The Final Move

I managed to once again pack my life away into a suitcase to make the move to my final host family.It is insane how much one accumulates in a year--my suitcase is beyond stuffed with just about everything. My new family was so nice and welcoming, and I already feel at home. My new host mom, Elsa Marie, works at the city hall up in Gjøvik and my host dad, Svein-Arne, works for an electric company. I have a host brother, Gjøran, who is 15 and a host sister Tonje (but she is on exchange in my hometown Eureka woooo!! So she isn’t living at home). The weather has lately been rainy but hopefully it takes a turn for the better soon.  I am living now, right by the lake—the perfect place to go running or to take a nice walk along the water. In a month or so the tide should rise, and that means boating season!

Welcomed into my new home with some local Old Town Eureka made chocolate mmmm :)

The new room

The House out in Kapp

The backyard

Her lives Elsa Marie, Svein-Arne, Tonje and Gøran

We recently met all the students that are to traveling out of Norway to be exchange students in other continents such as:  South America, Australia, and North America.  We had a meeting with them, and all of us current exchange students, to let them know everything they needed about a year abroad.  Because we are now the experts on how to be an exchange student.

Iben and me

All of us current exchange students and soon to be

All of the students traveling out. From Left Magnus to Ecuador, Lars to Brazil, Solveig to Canada, Marthe to USA, Lena to Argetina, Ingrid to Argentina, Eirin to Australia, and Ingrid to Brazil

It is now reaching Russetid in school. This is a tradition that all high schools in Norway have had for a long time. All the third year students celebrate that they are done with school and exams, and this involves a lot of partying. It is a seventeen daylong celebration, which begins on the 1^st of May and goes to the 17^th of May. It ends exactly on the national day.  During this time all the students have a pair of red overalls which they must wear everyday, during the seventeen days, and they are not aloud to wash them. These Russ students commonly drive red cars and buses. They have tasks that they have to do for each day, one tradition is to swim in the lake on the first of May and basically they play a lot of pranks on the lower classman. It is their time to have fun. Unfortunately I will be missing a majority of the Russetid because our exchange trip is at the same time, but I do get to wear my Russ overall’s on the 16^th and the 17^th!

The Russ overalls

The typical Russ bus

Only a week to go until the big exchange trip. From the 2^nd of May to the 15^th all of us exchange students will be traveling around Europe.  We will be visiting Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, France, and London.  It is definitely going to be a trip that none of us will ever forget. I cannot wait!

Here is a link below to our itinerary for the Euro tour.

http://forumreiser.no/index.php/gruppereiser-a-firmareiser/rotarytur-2011.html