Vinterferie // Winter Vacation

February 25, 2018

Vinterferie // Winter Vacation

Happy Sunday, everyone! I hope you liked hearing from my mom last week. If you haven't read her post, go check it out! She wrote about the best and worst things about having a child on exchange :) It's now been two weeks since I've given any updates on my life here, but luckily that first week was pretty normal. The real excitement started that weekend, so I figure that's a good place to start!

Each year at Katta the students put on a play at the end of winter. I'm not sure exactly how long this tradition has been going on, but there are posters down in Teatergata (Theater Street, a hallway by the auditorium where all the different behind-the-scenes things go on) from decades before I was born. This year, the show is "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist" by Dario Fo. While things are already happening way back in the fall, everything really kicks off right before the winter vacation. Last Friday felt like the true starting point, with a PR-Raid unlike anything I'd done before. After school lots of students met up, got their faces painted, and then gathered around to learn the 'theater song' (it has nothing to do with the show and I'm not sure where it comes from but it seems to also be a tradition). When it started getting dark we all went outside, lit torches and began to walk down to Karl Johans gate, one of the main streets in Oslo. We sang and chanted the whole way, drawing lots of attention and handing out fliers for the show. Further down Karl Johan, as we neared Oslo Central Station, we began to run down the street to the end of it where we formed a huge circle and kept singing and chanting. It was another one of those magical moments you really can only get at Katta, and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it!!

Friday had been the last day of school before break, and although theater stuff was already happening on Saturday, I took the day to hang low and rest up for what was sure to be a bit of a crazy week. That evening, after an extra ticket became available, I had the really cool opportunity to go to the opera! Oslo's opera house is internationally known and while I had been there a few times before, I had never seen an actual show there. The show was Tosca, and as part of a Youth in Oslo event, the tickets were only sold to people between the ages of 16 and 30. The show was absolutely beautiful and although it was my first opera, I don't think it will be my last!

On Sunday I went back to school for my first day helping with the theater. I was really nervous; I had no idea how it was going to work and knew very few students that were in other grades and therefore the ones that were really running the show. Thankfully, I had Beate there with me and we quickly found a job in costumes. We spent the day, with breaks for lunch and dinner, sewing military patches, the kind high-ranked people have on the chest to show all their achievements. The next day I was there with Iben, Frida, and Beate and we worked a little on the set before we went on a little shopping trip. Tuesday was my first day working with makeup, where I ended up spending the rest of the week! My friend from the orchestra is one of the group leaders and it was quite a relief to finally know someone, hehe! A group of us went on a short trip to find some things they needed for the show and then came back to learn how to do the makeup for the different characters. We practiced on each other and hung out for the rest of the afternoon and I was starting to feel like I understood how this all worked and was really, really liking it!

I spent Wednesday at home, baking, hanging out, and learning some new stuff on ukulele and guitar. Thursday was the longest day so far. I did more work with makeup during the day as we practiced on the actors for the first time. I felt like I was living out the dream of that little part of me that's always loved makeup and wanted to be a makeup artist. That evening was plakatnatt, or poster night. The challenge was to go around the city hanging up posters in creative places and Iben and I ran around for two hours with our best location being a HUGE baby head in the middle of a park. In order to get one poster on the chin like a beard, Iben lifted me up which just ended with me face down in the snow :)) After the two hours were over everyone met back at the school to go together to one of the week's many parties (but the only one antisocial me went to). After a late night with very little sleep once I did get home, I decided to stay home again on Friday. I don't think I've ever had less motivation in my life. It was like first-week-of-exchange exhaustion. I thought I was done with that!!

Yesterday was another pretty long day, but after not really leaving the house the day before, I was okay with being a little more active. I went out and bought some more makeup for the group then helped costumes paint some fabric (it's so impressive how many of the costumes are completely hand-made) and helped decorate the cafeteria where the audience will come in first. After dinner (we eat very early) we began to do makeup for the run-through. One of my favorite games to play is "How Long Can I Go Without People Knowing I'm Not Norwegian?" Unfortunately, that afternoon people began asking me if I was going to apply for one of the leader jobs next year and I had to tell them that I was going back to the US in June. I take it as a huge compliment that people don't know that I'm not Norwegian, and I got some pretty great reactions when people realized. We also tried to do a little hair for this run-through, more specifically curling some hair. Some very short hair. I was a little skeptical that it would work at all, but after only burning the guy's neck once, he had some little ringlets in his very red hair. One of my proudest works of hair art by far ;)

Today is the dress rehearsal as the show opens tomorrow!! When this goes up I will have just gotten back from the last day of intensivuka (intensive week, the name for this week) and hopefully with a few more pictures of what actually goes on there. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to get on camera without ruining any surprises, but I'll do my best! Despite being one of the more nerve-inducing activities I've been a part of here, I am so glad I decided to get involved. I made so many new friends and strengthened my friendships with people I knew from before. If you're reading this and considering going on exchange, definitely going on exchange, on exchange now, maybe moving to a new place, or really doing anything that puts you in a place with new people, I highly recommend being a part of anything that compresses a bunch of social things into a short amount of time. It can be a little exhausting but I guarantee you'll come out knowing way more people than before!!

p.s. Sorry for the even longer than normal post, and the next two posts will most likely be coming out on Monday instead of Sunday!

Word of the Post:
en skuespiller = an actor

Photo time!