Sorry about not posting, it has been crazy busy here for the last month, and quess what. I have been in Tønsberg for two months! It has been a little over 9 weeks since I left the Minneapolis airport. It really does not feel like it has been that long though, I have been so busy I haven't even been able to think about how long it has been. My language is continually getting better, I can now understand a lot and I am able to speak a little here and there. I really need to work on speaking more though because I'm not really making much progress with that. Anyway, a ton had happened since my last post. First off we had an AFS camp the weekend after my last post, we left Thursday after school and headed to an island near Kragerø. It was a lot of fun, we played games (a lot of soccer), had some talks about how things were going and stuff, jumped in the ocean (twice), explored some caves and tunnels on the island from World War II and generally just had a blast. It was really nice being able to see so many people from the first camp, and got to meet some really sweet new people as well. Overall it was a really fun weekend and am really looking forward to seeing everyone again at the mid-year camp.
After getting back from the camp I had this presentation for a language day that the school was having, I was so nervous because I didn't have much time to prepare for it but it actually went very well. There were some gaps and things I could have done a little better, but everyone said it was really good, and I even got asked to do another presentation for one of the English classes at the school. That same week we also had this dance/play thing that we went to, and so I ended up not having any classes that day.
I am really getting into a pattern with school and am getting used to schedule each day, so nothing is really sticking out at school anymore. Although in the days where I have a lot of classes where the teacher just talks it is really hard for me to pay attention especially as it gets later in the day. Fridays, or my fagdag days are expecially hard because it is 8-3 with pretty much all Norwegian so it can be very hard to follow, once it gets to about lunch time my brain just shuts down.
The weekend after the AFS camp was the start of my fall break (høst ferie), and right away Saturday morning we left for Bergen!!! At 6:30 in the morning :( It was a blast though, we drove over several plateaus over 1000 meters above sea level, on one of the plateaus there was even SNOW, and I threw my first snowball of the winter on October 2nd! It was a long trip but I got to see some amazing sites and places. We arrived in Bergen in the afternoon and met my host sister at her house. We ate dinner in town at this Indian restaurant, it was really good! The next day we took a train up one of the mountains surrounding the city to a viewing point where you can see the valley and almost all of the 7 mountains surrounding the city. It was really, really cool, although it was kind of a bummer because it was raining pretty hard so a lot of what you saw was just fog. It was still really cool though, we got to see a castle and church from medieval times and got to look around. The castle and surrounding walls and everything has been standing since the 1600's so that was really cool to see and experience. Just chilled out for the rest of the night.
The next day we got to do some more exploring of the town shopping centers and me and my host-brother went to the aquarium, a little later in the day me and Steinar went and walked around the Bryggen i Bergen. It is made up of a lot of older wood buildings, and is a really cool site to see. I got to go to a movie with an AFS friend from the US, just FYI Scott Pilgram VS. the World is really funny. I absolutely loved Bergen and would love to go back again and also to see some of the area further north. The fjords with the mountains rising straight out was such an amazing site, and seeing more would be awesome. From Bergen we left to head for the hytte in Sweden drove over some more mountains and also drove through a 24.5 km tunnel!!! We were on the road for nearly 14 hours, 770 km. It was a long day on the road but there were a lot of amazing views.
In Sweden it was a lot of just chilling about, I watched some movies. One of the days we went for a bike to the place that they call steinhytte (stone cabin), it was a really neat place. Another day we went to a pool just in-land about a 15 minute drive from the cabin, and me and my host-brother also went bowling for an hour or so.
We got back to Tønsberg on Friday and I had another night to just relax at home, along with Saturday, it was nice to just chill out at home for a day. Sunday was a lot of fun, went with a couple of friends to jump in the ocean (10 C), it was not as bad as I thought it would be , it was actually pretty warm. We hung out at a friends house for a while, then I left and went to have pizza at one of the local restaurants with a couple of the exchange students at my school and with a couple of people that were exchange students last year. Very fun day and a great way to end my fall break.
Had a hectic Tuesday last week a lot of stuff at school, gym and idrett were both hard workouts and then I did the workout with the ski club which was also really hard, but it felt good to be so tired at the end. School was pretty good after fall break, I was actually really surprised how much I was able to pick up in conversations because I really didn't think I spoke much over the break. Although I did get a little bit of a cold towards the end of the week, hung out with some friends Saturday night. My host-brother and his girlfriend came home for the weekend so it was nice to hang out and talk with them for a little while and played some games with them and my younger host-brother.
Lastly this last week wasn't very exciting had my first two tests, the first one was math which went really badly, especially because I have only been in the class for a few weeks so I missed almost a month and a half of the class. That makes the test really hard. Next I had a biology test, which my teacher gave me the choice of doing it or not doing it, and I told him I would do it (what was I thinking). Although the first part of the test was online and that actually went really well, I ended up getting a 4 on it, but the written part went really bad. Oh well, it will get better as time goes on. Had fagdag off this week so it was nice to just sit and do some updating on things, and also getting ready for a trip with the ski club this weekend. We are going to a ski TUNNEL, in Sweden, I am so excited. We will have a weekend of skiing in October, plus last night we had our first SNOW of the year! Me and my host-brother played in the snow for a while, made a snowman, snow angels, and had a snowball fight. It was a lot of fun, but already most of the snow is gone already, but we did have several centimeters on the ground when I woke up this morning. We also had this thing with AFS on Wednesday with other AFSers from the area, it was really nice to get and see some people again, and I found out that one of the guys near Skien will be coming to Tønsberg every so often because he is joining a fencing club near here. So it will be really cool to be able to see him every so often. We also talked with the other guy from Skien about trying to get together and hang out and try to do some skiing, or something together during the winter.
Anyway, thats what happened in the last month. If you want to know any more details you can leave a comment or send me an email (stronger.faith@gmail.com). Hope you enjoy reading.
Takk for lesing
Jon
