Nearing the End

June 17, 2018

Nearing the End

Am I the only person that uses the Apple weather app as a measure of time? As soon as the day of some sort of event can be seen in my phone's weather forecast, I consider it to be soon. Just yesterday I opened the app to check the weather, an innocent enough task, and saw that Monday lurking at the bottom of the screen. It wasn't such a surprise, I had noticed the days getting closer all week, but something about the actual departure date being close enough for me to have an idea of the weather freaked me out a little. I've started the real preparations already with a large box of winter clothes and such in the mail and a trial packing run completed, but now I have no excuse to act like the day isn't right around the corner. And now I really mean right around the corner, not in the sense that I talked about two months ago. I've said goodbye to some family and mutual friends, and have the next week filled with different forms of the dreaded adieus. While I know I'll likely see most of my closest friends and family again, it's harder to leave here without a set return date than it was to leave the US knowing I'd be back in ten and a half months. The nights of restless sleep have begun, just as they did in early August last year, and the constant thoughts of those plane rides and first moments send all sorts of emotions rushing through me. All I can do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best, and take these last few days to soak in the last bits of this life I have been lucky enough to live for the past months.

This week has been a continuation of the not-actually-vacation-but-pretty-much-vacation we've been having the past two or so weeks, but I promised to include Sunday's activities last week because the post got so long, so I'll start there. Sunday we celebrated two of my host cousins' birthdays together at the cabin. I stayed long enough to get some food and to see a small dent be made in the mountain of presents before heading back to the city to watch a concert for my friend's youth group in the evening with some other friends.

As I mentioned earlier, school is really over but they can't legally give us the days off, so we end up having "alternative activities" to keep us busy. It's a bit annoying to have these weird half days with different things going on that aren't at all related to school when I could be doing last fun things with friends, but I guess it's better than doing school work... Monday we had a sort of scavenger hunt through the city, where the goal was to go to a specific place in all 15 city districts in five hours. Now, Oslo is actually a pretty big city geographically, and only three or four of those districts are actually in the center, so you can imagine this was not especially easy. In the end we managed to get to nine districts, catching more than half of the public transportation we took by the skin of our teeth and our group leader sprinting back to the school in the rain to make it before the teachers responsible for attendance left. All in all it was a dramatic, exhausting day, but I got to see some parts of Oslo I had never seen before so that's a plus.

Tuesday we went to a culture festival in the city, which had some cool exhibits and performances. One of the schools in the city offers a design and fashion line which a friend takes, and we got to see a fashion show that showcased some of her clothes. That night was the last theater party out on one of the islands in the fjord, and since it started early and was free, we decided to go. I hung out with friends and talked to some people I don't see all that often and enjoyed the not-too-hot (for once) weather. Wednesday we had a volleyball tournament at school that lasted all of two and a half hours, and Thursday we basically had the day off. We did have an assignment, but it was to write some feedback to our contact teachers which didn't take all that much time and was to be done from home. I spent the rainy morning with Mathea making and eating breakfast and looking at plane tickets to the US ;)))))

Friday we had a sort of field day which was actually one of the highlights of the week, mostly because we weren't forced to play capture the flag and stuff like at my elementary school. Basically we just had to show up at this lake with grassy areas around it which is within walking distance from my house (but literally 1+ hours away from 90% of the school) and could choose what we wanted to do. You didn't even have to do anything active if you didn't want to. But when I got there, I saw a pile of frisbees and got very excited and forced all my friends to throw with me for a little. I hadn't even touched a frisbee my whole exchange year, and missed throwing in the street with my brother (Jake, if you're reading this, prepare yourself for lots of frisbee this summer). Anyways, my friends got bored after a little bit, but I wanted to keep playing so I asked to join a group of guys throwing one around and it was in that moment my lack of fear for meeting new people really came in handy. I ended up spending the next two or so hours throwing with them, and some new people came over as well throughout. It was nice to just throw and talk with new people, even if the chance of me seeing them ever again is quite low.

For my birthday from my host aunt I got a day at the climbing park/high ropes course in Oslo with my host cousins, which we did yesterday! We spent the day climbing around and taking zip lines up at the top of the mountain that serves as Oslo's main downhill ski mountain in the winter! There's quite a few different trails if you will with different obstacles and zip lines of different difficulty and length, and some of them were quite challenging. If anyone in Oslo or visiting Oslo wants something to do outside in Oslo's nature, I would definitely recommend it, just search Høyt og Lavt Klatrepark Oslo and it should come up:) Today the weather is rainy again, which is actually very needed because the heat and dryness the past few weeks took its toll on the grass here, so I'm spending the day doing the more logistical things that need to be done before I leave. Yay. Next week you'll hear from me for one last blog post in Norway; oh how the time has flown!!

Word of the Post:
bydel = city district

A few pictures (really wasn't good about it this week)