I have nothing interesting to say about getting to the airport. I drew whales and mountains and a canadian flag on my suitcase in highlighter, it didn't exactly show up. The motel in Spokane had free double chocolate chip cookies ( other kinds too, but I didn't pay attention to them). I got a thai noodle salad for supper, it wasn't super memorable as a last meal in North America. I've never seen so much lettuce in one place; I didn't even make a dent. The chicken was good though.
I bought two sports bras and a wallet at Target in Spokane, and new runners in the mall. I felt like I had to stock up on everything, that there would be no stores whatsoever in Norway, or else that a bottle of shampoo would cost 30 dollars or something ridiculous like that. I was partially right, pizza for three people cost 300 kr the other day in Bergen, which is about 50 dollars Canadian. Still though,the four pounds of toiletries I packed could probably have stayed home; they DO shower here, and believe it or not, they even have conditioner! ( See what I mean about rambling? I wasn't exaggerating!. It's a really good skill for essays on exams, especially when you know nothing about the subject, but it's probably a little irritating here. Oh well, the exit button is thataway --->, except tilted up. I'm sure you can find it.
Meghan and I wore our Rotary jackets on the plane (I'm on a rotary exchange, by the way, I never really said that), and neither of us really had any pins. I ripped the flag part off a canadian flag I took from Canada Day, and pinned that on my jacket.We must have been recognizable enough though, cause we were approached by a girl who went to mexico a few years ago.
I sat with a woman on the plane who’d been a teacher in an army camp in Germany for several years, she described the architecture of the Denver airport, and convinced me that Norwegians were really nice, and that I had to buy either a troll or a sweater.
The Denver airport looked, as far as I could tell, like a bunch of tents put together. It’s strange to go to a city for only four hours, and be only in the airport. It doesn’t really feel like you’ve gone anywhere at all. Meghan and I talked to an elderly lady about knitting, and I went looking for a cart so we could wander around and haul our stuff with us. No luck. I brought way too much as a carryon, definitely didn’t need ten granola bars, two packages of apple chips, a box of crackers, Canadian flags, and whatever other junk managed to fill a laptop bag and a backpack.
In Philli, which I still picture as being made of cream cheese, we went straight for the food court. I bought a bowl of spaghetti which I think was cooked in oil rather than water. It was delicious. We met up with some other exchange students, all either going to Oslo or Frankfurt.
I was pretty hyper by the beginning of the overnight flight, and probably made an interesting first impression on some people (Abby and Devin, I'm talking about you, haha). I got really excited about the airplane wing several times, thinking at first it was a plane flying parallel to us, then the sun, then a plane coming straight at us. I was really excited about the Norwegian looking people on the plane, and decided anyone blonde was a Norwegian. The family in front of me fit this criteria (what, spell check wants me to change that to “this criterion”, no way, that sounds like a spaceship) so I tried to lurk on their conversation, only catching the word aldri, which means never. I tried to sleep, and got really confused by the airplane washrooms, convinced that locking a door made it easier to get out, plugging the toilet (if you can call it that) with paper towel because I didn’t see the toilet paper in front of my face, and trying to put the paper towel into the machinery area which clearly had a line through the universal symbol for trash.
I learned that trying to sleep with your feet vertical up the back of the seat feels good for about seven seconds, and then gets really awkward, especially when you realize all the flight attendant sees are feet popping up where a head should be. I don’t think I slept at all, although I got really excited when I accidentally hit the stopwatch part of my watch, looked at seven minutes later, and thought it was 7 am. It was only four, and a check of my ipod confirmed that I hadn’t skipped any songs.
We got little plastic meals, which actually weren’t bad. I decided that the carrot cake was carrot-zucchini cake, so I wouldn’t worry about the bright green bits. The thin strip of light grew as we went, and soon I could see…clouds. Not very exciting, although it was fun to imagine what was underneath. We started to descend into Norway, and it was super anticlimactic. We couldn’t see anything until we’d practically hit the ground, and it was pouring rain.
The first thing I noticed about the Oslo airport was the tiny cute bathrooms, and the silence. Oh, and the fact that their fire hose signs look like cute snails. Customs was easy, easier than Denver, which makes no sense. We went down to collect our luggage, and I decided it was smarter to carry a ski bag, suitcase, backpack and laptop case without a cart, never mind that I had trouble with my carryon alone. By the time I made it across the floor, which is really small by the way, I was sweating and had dropped everything several times. I tried to change some money, but gave up when I couldn’t read the error message the machine gave me. I made it to the baggage area without taking any heads off with my skis, which was a serious accomplishment. I got some funny looks hauling them around, I guess that’s strange in august even for Norway, or else they were looking at my amazing baggage carrying skills, and not the skis themselves.
I went through security once, and they told me I had to go back, because I had liquids in my bag. I had assumed Norway wasn’t as paranoid as the states, and had forgotten. I dug out the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer from the bottom of my backpack, spreading my stuff everywhere, and probably breaking every rule about keeping your belongings safe. I went through again, the security wand lady gave me a funny look, as though I wanted to be felt up again. The security clerk gave me an exasperated look, and said in slow English, “please take the liquid out of your bag, go back.” I told him I had, and gave him the hand sanitizer. He looked at me like I was retarded, and pulled my water bottle out of my bag. Whoops. I hauled all my stuff against traffic again, and asked the man if I could keep my laptop in my bag. He said sure. So I went through again, and the other man working there was like ooh that’s a laptop, can you take it out? I glared at the first guy, and went back to the end of the line. I finally made it through after getting a serious “wtf” look from the security wand lady.
I sat with a guy going to Ålesund for a bit, cause my flight was so far away I didn’t even get a gate number. When he left, I sat down and read an article in a tourist magazine bragging about the speed of the Oslo airport’s security check through. I bet I seriously messed up their statistics.
My body finally decided to realize that I’d been up since 3 am the day before, but I didn’t feel like leaving my stuff abandoned while I slept, so I forced my eyes to stay open. Oh, and random fact, the workers at the oslo airport get around on scooters. Scooters! Like the kind little kids ride around that you push with one leg. That basically made up for my experience going through security.
I forced myself to get excited when I woke up, and it worked and brought me back to a semi-conscious level. Meeting the rotary people was fairly uneventful. John Akselberg was taller than I expected, and that was about it. They were really nice, and I realized I wasn’t capable of speaking any Norwegian. I was fairly awake by the time Tord and I left to drive home, and decided it looked like Vancouver Island with a lot of roundabouts.
We had chicken, rice and vegetables when we got in, a nice normal meal. The only thing I was unsure about was a plum and onion salad in mayonnaise, one bite was enough of that. I decided I had to get organized right away, which makes no sense as that’s usually last on my priority list, especially after 30 hours without sleep. I fell asleep around 7 pm and woke up at 11 am the next morning, when Helene woke me up for breakfast. I had woken up earlier, but the clock in my room had stopped during the night, so I was convinced it was only 6 am, and thought that they ate very early breakfasts in Norway.
Breakfast was insane; bread and crackers, with pretty much everything that can be put on them, plus more, like caviar in a toothpaste tube. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the brown cheese, and tried it with tomatoes, which got some strange looks from my host family; they said they’d never seen that combination. I’ve basically lived off toast, jam and brown cheese since. I haven’t got the guts to try jars of fish, which look like something from biology, or the caviar, but I’m getting there. I started with liver paste yesterday, that’s a start.
We went to the Arna-Bjornar vs Staebeck soccer game after, and holly I’ve written way too much about nothing and I don’t feel like writing anymore. Too bad I couldn’t be this prolific in English class, or writing scholarship essays. Oh, University is FREE here! That seems like it would take out a lot of motivation in high school, my reason for getting good grades the past three years was to get money for university. Speaking of money, I was talking to a girl in school today, she works at McDonalds and, as far as I understood, makes $14 an hour on weekdays and $17 on weekends! Whattt! That’s how much I’ll make if I ever become a lifeguard, after spending $1000 on courses. And she makes that here at Mcdonalds!
Anyways, that was a digression worthy of Mr Demontigney, if that’s even how you spell his name. I don’t think I’ve ever written it, it was always Mr D.
More rambling later, you can stop scanning for interesting parts of this and give up cause you won’t find any, but now you’re lucky cause I’m stopping now (for now).
Ha det
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