A few months in

So now I have been in this amazing country for about 1 and a half moths and I cannot believe how incredibly fast the time has flown. I have done so much that I never thought I would and met some incredible people. I have settled into school and in my new home and I am starting to gain a bit of normality.

I live in a town called Sandefjord. It has about 45 000 people and as the name suggests, it is situated on a fjord. It was well known as a whaling town and has a whaling museum and the people seem to be very proud of that bit of history. In fact while here I have already seen whale ears and also a whale tooth!! It was very freaky but also incredibly interesting!

So far I have not been home sick at all but, when I skyped with my mum, she showed me my 2 dogs and my cat I did burst out in tears. I think I miss them the most (Sorry mum haha)

The first time that I tried skiing was in the back yard with my host dad. It was one of the scariest things. (The video is up on the blog also) I managed to stay up most of the time and when I challenged my host dad to a race down the tiny hill, I managed to win (It may have been because he fell over) haha. A few days after that, my host dad took me out into the woods and we went skiing for about 45 minutes. I really enjoyed that!.
Seeing as my host family were taking me to the mountains to skii soon my host dad decided we should go for a longer skii. So this time we went skiing for 2 hours!! I fell over numerous times and went down some VERY STEEP hills but it was soooooooo fun!!

A few weeks later we drove 4 hours up into the mountains for a 4 day ski trip. The place that we stayed at was called Torsetlia.  We drove up on the Thursday so that day was just for relaxing. For dinner we had some thing called Carbonader (served with vegies and brown sauce) They are kind of like meat cakes. For desert we had apple, cream and crushed biscuit. It was pretty good :) The next day we woke up...had breakfast..took a nap..then we went for a 5.3km cross country ski (mostly uphill)..we took another nap..had fried mountain trout for dinner and then we all sat around the fire playing Ludo! It was a fantastic day. On the Saturday I tried down hill skiing for the first time! To start I just went on the childs slope but it was still sooo terrifying haha so I spent all day there trying to learn how to stop. My host dad and host sister forgot to tell me that I had to turn to the side when I wanted to stop so when i finally got told that I could do it straight away haha. My host sister and i also went on these snow billy cart kind things down a 2km long track! It was so fun as we went sooo fast haha even though I did crash a couple of times. For our last dinner we had roast reindeer with scalloped potatos and it was fantastic!! On the Sunday it was sad to say goodbye but before we headed home we went down hill skiing again. This time I tried the green slope called the 'Grandma Slope' haha It was so scary but soooo fun! After that we had to go home. Even though I was sad to leave , it was so lovely to sleep in my own bed again!

This last weekend, I went to Oslo for 4 days on a Rotary trip. Here I met all of the exchange students in Norway. I caught the train from Sandefjord and was joined by 2 of the exchange students shortly along the way. In total there was about 30 odd of us exchange students! It was funny how in this reasonably small group there were 5 rangas (red heads)!!! Who said we were dying out?
On the Thursday, it was mainly a chill night which was nice.
 On the Friday we went to the Viking ship museum where the 3 most preserved viking ships were. We also got to see the remains of 3 people that were found in some of the boats. It is amazing how much they can tell from such little remains! After that we went to a museum that showed the incredible journeys of 2 Norwegian Polar explorers named Nansen and Johansan. That was really cool! We even got to go into the original boat! We then got to have free time so we looked around a shopping center. That night we went bowling and had pizza. The first game I only got 35 haha but the second time I got over 100 and I won!!
On the Saturday we went to the Norwegian resistance museum that showed everything that happened while the Nazis occupied Norway for 5 years between 1940 and 1945. We then went to the Nobel Peace Prize museum which was cool!. After that we went to the World Ski Championships!!! It was awesome!! We saw the ski Jumping Final. There were no Aussies competing but I still had my big Aussie flag and shouting AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE OI OI OI!! haha. Then my friend Devon (From the U.S.A) and I got on national TV and both his host parents and my host parents saw it! It was so awesome to see them fly through the air and some how not fall when they hit the ground again! On the way back to the car, we passed the old Royal Castle which still has guard there. We were able to walk through the grounds and I even got a photo with a guard! It was really cool! That night we all had our last dinner together which was a little sad. I really enjoyed it when Noellen, an exchange student played a song for us on the piano. A little later she started playing "Piano Man" so I went over and sang with her. It was all going really well until the battery operated candle fell of the piano and broke haha. The good thing was we just cleaned it all up and picked up where we left off. We then all got given a Rotary Banner from the Rotary club that organised the trip which was cool. The next day was the day that we were leaving but first we went to an old ski jump. we climed all the way to the top and it was so high. I was so scared haha. The ski jump was very individual because when you jumped you jumped over a road! We then went down the bottom into a school where we had lunch a learned a little  bit more about the ski jump. After that it was really sad becuase we had to say goodbye to everyone! So Noellen, Nina (From Australia), and Vicky (From Argentina) and I caught the train home which was fun.

Well I hope you have enjoyed this VERY long post. I will keep them more frequent now to keep you updated on what I am doing :)
xoxox
Love Miki