammen, I met up on the train with Abby and a few others. I didn't feel very bad when I saw that they had big bags too. Here's a picture from the train ride up:
When we arrived at the train station, we wanted to go into town because we didn't see any Rotary people, so we were heading towards the town when a guy yelled to us and we saw the minibus that was supposed to pick us up. There was a man videotaping us (which reminded me of Bob's videotaping back in our district at home in USA) as we walked over and we didn't know what to do so we just kept laughing.
We arrived up at the cabins at Nystølen where we were split up into different cabins; ours was called Hellebu. Jessica and Kate arrived later in the day and they were staying in my cabin with me. We had a "cafeteria" (literally translated) a short walk from the cabin through the trees and deep snow. We ate breakfast and dinner there and sometimes lunch (unless we were skiing with matpakker - Norwegian equivalent of a packed lunch). The first night, Kate and I slept in the room with bunk beds but when we woke up, we decided we would switch to the room with the giant bed because neither of us had a good night of sleep.
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| hole in the floor? |
We got our cross country ski legs on first after breakfast and went on a short skitur. We also met the new Aussies and Argentinians after our skitur! There are two girls from Argentina and three girls and one boy from Australia (as well as another girl or two from Australia that we'll meet at Holmenkollen in week nine). We were split up into three groups as well: North America, South America/Japan and Australia. This meant that one group would go to the downhill ski area while the rest would hang out and cross country ski for the day at Nystølen. We gained three more girls in our cabin: Victoria and Rocio from Argentina and Jourdy from Australia.
Jørn from language camp stopped by to say hello...
NEWSFLASH: I'm now officially an "oldie" in Norway. I think it's a good and bad thing. I remember being amazed at what our old-oldies (old Aussies and Argentinian) could understand when I was a "newbie" and these kids are now in awe of what we understand. It shows I have learned a lot, but at the same time it shows that I only have five months left here. Tomorrow is the sixth month anniversary in Norway for me.
The next day, we had breakfast and made our matpakker and hit the slopes. We went to a downhill ski area with only two T-bars (my father will be proud to hear about those): one one-seater and one two-seater. We started off at the bunny-hill to see how everyone was and we were finally let to go on the bigger-hill. Almost everyone had skied before! It was really a fun day. We had our matpakker inside and went back out for a few hours in the afternoon as well. That night we went up to the other girls' cabin and danced and sang for most of the night.
Another day we went on a 12 km skitur. Our Rotarian guide was 73! He did a great job showing us the trails and leading us. Kudos to him :)
We had a movie night in Kate and my bed one night and accidentally broke it!
I guess we really do gain a bit of weight on exchange... ;) Or maybe it was just because the bed is meant for two people... oh well... either way, the bed broke again this morning at around 7AM so I wasn't a happy camper...
The next day, we went cross country skiing again and then went on a moose sighting ride with Jan. We didn't see any moose at first when we got out of the minibus...
But then Alyssa screamed "MOOSE" (which freaked us all out at first) and had found two up the hill during our drive to the Rotary meeting.
At the Rotary meeting, we learned about Holmenkollen weekend in March and gave our little "presentations" about our countries by singing the national anthem of our countries or talking about differences... etc..
Connie's birthday was on Wednesday and we had a dance party in the other girls' room. They bought Hello Kitty cups and napkins and cheese puffs. It was a fun night :)
The rest of the week was full of skiing and bonding with the kids. We had tons of movie nights and dance nights and bonding nights. The last night we had cake for Connie's birthday and watched TV in the cafeteria where we found out that "Presidenten går av" "the president goes off" in Egypt and where we also had seen the double world record breaking in ski jumping by a Norwegian ski jumper.
Here are a few more pictures from this week:
The next time we'll all see each other is in less than three weeks at Holmenkollen! We're watching the international ski jumping finals! Lucky us :):)
I'll probably update more, but I am quite tired so I'm leaving you with this for now...
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