dec. 6th

At this date a year ago I went swimming! It seems so unreal, we have 10-20 degrees and three inches of snow here!

Last friday I was at a scout meeting, in 10 degrees weather. I got a ride with Mona, and a mutual friend of ours came along too (gosh,that sounds kind of proper). Mona was going see her boyfriend, and our friend was going partying, and me, I was going walk around in the woods for a couple of hours. They asked me "Eli, is that really something that you do for fun on a friday night?" I didn't know what to answer right then and there, but now that I've had some time to think, I've come to the conclusion that yes, I do find it fun. I really do enjoy walking in the woods, cheeks getting all cold and red, freezing toes... Well, I don't really enjoy the freezing toe-part, but thats just part of the deal.

This is my russ-photo, or senior picture I guess. We had our first russekro (party for the graduates/13th graders), and the theme was traffic lights. You had to dress in green if single, yellow if you're talking to someone, and red if you're in a relationship. It was alright, it was really convenient with the color codes! And there are plenty of parties to come, so I will tell you more about that later :)

Scouts

Whenever I write that nothing is really going on, something crazy happens. So guess what? Something crazy happened. I just joined a group of scouts called the Rover scouts, it's for people over 16. I went to a meeting monday, and then I went to one friday where we played reball (like paintball but with without paint, haha). After we were done playing reball, the other scouts told that to be accepted into the Rover scouts you have to go on a secret mission. They also told me that there were three other guys who were doing going out on a mission tonight, and that if I wanted to, I could join them. So I did.

So I picked up my sleeping bag at home, and put some woolen underwear on. This is woolen underwear. Some might say that they're the ugliest clothes ever designed. They're very tight, and, well, here's a picture:

That's not me. We had a camera on the trip, the only pictures we took were ones when we were in our sleeping bags with only our noses poking out, or of the sky and the lake we slept next to. Basically everything that you didn't have to get out of your sleeping bag to take a picture of, haha.

So about this mission. They dropped me and the three 16 year old guys that I was going with, off at the end of some little bitty road in the middle of nowheres. This was around 12.30 at night. We got a map and a route we were supposed to follow. Oh, and did I mention that it was pitch black outside, and even with headlights, it was hard to see more than maybe eight feet in front of you, there was about 40 degrees fahrenheit out, and ofcourse it rained (and even sleeted some) the whole night. So around one in the morning, we started walking. There was no trail or path. Through swamps, up mountains and steep hills, down mountains and steep hills, and the going down part was almost worse than climbing up because everything was so wet and slippery. So we walked and walked, I had a backpack that was about 15 lbs, and it got heavier and heavier as it got more and more wet. At about 5.30 in the morning, as we were standing in the middle of a swamp, all I wanted to to was to just sit down and cry my eyes out. I was physically exhausted, I was soaked to the skin, and I had bad blisters on both feet. Well, I kept going. And 10 minutes later we found a road! A real road with asphalt! By then we had only walked a third of the route, so we figured we'd never get there in time, so we decided to find somewhere to camp to get some rest. So we walked along the road, well actually we walked in the middle of the road, the place was deserted. We walked past three houses, until we came upon this old barrack. It looked like something off a scary movie, so we werent too psyched about sleeping in there. So we camped out at a little parking lot, we had a tarpaulin, so we used that to build a tent-ish thingy to protect ourselves from the rain. We had to sleep all huddled together to keep warm. Me and three 16-year old guys that I'd met for the first time that same day. It went pretty well, I kept waking up from the sound of my own teeth chattering, but other than that it was great. We slept, or atleast relaxed from about 6 to 10 in the morning.

We had gotten a kvikk lunsj (the norwegian version of a kit kat-bar), which was the only food we had with us, so we shared that for breakfast. We called the guy that had planned our trip to say that we weren't able to make it in time, he told us that he'd never expected us to make it there anyways, so he gave us another route to follow. I had to summon all the motivation I had left in me to get out of my somewhat warm sleeping bag to put on my wet clothes, and keep on walking. For the first quarter of a mile, my toes were so frozen I could have swore they were about to break and fall off. We hadn't even walked a mile before we saw a bone, then another couple of bones, and then a skull, lying on the path. I'm guessing it was a sheep. So we must have slept not even a mile away from something that was so big it could kill sheep. It was so much easier walking in daylight, and we even had a trailto follow for the most part! There is such a HUGE difference between walking on a tiny trail and walking with no trail. Speaking of HUGE, this is what met us when we were about halfway to our goal saturday.


Yeah, and they were standing maybe 10 feet from the passage we had to go through. And they had a baby calf, which means they're more likely to attack. But we got past them. And we reached our goal. After 3,5 hours of walking. And guess how far we had walked that day? About three miles. We didn't walk slow, but the terrain did impede our speed by quite a lot, all those darned swamps and mountains! And also, I was with three boys scouts, and from time to time they were like "Hey lets go up on that hill so we can get a better view of things", I just wanted to yell "Dude! It's pitch black outside, how is it going to make any difference if we stand here or on some damned hill????"And the night, friday night when we had walked for 5 hours straight, we'd only walked 6 miles. When we got to that parking lot that was our final goal, I was so relieved, so tired, so hungry, but most of all so proud of myself! I wanted to quit quite a few times, but I stuck it out! It took all the strenght and energy I had in me, so when I got home, I slept for 14 hours straight, and then I had to go to work. But I got through it all!


Did you know that it's possible to get blisters under the sole of your foot?

Casting Crowns

Hey! I went see Casting Crowns sunday. It was awesome. Other than that nothing is really going on. It's cold here, and I'm excited for christmas.

Today we're making "lefse" at our house. It's, hmm well I really don't know how to explain it. It has butter and sugar in the middle. Its good. And it looks like this:

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!!