The clock is ten on half eleven

Oh hey blog. Long time no see!

It's 10:20 p.m., early May, and light out!! Well, by light out I just mean that I can see the outline of the mountains agains the sky, that the water is clearly blue and the sky is slightly orange still. Not that the sun is still up or anything. If I took a picture it would probably come out too dark to see much. But still.

When we drove back down from Geilo a week and a half ago, it felt like we'd been gone for a month. While we were gone the trees turned green, the sun came back, and all of a sudden I could go outside barefeet. Not that the weather stopped me from doing that in december...

What to do at midnight when you can't get to sleep? Why not go outside and take barefoot pictures in the snow? Probably freaked out my host family with bare footprints all over the place when they left for work in the morning. Or not, seeing as it was still pitch dark at that time of the morning.

But anyways, I don't remember winter ever switching so quickly to nice weather and summer. Or maybe it's just that I don't notice that kind of thing at home, but here I've trained myself to be observant and notice details to which people reading this probably think "so? the sun goes up and down every day here too, what are you getting at?"

Exchange definitely has taught me to be more observant though. One of norwegian's favorite questions is "what's the biggest difference between Canada and Norway?" which I still can't answer consistently. I'm always on the lookout for something to respond with though, some big revelation like "oh, well I actually just realized that everyone here walks on the ceiling, and everything's upside down!"

I still haven't come across any one, huge difference though, so I usually come up with something lame: "uhh...you guys have more trains?" or obvious: "well we don't speak Norwegian in Canada!" 

Over the past little while though, I could definitely have used graduation traditions! The graduating class is called "Russ", and right now it's russetid, from May 1 to May 17th (Norway's national day). The 3rd grade in high school (those born in 1992 for this year) wear red pants everywhere (usually, they can be other colours depending which line at school they're in)

They try and collect little tokens for the tassel on their hats:

Challenges to earn tokens include:

-Spending an entire class under your desk

-Make a packed lunch for the school principal

-Speak a language other than Norwegian for a schoolday

-Drive around a roundabout 7 times

-Put an "L" (the same as the "L"'s we have for beginning drivers) on the back of a police car

-Eat breakfast in a roundabout

-Tie a teacher to a flagpole and dance around them during break

-Roll a tennis ball with your nose down the street

That's just a really small, random sample of a few, there's over 100 for Russ in Bergen. I skipped over the alcohol and sex ones, which make up a large part of them. (Most Russ are 18/19, and the drinking age in Norway is 18)

They also go around with water guns/buckets of water during school, and soak other students who aren't Russ.

They have mock business cards which they give out to kids, who collect them. Overall graduating from high school in Norway sounds like a lot more fun than at home! There's a lot I missed about Russ here, but HERE is the wikipedia article about it. I'm not Russ, since I got put in the 2nd grade, but it's still neat to see how they celebrate it. Although maybe not so great to have to check before leaving the school, to avoid getting a bucket of water dumped on your head...haha

A couple other observations from the last 9 months:

-They're way more comfortable talking about adult's ages; it's perfectly normal to be asked how old your parents are. 

-Teachers are generally called by their first names

-Even if people complain about it and dream about having a car when they get their licence, I'm still amazed by the public transportation. A girl in my class lives a ways out of the city and 8 km away from the nearest bus stop. So the kommune (like regional district I guess) pays for a taxi from the bus stop to her house to get to and from school. It's so nice to be able to get where you want to go (for the most part) without finding people to drive.

 

I haven't done anything hugely exciting since I last posted, but I'll give a little update. In point form, since that saves my lazy self from actually having to form sentences. Although I find when I scan long chunks of text its the point form parts I tend to stop and read. Anyways:

-I started babysitting a bit a couple weeks ago, which I think is going well. Whenever I'm having trouble babysitting at home from now on, I'll just be thankful that the kids actually speak the same language as me! It's helping me a lot with Norwegian though, and the kids are really sweet. And then if they ask for chocolate I can just pretend I don't understand them! :P

I love all the little things you realize and learn though. Like singing "ring around the rosie" on the trampoline, with the kids trying to sing along, and realizing the song actually makes no sense. And that the Norwegian version is about apples and pears that "all fall down" out of the trees. 

-My flight home is confirmed; leaving Norway on July 8th

-The Canadian election was nonexistent here (which makes sense really, when was the last time we heard about the Norwegian election?) And random fact, Norway has a proportional representation system rather than our "first past the post" and the country functions perfectly well. Just sayin. 

I tried to vote; sent my papers at least 3 weeks before the election, but I still haven't gotten a vote package back, not that it's any use to me now. It was an interesting election to follow in any case.

-I've started legitimately noticing Norwegian creeping into my english, although I usually catch it before it actually comes out. It's mostly sentence structure that would be understandable if I said it, but would just sound...odd. Like "thinking over" instead of "about." or trying to say "the clock is half three."

from here

I don't really say norwenglish (at least not while speaking english, Norwegian's a different story!) out loud that often, but it's definitely a bit of a struggle to pick which language to come out! Honestly, though, I'm glad that speaking another language for nine months has had a little bit of an effect!

-This time next week I'll be in Stockholm!!!

-I only have school 2 days this week, thanks to "whole day tests" that follow a pattern I can't figure out, even with a copy of the schedule. In art class we're doing "land art" which means you can make a spiral out of seaweed and shells in the sand and get graded for it. So basically an excuse to hang out in the sun at the beach, not bad!

...took me all of one minute

I have done more over the past couple weeks than just that, but don't remember what else, besides lots of time sleeping in the sun and wandering around the city.

So that's a bit of an update

Gorgeous country