Rotary Winter Camp

We recently had a ski camp out in the town of Nesbyen, Norway. All of us exchange students had not been together since our Language camp, which was in September. It was one crazy, athletic and fun week—it was great to be reunited with everyone after so long. We also got a few new additions to the group. There are five new exchange students from Australia, one new girl from Brazil, and one guy from Argentina. They arrived in Norway in January because their school year is different from ours.

The weeks schedule:

8am: Breakfast

9:30 Morning cross-country ski run (usually around 10km)

12pm: Lunch

1:30 Downhill skiing/More cross-country skiing

5:00 Dinner

Night Activities

We stayed out in Cabins, with about 8 people to each one. And I can say that there was not much sleeping. Some of the nights after dinner we would go moose watching, night skiing, or we would just hangout in our cabins. The last day we went on a 20 km ski trip to the top of the mountain, which had one spectacular view. We were really lucky with the weather. The whole week was between 0-5 Celsius and we had a few days of perfect sunshine.

Nystølen Cafe

Gustavo and Brock

Juliana(Brazil), me, Juliana(Brazil), and Anne(Colorado, US)

Brock(Canada), me, and Jonathon(Pennsylvania,US)

The American Girls: Karlie(Fresno, California), me, and Savannah(Wisconsin)

View from the Nesbyen Ski Resort

The Brazilians: Juliana and Gustavo

The South Americans their first day of cross country skiing :)

Josh(Australia), me, Gustavo, and Karlie

Some of the Norway Rotary Exchange Students

Josh, me and Duncan(Australia) sporting the American Flag

Me, Marina(Brazil) and Juliana

Our last day of camp we did a long cross-country ski trip and we were lucky with the beautiful, sunny weather

Proud to finish our long ski trip!

The whole group

Now the daylight hours are getting longer and longer and the weather lately has been really warm for a Norwegian winter. We have had a few days of rain, which has made the snow a little too icy for skiing. It feels like we will have an early spring.

Recently, a friend of mine that is an exchange student in Denmark, came to Norway with her host family and I got to show her a little bit of Norway.

Nina in downtown Oslo

The Stortinget in Winter

Down by Akershus

A night at the opera. We saw La Bohem, a French made performance

Out eating with a couple of Rotarian's before the show

Nina getting ready to eat some real Norwegian fish

A delicious fish and potatoes dinner

Topped with a raspberry sorbet in vanilla yogurt for dessert

Posing along the Opera wall

A recent picture of my town: Lena, Norway

Winter Wonderland

Lena Hoff Church

Lena, Norway during the winter time. Some pictures I took on my way home from school one day.

Håvard, Kjartan, and I going night skiing.

View from the cabin.

Mathilde getting ready for skiing.

It is typical to have cabins way out in the country. The place where we could park our car was a few kilometers from the cabin, so we went ski-backpacking out to the cabin. It was a really fun experience because we all had headlamps on to find our way in the dark. It was just like backpacking but  only more exciting and tiresome. The cabins here usually are without electricity. It is a really peaceful place to go to get in touch with nature because you get away from technology and the city.

Going on a 10 km skitrip. 

Fact: All Norwegians are born with skiis on their feet.

I have come to the most athletic country. The majority of Norwegian Families are very sporty. Probably 95% of the population are crazy about skiing, and they do it everyday in the wintertime. Usually they ski in the evenings once they get home from work or school.

View from the cabin. Vaset, Norway.