Rollercoaster Week

February 11, 2018

Rollercoaster Week

Six months ago, I was waking up from my first night away from home of this crazy thing called an exchange year, trying to keep myself from building up expectations in my head. Six months later, I'm waking up to a relaxing Sunday after a late night with my best friends in Norway. Six months ago, I didn't know those four girls existed. Six months ago, I hadn't met my host family in person. Six months ago, I hadn't begun at my new school. Six months ago, six months into the year felt like a lifetime away. Yet here I am.

So much has changed in these six months. Even though I left my family, my friends, my community, and all I ever knew life to be in Portsmouth, over 3000 miles away, I've never felt so whole. As my two lives float further from each other, I sometimes find myself worrying that the person I have become won't fit into the meticulously crafted keyhole I spent sixteen years carving in Portsmouth. I may not look much different; I may have the same sense of humor and the same hobbies, but I realize now that that keyhole is missing a few notches, and without those, I'll get stuck when I try to push myself back in. I try not to think about this too much, after all there's no way to know for sure how the homecoming will be and I still have four and a half months in Norway, but last night, as my friends and I were sharing our life stories from before we met, it was hard to ignore the thought of those two lives colliding. I was trying to put into words my fear that over the course of this year, I will have picked up five, maybe even ten years of life experience, while everyone in Portsmouth will have acquired one. I've started a new life; my friends have added on to the old. I've always been the mature one, so what's going to happen when I come back even more adult than when I left? When instead of being able to go wherever, whenever, I'm suddenly dependent on people and a car again? It's these questions that make me want to crawl into a hole and not come out, but each day as I become more and more my true self, they find their way into my brain. I guess this whole thing is me trying to tell my future self not to try to conform back to the old you just because she fits better into that keyhole. She was you, but only seventy-five precent. I've spent the past six months finding the other twenty-five, and would rather that time not be thrown away just because the people I grew up with may not completely understand it at first.

I feel this week is a good portrayal of how I've grown up since coming to Norway. It started off pretty normal with school on Monday. I was excited because on Tuesday, I was going to be able to eat normal food again. I had a little cold, but since I've pretty much been sick continuously since I got here, that wasn't a huge problem. I woke up Tuesday morning with a pretty sore throat but with a little extra energy knowing I could eat regular bread for breakfast. About half an hour after I ate, I started getting really bad stomach pains. I lied back down to see if they would go away, but over the course of the say it only got worse. The timing of it all was a bit suspicious to say the least, and decided to not eat any more gluten for a few days then try again to see if it was definitely the bread that caused it. Wednesday I woke up still a little uncomfortable, but since I was feeling a little better, I went to school. I ended up having to leave early because I had to sit on the floor curled up I was so uncomfortable. It was on the way home that I missed living close to school and being able to get picked up by car and driven home if I was sick. Thursday I still wasn't better and stayed home yet again. By this point I was kind of baffled. Could a piece of bread really cause three days worth of stomach aches? I began to doubt that it was gluten and think maybe it was some sort of stomach bug.

I began to get nervous when I woke up Friday still not feeling great, but I had a math test and plans after school that had been in the calendar since November. I was going to a Kygo concert! Kygo is a Norwegian artist who does the more technical side of music like mixing songs and DJing. He's known for collaborating with other artists who sing while he puts together the rest of the music. I was going with three other exchange students, one of whom was going to sleep over after since she lives a little far away. I made it through the day at school but was still really worried about how the night would go. We had floor tickets so we'd be standing all night and were also going to get there a little early to get a good spot. We ended up standing about as close to the stage as possible with normal tickets which was really cool! Through the concert I kept waiting for my stomach to attack me again, but thankfully that time never came! I was able to enjoy the concert which was really cool because Kygo is one of the more internationally-known Norwegian artists and it was a lot of fun to see him play in his home country and see how proud the Norwegians were of him. After the concert we headed back into the center and then Klara and I went back home. After a week of being sick and going to bed early, staying up til 12:30 was a bit of a challenge but totally worth it.

Yesterday morning we slept in and ate breakfast. Afterwards, all six of us (me, Klara, and my host family) went out to build a snow fort/igloo in the huge pile of snow that is standing in front of the house. Building snow forts is quite possibly my all-time favorite winter activity and it was so fun to get to play around in the snow with Elin and Bjørn. When the tunnels and room inside the snow pile were big enough for everyone to climb through, we went inside for some lunch before the others went to watch a movie and Klara and I went back into the city to get her to her train. I came back and relaxed a little before heading over to my friend Sarah's house for an evening with my friends!

We ate pizza and hung out, talking about our lives before all our paths crossed. Iben, Beate, and Frida all live in the same area and have been friends for years but Sarah and I are relatively new friends to them and each other, and it seemed like a good idea to fill each other in on everything that happened before we met! It was very funny with some great pictures from our childhoods and I kept wishing that I had access to all the pictures I have back in the US from when I was little. We ate banana splits and I reveled in how lucky I am to have these first-borns (hehe an inside joke that actually isn't that funny but that I love anyways) in my life!! Not every friend would buy you gluten-free pizza crust mix and lactose-free ice cream... Ugh now I'm thinking about going home again and having to leave them and it's making me sad so I'm gonna wrap this up.

Happy Olympics!!! I'm cheering wildly for both Norway and the US, if you were worried I was going to pick a side :) Also-- little side note-- still not totally sure what caused the stomach stuff so now I'm trying to rule different foods out by trying them slowly and seeing how it goes :)

Word of the Post:
en snøhule = a snow cave/fort/igloo thing :)

And now for some low-quality pictures (because you can't read this blog for good camera quality)