Evelyn's Year in Norway

           Saturdays at Agder  Folkøgskole typically have a seminar that students can sign up for, with different teachers or classes running it each week. This Saturday, the Agderlørdag was a walking trip to town, so my friends and I signed up. (You need to participate in at least 16 Agderlørdag seminars throughout the year for full credit). The walk was about 45 minutes, and we ended up in one of the oldest parts of Søgne, so we walked around and looked at some of the old, historic buildings.           As we were walking, the isbil, or ice cream truck, drove by but didn't stop. However, the sight made  everyone hungry, so we all went to a little ice cream stand on our way back. I guess mid 50s is ice cream weather? A few days ago it was in the 60s and everyone was swimming, so I better get used to it! I actually ordered in Norwegian--probably the most I've spoken to anyone outside of my class--but the girl serving just asked "cup or cone?" in English so I gave up. H

           On Sunday we had our opening  banquet, and school officially started on Monday. These first ten days are supposed to be about social distancing and trying not to let anything spread, being extra cautious, but that has been difficult so far. The building and hallways are small, and there are about five doors I need to open to get from my room to the cafeteria, so if we go down, we go down together. Hopefully everything will be fine though, and we can start school like normal next week!            A weird side note about the doors is that they are all impossible to tell which way they open. Each looks like it should be a push, but sometimes you have to pull and its very disorienting. We keep laughing at each other for how many times we walk into doors, expecting them to open in.           We have assigned seats in the dining hall to avoid spreading anything, and my table has two guys, from Japan and India, and a girl from Germany named Sofia. My class has fifteen people in tot

       On Saturday my quarantine officially ended! I woke up early so that I could move all of my bags to my new dorm room. I don't have a roommate due to uneven numbers, but since I had requested one, I got a double room all to myself. Turns out I needed the space, as I seemed to have packed my entire house! I even had to steal hangers from some of the empty dorms since I didn't have enough.              At 11am I got picked up by Gunlaug and Alf Torgny--my Norwegian relatives--and they drove me to their house, where I quickly saw their son Audun and his wife Hilde. Then I was dropped off at Aurebekk--the family farm/land. I spent most of the afternoon spending time with the children. I was very excited to see them because I'd had so much fun with them last year, and now that I know a few words in Norwegian, we had a good laugh of trying to speak with each other.            Sara and Lea brought a box of toy animals over and quizzed me on the translations, and then we count

 Hey everybody!  I’ve had a really crazy last couple of days. It’s been super fun, and I have a lot to share, but I have no time right now. I had an amazing time with my family on Saturday, and officially moved into the dorms. On Sunday I met my classmates, went swimming, and was introduced to the school. Today we have our first day of “quarantine” classes. I’m getting used to the schedule and meeting lots of new people, but I will try to post soon with a bit more detail! I’m writing this from my phone in the few spare minutes before class starts, so I gotta go!

         This morning I woke up, and around 9:30 decided to make breakfast. I had one egg left, so I wanted to make an open faced egg sandwich, but I wanted toasted bread. I don't have a toaster so I buttered the bread and cooked it in the frying pan,  then cooked the egg, and put some cheese on it. I also had another slice of toast with jam.           Since I cook everything myself, I'm responsible for all of my dishes, and there's no dishwasher so I like to do the dishes as soon as I can to get them out of the way. I usually do them in between cooking and eating, so the food is my incentive to wash them. I washed the knives and the cutting board, then the pan. Then I sat down to enjoy my delicious breakfast!          Suddenly my doorbell started ringing quite urgently. I opened it and teacher that I had not previously met came in and said that I'd set the fire alarm off,  which was weird because there was no noise. She checked the apartment, and I embarrassingly told

          There really hasn't been much going on these past few days. I've walked around the lake a couple of times, Bjorn and I went swimming again, and I've been chilling in my rooms watching Netflix. Quarantine is definitely getting boring, and I can't wait to get out and see people again!          One funny moment was when we were swimming--we were hanging out on a raft off of the beach, and these two little kids swam over. They were probably about 8-10 years old, and we each kept to our own side of the raft, which is blocked in the middle by a set of stairs to jump off of. All of a sudden it got really quiet, and I looked over and couldn't see the kids. Bjorn and I were both concerned, when we heard a knocking from underneath, which scared us both! They had maneuvered under the dock and right under where we were standing so that they could scare us. We talked to them a little bit, practicing our Norwegian, but then of course they started speaking English!      

          When I arrived at Agder I was given a stocked kitchen, and needed to prepare my own meals during quarantine. I'm not much of a cook, and some of the food, like the 'makrell i tomatsaus' was a bit of a culinary mystery to me. Not knowing exactly what, or how much food I would be given, I had brought with me a jar of peanut butter, some instant oatmeal packages, taco seasoning, and a box of mac n cheese. Over this last week I've made a variety of meals, and I thought I would share some of them here! Breakfast of peanut butter bananas and oatmeal. (The postcard is of Lindesnes, the lighthouse at the southernmost tip of Norway). Bjorn and I collaborated to make delicious taco bowls from what we had! I was also able to eat the leftover taco meat with eggs for breakfast. Yum! Definitely the most interesting thing that I've tried so far has been the tin of mackerel in tomato sauce. I'd say I'm a pretty adventurous eater, so when I saw this in my fridge, I

      Sunday morning at 9:55, the nearby church started ringing its bells. They rang for five minutes, and then at 10:25 they rang again. And again at 10:55. They seemed to be coming from a long way away, yet they were still quite loud! After my initial shock, I found them quite soothing, and recorded this video I thought I'd share:

A nice woman took a picture of Bjorn and me, and we talked with her about where we could have a campfire. Now all we need is marshmallows! This is where we went swimming from--a nice little beach area. It's hard to see, but we swam all the way out to the island in the middle.  This is a zoomed up picture, but it's still hard to see.  We swam the easy way back, to here! Here's a cute bridge on the path. This is just one of the many trampolines that I've seen so far. They're everywhere! Here's the little cove on the sea where there are picnic benches, a dock, and a gorgeous view. The dock--yesterday we saw some jellyfish off of it.  Here's Bjorn--we saw some cans left on the ground so we went around picking them up and threw them away. Trying to make a good impression, being American and all :) The weather's in the seventies today, and it's extremely sunny. I think I'm getting more burned here than I did in Rockport! Home sweet home! I live on the

     It's Saturday night, and I've been at Agder for 3 full days! My first day was more exploratory than anything. There's a lovely lake about a 3 minute walk from the school, with a great path around it. I walked the path, and explored some of the surrounding area, including the way to the ocean, only about a 15 minute walk from Agder. At 2pm that day, I logged on for a Zoom workout with my mom, and Community Fitness of Cape Ann. It was great seeing everybody, and while it was 8:00 in the morning for them, I was wide awake and ready for burpees!      On Friday I met the other student quarantining here, a boy named Bjorn from the state of Washington. He was very nice, and we decided to go swimming in the lake. The weather was in the high seventies, and we both wanted to make the most of Norway's limited warm and sunny days. We walked to a little beach area, where there was a family swimming off of a dock. The water was tropical compared to the ocean! In the middle of th

Here are some pictures from my traveling, and my first day in Norway: Comfy chairs where I took a nap during my 9 hour layover in Amsterdam. Sausage roll and mint lemon water from Amsterdam Airport. Incredible fields of hundreds of wind turbines, seen from the plane on the flight to Kristiansand. Took a walk this morning to the nearby lake. There's a nice path around it, about 3 km long. Going to have to start using the metric system! Some painted rocks along the trail. "Ha en fin dag" means have a fine day. There were lots of ducks swimming in the lake. Some pretty plants, there were a lot of nice places to sit around the lake. Found this--I'm going to call it a swing but that's a strong word in this case. Fun nonetheless! There's an area where the path branches off to the ocean. It was beautiful here sitting on the rocks.  I might go back later and bring a book. It really felt like home.  View from my window. You can see the ocean in the distance. First Norw