The Best TIme of the Year

These past few weeks I have been really experiencing a Scandinavian Christmas. A typical tradition here is to have four candles of advent, and with each Sunday in December a new candle is lit.  In lighting a new candle a verse to the, “ Vi tenner lys” song is sung. The first Sunday of December one candle is lit and one verse to the song is sung, the next Sunday two candles are lit and two verses are sung, and so on until the final Sunday where all candles are lit and the song is fully sung.

Vi tenner lys – adventsang

Vi tenner lys for han som gav oss solen Og lar oss leve på den gode jord. Vi tenner lys for alle barn i verden Vi tenner lys for søsken, far og mor.

Vi tenner lys for vise menn på vandring Vi tenner lys for stjernen over dem. Vi tenner lys for Josef og Maria Og for den lange vei mot Betlehem.

Vi tenner lys for englene og stallen For okse, esel, gjetergutt og lam Vi tenner lys for barnet som skal fødes Vi tenner lys for dem som tror på ham.

Vi tenner lys på alle mørke steder Vi tror at lyset skinner i Guds ord. Vi tenner lys for Frelseren i stallen For han som bringer himmelen til jord.

All the kids in the family also have an adventscalendar, which is filled with chocolate for each day before Christmas eve. In addition to that calendar my host family also has a calendar with a new note for each day. The first day the calendar had a message saying, “ I kveld skal vi ha peperkaker og gløgg”. This translates to “Tonight we will have gingerbread and gløgg”. Gløgg is a classic Scandinavian hot-spiced wine served with raisins and almonds. It is the perfect drink after a cold day out. All the traditions here make Christmas a really special time of year and I have been really enjoying celebrating this time with a big Norwegian family.

The first snowfall came much later than usual for Norway this year, but sure enough it is here now, and here to stay. It came a couple of weeks ago and since then it has been snowing off and on. The weather has been consistently in the negatives and the roads are always completely iced over. The way I take to school is almost impossible to go if I don’t have spikes in my shoes because it is so slippery.

Håvard and I having a snow fight on the first snow fall.

The host family I am with now is a really athletic family. All of the kids do sports and the parents too. The youngest, Håvard, is on the Østre Toten Ski team and he is only 8 but soon to be pro. I tried out cross-country skiing with him for the first time when the snow first came. It has been a long time since I have skied because normally I snowboard, and the whole two-leg action was really weird for me but with practice it is coming. The next youngest is Johanne and she plays håndball and soccer. Sina plays soccer too. She is on the best soccer team for youth in Norway. Mathilde, the second oldest, is really into Hånball also, and she is the captain of her team.

From left to right my host sister Johanne, Sina, and me at a birthday party

My host sisters Sina and Mathilde

Recent Activities

Baking Peperkaker (gingerbread) with my Tonje

A trip to Oslo with my friends Sousan and Sheri

International Birthday party for my friend Angela from Taiwan

Host Family, Tosterud

I recently took a trip to Bergen with Hjørdis and Egil. There we went around the city sight seeing. We were really lucky because we had perfect weather, and in Bergen there is no predicting the weather. We had two days of solid sun.  We took a hike up to Floibanen, which is a lookout point where tourists can get a chance to view the city of Bergen and the fjord it is surrounded by. It was beautiful to see. We also went to the city’s fish market where I tried a lot of fish tasters, and I’m not sure what most of things that I ate were, but it was fun.  Bergen is Norway’s second largest city, following Oslo. There are around 270,000 people that live there on the west coast, and all throughout Norway, there are many different dialects. On the west coast they don’t roll their R’s but instead they pronounce it in the back of their throat with a harsher sound. It is often that people from the East, and the Oslo area have trouble understanding what the people from the west are saying.

 At the top of Floibanen

After Bergen we drove to Førde, which is where Egil and Hjørdis’ son lives.  It is a little more North of Bergen, but it is still a part of western Norway.  There in Førde I at Raspeboller for the first time, which is a typical West coast food. It is kind of like a compact sweet potato, normally eaten with honey. It had an unusual test, not a favorite food for me.

On our drive back home we took a different route where I experienced driving through Norway’s longest tunnel, 24.5 km.

A week ago I switched to my second host family, the Tosterud Family. They are a really fun and sporty family. There are four kids living at home now, and the oldest, Amanda, is studying in Bergen. There is definitely never a dull moment in this household. Håvard, is the youngest and he is 8 years old. Then there is Johanne, 13, Sine, 15, Mathilde, 18, and Amanda 21. Mathilde and I go to the same school and she was an exchange student last year in the US, in South Dakota. We are getting to be really close friends. The parents are Kristin and Kjartan. Kjartan is the omsorgsjef for the local hospital, meaning that he runs the care center. They are a really outgoing family. They live in Lena, in the same city where I go to school. Now I can walk to school (which takes 15 minutes) whereas before I had to take a bus from Kolbu to school, which took about 45 minutes.

I am still doing Tennis up in Gjøvik and I recently joined a track club out in Raufoss. It is really convenient because the bus station is a five-minute walk from the house so I can take it whenever I need to go to practice or to go see a movie with friends, which is perfect for me.

Here in Norway things are getting really festive now that it is December. In every city there are Christmas lights and they are beginning to show up on people’s homes too. Unfortunately, the snow still hasn’t come, and the weather lately has been fairly warm for Norway about1-5 degrees Celsius. I am hoping the snow comes really soon though! It is really weird because in the mornings I go to school and it is pitch black outside and the sun doesn’t rise until about 9:30 and then when I leave school it is already dark again. The daylight hours are slowly dwindling away.

My new room

The new house

My host mom Kristin at the christmas festival

Everyone getting ready for the christmas festival in downtown Lena

18 år

Beware: there are most likely mistakes in this text. After being in Norway and going to Norwegian school for three months my english spelling and speaking abilities are beginning to slip away. I have had several instances where I can only think of a word in Norwegian and not english, which i think is really funny. But anyways...

A legal citizen. I just had my 18^th birthday on October 25^th.  We had a little party with my friends and some Rotarians, which was a lot of fun.  We had a dinner with everyone and afterwards there was lots of cake and coffee. My host mom made a cake called, Verdens Beste, which translates to World’s Best, and I agree 100 % with that title. It is a three-layer cake. The top and bottom layer are a doughy yellow cake mix, topped with almonds and meringues. In between those two layers is a thick layer of a heavy vanilla cream. Oh it is one delicious cake, definitely the world’s best.

Verdens Beste :)

Now into November, our daylight hours are getting less and less. Now at about 4:00 in the afternoon it is pitch-black outside. This makes the nights feel extra long. Snow hasn’t hit us yet, but any day now it should come. The roads have been really icy this past week and the temperature has been nothing but negative numbers. I often come to school looking like the Michelin man. I wear two pairs of pants, on a daily basis, and I cannot leave the house without my puffy jacket and gloves. It is a complete different way of living but sure enough I have gotten use to the cold. I am really looking forward to the snow and I cannot wait to try out cross-country skiing.

Since it is so cold here, one would think that Norwegians would forget about style and just wear whatever they could to stay warm, but that is definitely not the case. They have so much style. This goes not just for women but the men also. The men all wear scarves and peacoats, which is rarely seen in the US. Teenage guys also like to style their hair with lots of gel, giving it that crazy look. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys spend more time doing their hair than the girls. Wool ponchos, scarves, pea coats, and high-top converse are all really popular items of clothing, almost a must have. It is also really common for girls to wear their hair in braids—in many different braided styles. White is a typical Scandinavian color, I can promise that everyone here has at least a few white shirts or outfits, if not several.

Our class recently took a field trip the Lillehamar University, which is about forty-five minutes away.  It was interesting to see how the college was set up. Overall college here is very similar to college in the US. A main difference is that most students usually live at home when they attend college. They do not have a dorm system like the colleges in the US have for freshman. Also in Norway they abide by the idea that all education should be free for everyone. Students here only have to pay for their books and their living space—apartment rent.

The film and music building

Sousan, Oda Mathilde, and me

Culture in Norway:

Here the Norwegian people are very proud of their country and they can often come off as shy and reserved. They do not like making mistakes so it can take them awhile to let new people in.  A lot of my friends are Norwegian but my best friend here is Sousan Houlacoui. Her mother is from Russia and her father from Iran. She has lived here for seven years now.  She can speak Russian, Farsi, Norwegian, and English—all fluently. It has been a constant struggle for her family to gain Norwegian citizenship and they are still in the process.  One year ago they finally got the permission to move into a house, for years the four of them lived in a tiny apartment.  In living here I have learned a lot about not only Norwegian culture but the culture of those from the Middle East. In my school and all the schools throughout Norway, there are numbers of students who have come to Norway in hopes of an easier life and to gain citizenship. They come from places such as Iran, The Congo, Lebanon, Albania, and so on. People immigrate to Norway because it is one of the nicest countries but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is easy to become a citizen here—it is actually rather difficult. One of the boy’s in my class was recently sent back to Albania after living in Norway for two years. It is hard to believe what so many of these families have to go through and they only come to Norway in hopes of a better life. These families spend a few years here, they make friends and close connections, they have jobs, and then suddenly they are forced to leave. My friend Sousan, and her family, have really fought to stay here, but still there are years to come before they will be citizens. In the process of getting citizenship their family has to follow specific rules and if they disobey they will be sent back. They have to stay in Norway until they are citizens—they cannot travel outside of the country. Sousan’s family has been much more lucky then most immigrant families. Her father works as a doctor, and that automatically gives one a high social status. All in all being a foreigner in Norway can be tough. It is a long process to become a citizen and sometimes it takes a year just to get a response from the immigration office.

Oslo:

In Oslo there is a huge difference between the East and the West parts of the city due to the mass amounts of immigrants. The western region is known as the higher class, rich area. It is in the west where there are all of Oslo’s tourist attractions. This includes Frogner Parken, Carl Johan’s Gata, Holmenkollen, Akershus, the Opera, and so on. The East is known more or less as the Ghetto. In the East there is a lot more diverse culture and that is because a lot of foreigners live in this area.  East Oslo has it’s own little twist on the Norwegian language which they call kebabnorsk.  It could also been considered as slang to the younger generation. People at my school often speak this slang as a joke, and it is fun to use.

The Farmers market in downtown Hamar:

Goat cheese tasters. Norwegians love goat cheese, it took me awhile to get use to but now i love it too.

Juliana, me, and Iben

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