Nice was nice.

Bonjour! Adapting the french way of life; loaf under arm!

So Nice was indeed very nice! I had a great time, we went shopping, ate good food, sat on cafe's, ate great food, went to a couples of museums, and ate awesome food! Pretty much all we did was eat and relax, it was great! We had so much good food! They had lots of good italian restaurants, local food, we went to an indian restaurant one night... There was just so much food, and don't even get me started on the desserts! There was this ice cream place just down the street from our apartment in the old town, and it had 100 different ice cream flavors!

One night we decided to just eat at the apartment, so my sister and I were sent out to go get some raviolis (stuffed pasta). Turned out the pasta place in the old town was closed, to we had to go find another one. We knew what direction it was in, so we started walking. After we'd walked for a mile, we realized that we didn't really know where this supermarket was, so we asked a local woman. In french. I speak some french, but with their accents and how fast they talk, it was hard to understand much. So i asked (in french)"Where is the supermarket?" and the woman said something something bus station, something something 4 blocks, something something left. We knew where the bus station was, so we walked there, and when we still didn't see it, we decided to ask another french lady. She said something something keep walking something on your left. So we kept walking, and when we'd walk for forever and a half, we thought maybe we'd walked to far, so we (I keep saying we, but truth is I asked and my sister stood like 10 feet away pretending not to know me) asked a random man in french. Fortunately, he didn't speak french, so I asked him in english where the supermarket was, and he pointed to something behind our backs. We turned around, and there it was, just across the street. The raviolis were super awesomely good so in the end it was worth all the work.

Adapting the french way of life 2: Coffee and crepes-breaks as often as possible

The little mall, Nicetoilet - I mean Nicetoile!

Oh yes, I went there. I took a picture of myself in the mirror. And truth is, I can't promise you it wont happen again, but I'll try to control myself.

So as you see, I got my senior jacket! And getting it was a bit of work. Because I've been home alone all day, and for some reason the key to my bike wouldnt work so I had to walk to the store. And when I got back from the store, I went check the mail, and there was the little paper that you hand in at the post office so you'll get your package. So I had to go back to the store/post office to get my package, but I realized when I was almost there that I had forgot said paper. So I had to walk home, and then walk over there again. I was kind of feeling like Charlie on his way to the chocolate factory, golden ticket in hand!

I'm leaving for France monday, so au revoir Norway and Bonjour France!

The big C

Hi, I'm going to France monday. Hopefully I'll experience something interesting and blogworthy. Lately I've been training for the cooper test. And what is the cooper test you ask, well the cooper test is a practical test in P.E where you run as far as you can for 12 minutes, and you get a grade based on how far you run. 7 laps is an A, and you need atleast 4 laps to pass. So I've been practicing at the treadmill at the gym.

Do you know how boring it is to run on a treadmill when the only show that's on the tv is a norwegian soap opera or some gay dude doing makeovers on random people? It's pretty damn boring! So to keep myself entertained, I've started doing math on the treadmill. I convert from miles to kilometres, I see how many calories I burn per minute and how much it'll increase if I increase my speed or incline by this and this much. I've also figured out that the treadmill counts kilometres wrong. Say if you run at 10km/hr, you run 5K in 30 min, right? Not according to this treadmill. So I figured out how much oh dear lord I am even boring myself right now. Sorry. I will update when I get back from France.

Aww I saw on my little map thingy that I installed yesterday that I had one visitor from Norway and one from Louisiana! Thats so nice. Hello!

Stuff Norwegians put on their bread

Nugatti, the Norwegian verison of Nutella. Awesome

Homemade jam that your mom or maw maw made

Brown cheese made from goat milk. This is awesome. We also like to put sliced peppers on our cheese sandwiches

Red beats... Not my favorite but my grandma loves it

Mackerel (fish) in tomato sauce. This is really good, I just had some! We also like to spread liver patee on bread, I know it sounds disgusting but it's really good!
It's common for people to bring lunch bags with sandwiches to school, everyone does it in first grade, but still now I'd say the majority of the people in my class makes their own sandwich and brings with them. I think it's great, it's cheap, and it's always fun to compare sandwiches with your classmates :)

Ozzzzzyyyy!!

Hey! Guess what I did this weekend? It was so awesome, and so worth the hundred-something dollars I payed for the ticket! I went to a festival here in Stavanger to see Ozzy Osbourne live in concert! He was really good live, a lot better than I expected for a sixty-something year old man. The whole concert was just intense, and the music he played was a good mix of old stuff and some of his newer songs. Standing like 15 feet from the stage in a crowd of 12.000 people is something everyone should experience.

There were other bands too, like Madcon and Bare Egil band. Bare Egil Band is a dude that is most famous for a song about a man that dies falling down stairs, so yeah, but it was still a pretty good concert. And Madcon is a norwegian rap duo, they're pretty good if you're into that kind of stuff.. Here's a song by them

Ok now that you've listened to it, play it again. Once you know it well enough, you should go out in the streets and sing! People will be like "Wow, that's a cool song!" and you can say "Yeah, it's by some norwegian band I listen to", that'll make you sound very internationally smart, or you can say "Yeah, it's just some lil song i wrote"... They won't know the truth, I promise I won't tell :)

I like to cook

In our first religion class, we were asked what we like to do in our spare time. We went in a circle, so the whole class got to answer. I was one of the first ones, so before I got to summon myself enough to sum up my life in a few words, my turn was up, and I didn't have an answer. My class did though, Eli likes to cook, they said. I'ts true, I do like to cook, but it got me thinking, because there are alot of other things I like to do, more than cooking. But cooking, that's what my classmates remember me by. Doesn't it make you wonder what your classmates would say about you?

But I mean, cooking is cool, I can live with that. It's not like they said "Eli, yeah she likes to kill teddy bears..." Funny story, I was in geometry, or actually I wasn't in geometry, I was in the rest room. But as I came back into the classroom, I noticed it was very quiet, and they were all looking at me. I checked for toilet paper sticking to my shoes, but no, so I went sit down. The teacher comes up to me and asks me
- Eli, do you like to kill teddy bears?
- Umm, no...? Why?
- You have a murder teddy bear on your pencil case...?
I don't even remember what I answered, but that was the only time I was really glad the teacher went back to teaching geometry, instead of just chatting to us.

The picture is from valentines day 2009, I made pink waffles for two of my friends. Yeah, norwegian waffles are heartshaped, how cool is that?

Standing in the gym in my panties.

It's true. It wasn't a dream, and I did it voluntary. Well, before I say anything more, I should explain that I wasn't prancing around the whole gym in my underwear, me and two friends just tried on some pants in a corner. Still confused? I was trying on some pants that I need to order because I'm going to be a Russ this year. See explanation below. And, I mean, the gym was empty except for me and the two other girls I was there with, so no need to act all shocked :)

Russ (singular and plural) is a participant in the traditional Norwegian videregående skole (equivalent to high school or the British equivalent to sixth form) graduation ceremony known as russefeiring (russ celebration). Russ are easily recognized by their distinctive overalls and caps (russeluer) resembling student caps. Tradition dictates that they wear the overall and the cap from the 1st to the 17th of May

The Russ celebration is practically a big ole party that we 13th graders do in the middle of exams... Let me explain further by copying some more from wikipedia:

The russefeiring traditionally starts on the 1st of May and ends on the 17th of May, the Norwegian national day. Participants wear coloured overalls, drive matching cars, vans, or buses, and celebrate almost continually during this period.



Oh, and not only do we party, we also do something called "knots". The Russ committe (Yes there is a Russ comittee, we're pretty serious about this) makes a big list of things you can do, and if you do one of these things on the list, you'll get a knot or some symbolic "souvenir" tied in the string of your Russ hat. Examples of Russ knots:

Spending a night in a tree (earns a stick from the tree)
Eating a Big Mac in two bites (earns a piece of the wrapping)
Drinking a bottle of wine in 20 minutes (earns the wine cork)
Crawling through a super market while barking and biting customers' legs (earns a dog biscuit)
Spending a school day crawling on hands and knees (earns a toy shoe)
Spending the entire russ period sober (earns a fizzy drink cork)
Drinking 24 beers in 24 hours(girls) 12 hour (boys)
Go for a swim before the 1. of May (earns a popsicle)
Ask random people in a mall if they can lend you a condom (earns the condom)
Break up with a random 16 year old very public.
Sleep on school grounds for a whole night.
Run over a local bridge or from the school to the sentre or similar place naked.
Sit in a round about with a sign that says "We'll have drink if you honk your horn!"
Host an aerobic class at the local pub and get at least ten people to join.
It's common for every school to have about 100 knots.

I'm not planning on doing all these knots, but I think being a Russ is a great tradition, and I'm really looking forward to it! Go Russ of 2011!!

what can I say...

Remember earlier this summer when I didn't have anything to write about? Well, thats not the case anymore. Our lodge burned down monday night. There was an accident with a lamp (you know those big industrial strenght ones that lumberjacks use) that we guess must have tipped over, and because the lodge is in the middle of the mountains, a fire truck could never get up there. So it burned down. All the way down. This happened monday night, and when I went to work tuesday morning we still didn't know how serious it was. It sucked being at work, not knowing. And I couldn't talk to anyone about it really, because I didn't know how bad it was. And how do you talk to people about that, anyways? Just bring it up in casual conversation "Oh and our lodge burned down last night...". I still havent mentioned it to the people at work, I just don't know how to bring it up. The insurance company has been great so far, theyre dealing with all the paper work. But we might not get permission to rebuild it, and then if we do, do we want to? It's never going to be the same.

So now 7 years of hard work fixing and repairing is gone. Seven summers where we could have went to Nepal or Germany or whatever, instead we spent it at our lodge painting, hammering, fixing. And we didn't want it any other way, we chose to spend our summers working on the lodge because we wanted to, my family really enjoys it. Or should I say enjoyed. That place had soul, and we gave it even more soul when we put our souls into it working on it.

I'm going to miss it so much. That lodge was our "thing". We have a normal house, a normal car, but that lodge was extraordinary.

REPORTING LIVE FROM...

This is Eli, reporting live from the Science Farm! Yes I am on my laptop at work, no need to go "SHAME ON YOU ELI" just yet. I'm working a wedding shift, I just sit here at the office in case something happens, but usually the wedding manages fine on its own, which means I'm on my own, sitting here in the office eating candy, watching movies and checking facebook. And to do so, I get payed overtime :) Life is good! No wait, scratch that. Life is not so good, my neighbour is in New Orleans, Louisiana, and I am SO jealous. I read on her blog about places she's going that I've been to, how much fun she's having, even the heat doesn't sound so bad, and it all just makes me want to come back! Good thing I'm getting payed overtime, so I'll be able to afford it.

Well, I can't come visit Louisiana just yet, my next trip goes to the south of France during fall break in October. We're staying in Nice, and Nice is truly a nice city, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Hiking

Today I watched kids run into walls. Let me explain: At the museum there is a "senses tunnel", it's pitch dark and the point is to use other senses than your vision, and there is a safety camera hooked up to the tv in the reception, so today I watched kids (and grown ups too, even funnier) run into walls.


Over to a different topic. I went hiking to our lodge this weekend. Here are some pictures.This is my mom and dad. I told them to smile american style.
We got to our lodge saturday, and sunday we went for a hike in the mountains. We went on a hike to a mountain top half a mile above sea level. Our lodge is about 1/4 of a mile above sea level, so it was a pretty steep hike. It took us about 90 minutes to reach the top, and when we got there we realized we had only walked like 2 miles... But then again it was really really steep

Hiking rule no 1: If your backpack weighs less than half your body weight, it ain't real hiking.

On the top, you can see our lodge faaar down there, just a little red dot.

Hiking rule number 2: When hiking, always wear clother that are ugly, ill fitting, and out of fashion. This picture is a great example: me wearing my dads paint stained fleece and a t-shirt I got for free in 7th grade that still is way too big, and my mom is wearing matching fleece sweatpants and shirt... But the reason we took this picture was to show off how outdoorsy we are, we cooked our dinner (sausage, potatoes and onions, real fancy, hiking rule no 3: When on a hiking trip, do not prepare fancy meals) outside over the fire, and we also ate it outside. How outdoorsy is that!