Typical Norwegian weekend

This weekend I went to a russ celebration for the first time, which is very common for the senior grade in Norway. It took place in the local bar “Expeditionen” right beside the fjord on Friday evening, where I went to with Lena and two German au pairs (Lea and Kyra) I got to know trough her that day. That way I could experience the Norwegian alcohol consumption among youths and its consequences at close range, which is not really worth an experience, to be honest. When Norwegians drink alcohol, which means on Fridays and Saturdays, they do it as the Prohibition is about to come. They don’t know or care about their limits at all and just drink as long as it is possible. My advice is to accept the loud and suddenly talkative mass of people, overcoming their inhibitions, with humor. It is just the way they do it, but be prepared that you won’t recognize Norwegians you already knew before anymore. Some are just totally different persons when they are drunk… :D

On Saturday our German-speaking group met again to go cross-country skiing, one of the favorite activities of Norwegians. Although I am standing on skis since I was a little child, I never tried the cross-country version. Probably because I already knew that it wouldn’t be my favorite kind of activity. But let’s start at the beginning: After Lena, Lea and Kyra picked me up we went to Lena’s place and prepared dough for twist bread before we started looking for skiing equipment in the garage of her host family, which is full of all kinds of skis and stuff. Then we drove to the ski area nearby, called Harpefossen, and took the cross-country skiing trail to the cabin of Lena’s host family. On our way we figured out that cross-country skis are a bit less steady than the normal downhill skis, but on the whole it was not really difficult to ski on them. When we reached the cabin we made a little fire to grill sausages and the twist bread, but it was kind of difficult to keep the fire burning when it started raining. Despite everything we managed to finish while being creative, but still it got kind of cold with the clothes getting wet. Therefor we went back after eating up, which was a lot quicker because it went downhill most of the time. At that moment I understood why I love downhill skiing – I feel the need for more speed. Still we had a really good time outside as well as back inside while watching a movie, playing “Who am I?” and warming up again :)

All in all I had a great week. Besides my typical Norwegian weekend I started looking for new volunteers on Monday. Since I placed an ad about the EVS project in Nordfjordeid on the European Youth Portal some time ago, we received a lot of applications and Astrid is thinking about closing the deadline earlier than planned because we already have plenty of good applicants. Now we have to go through all of them, which is quite interesting and funny. On Thursday all of us volunteers had a look on them together and we really look forward to skype with some future volunteers :D

Moreover I went dinner driving with Barbara for the first time, which was nice because I usually don’t have company in my age. Together we had a lot of fun, which we also had on Wednesday while preparing ravioli and pelmeni for the students. It was Oleksandr’s idea to make them ourselves and it was delicious, but it took a lot of time and we couldn’t boil everything at once, wherefore some students had to wait longer than others, which was not appreciated. Now we go back to ready meals again, it is such a pity…

But it is definitely not a pity that I don’t have to go to the Norwegian class on Fridays anymore. Instead I help Astrid in the office, especially with the applications coming in right now. This Friday I was on my own because Astrid had to go to a meeting, which meant that I had to answer the phone. I was so scared of talking Norwegian on the phone and understanding it in the first place, but it went surprisingly well. I have to admit that I was a little bit proud of myself, especially because I never felt comfortable talking to strangers on the phone, not even in my mother tongue – and now I did it in Norwegian. Seems like I am on a good way there :)

Ha det bra,

Alisa