Påskeferie // Easter Vacation

April 01, 2018

Påskeferie // Easter Vacation

Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates, and happy April Fools' Day! It's more than a little crazy that it's already April and I'm realizing how quickly these last little-under-3 months are going to go by. To everyone who feels this school year is going by too slow, I'd be happy to trade feelings with you! It might seem like I was just on vacation, and you'd be right, but here I am with yet another blog post about a break! This week was Easter vacation and brought a new wave of adventures that I thought would be fun to share. We got incredibly lucky with the weather here which made for lots of time outside.

We spent a good amount of the week at the family's cabin out on an island on the fjord, but I kicked off the break with friends on Sunday and Monday! Sunday we watched a recording of this year's Melodi Grand Prix, which is the competition that decides who will be competing for Norway in Eurovision each year! It was so warm out as I walking to my friend's house that I even took my coat off! Monday was a little cooler which was unfortunate since that was the day we had our Easter city adventure planned. I met Sarah and Frida near our school and we began our quest of reaching as many of the end stations for the tram system in Oslo. Easter mystery stories are a big thing here and we had our own based off our friends and people from school to solve as we traveled around the city. We ended up reaching quite a few of the end stops before I began to die of hunger (okay, maybe not) and people had to make their way home for dinner. There will definitely be another day of this adventure later; I'm determined to reach all the end stations and solve the mystery!

Tuesday we headed out to the cabin and spent time reading in the sun and playing around. On Wednesday afternoon I headed back home with Anne and the kids because I had big plans the next day! On of the ways I was able to speak so much Norwegian so fast is because I have a friend Frida (another one) from Norway that not many people know about who helped teach me the language before I came. It's always a bit awkward to explain how we met because we met on Instagram through our braiding Instagram accounts. Yup, accounts completely devoted to hair braiding. Anyways, we've been friends for a few years now but had never actually met in real life, only talking over Skype and Instagram. She lives in a part of Norway that's a little hard to get to, but comes to Larvik at least once a year which is only about 2 hours south of Oslo. We had been planning on meeting up during Easter since before I came, so it was so surreal to see her! When she and her mom and sister picked me up at the train station, we drove a little bit further south to Stavern, a little town center in Larvik that's right on the water. It was pretty chilly but absolutely gorgeous, although I kind of forgot to take pictures...

After walking around the adorable center for a little, we went back to their grandparents' house where they were staying. I was greeted immediately with that grandparent hospitality and everyone was so interested in where I was from. After lunch, Frida, her sister and I went to a trampoline park in Larvik and played around there for a bit. For those of you who know Blitz, this place was about three times bigger with a trapeze, tons of foam pits, and foam jousting. When our time was up we went back to the house for dinner and, of course, braiding! One of the things that makes Norway so unique is the huge variation in dialects across the country. Frida's dialect is quite possibly one of the most different ones from a traditional Oslo dialect that can be found, and it was so funny to hear all the differences. Thankfully, I was able to understand almost all she said but that didn't mean it didn't require some thinking. I had seen beforehand a few sentences written in their dialect which scared me quite a bit because I could only decipher about half the words, but fortunately, it was much easier to understand everything when I heard the words being spoken. I don't have many pictures from the day because we were really just enjoying our time together, but let me just say that I'm ready to move to Larvik after this exchange year!

I came home late Thursday evening and met the rest of the family back at the cabin on Friday. Friday was also the day of the Easter egg hunt, which was different for me since I'm used to having it on Easter Day. This egg hunt differed from those I'm used to in that inside the first eggs were clues leading to the next ones and the last egg was filled with candy. These eggs weren't the small plastic ones, either, but rather medium and big card stock-ish ones with paintings of Easter scenes. After finding all the eggs, I decided I was going to take an Easter swim in the fjord. I wasn't planning on actually swimming, more like just jumping in and out to say I did it. The water near our cabin was all in liquid form, but during the egg hunt we had walked to the other side of the island which was actually surrounded by ice. That wasn't going to scare me though, and I got my bathing suit and hopped in. The water was absolutely freezing but it was so sunny out that when I got out it didn't feel that cold. Definitely a bucket list moment!

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and eating and playing, and it definitely felt like a vacation. We came back home midday today but still have vacation tomorrow! There's a family birthday though, so I thought I would get this post out today in case the day gets filled tomorrow:) It's pretty warm out right now so I think I'm going to take advantage of the sun and go for an Easter run! Enjoy family and friends today!

Word of the Post:
påske = Easter

Picture time!