Last post!

Hei everybody

I gonna end my blogging career today ;-) I really liked to share my exchange year with you and I hope you liked to read the stuff I wrote.

The last days were crazy.
I was on Koster one last time with my hostfamily. The weather wasn't very good and we returned already on Sunday instead of Monday. On Saturday Anne had birthday. I gave her a Swiss Cookery book and a chocolate fondue mix. It was the last time I saw the whole family with Anne, Thorvald, Nina, Tormod, Jessica, Harald and Anne Marit. In the evening we ate a very good dinner (I don't remember what it was) and suddenly Anne came with some presents for me?! I was really surprised. I got a Norwegian pullover which is very beautiful and a foto album with fotos from my whole exchange year. It's so nice! Anne Marit wrote comments in there. I just want to say thank you once more! :-)

Monday and Tuesday, the last two days, I was out with friends. On Monday I got a phone call from Nacho. He was in Greece for one week but he didn't get the permission from AFS for this trip. So he called me and said that he's in Halden right now at Kari's place. AFS said to him he had to travel home from Greece and he have to leave Norway on Wednesday. So he didn't get permission to go to the last camp. I think AFS overreacted in this situation and it was sad he couldn't go to the camp. He said to me that I have to say hello to all the people, especially to the girls ;-).

On Tuesday I ate the last time dinner with the family. I really have to say it wasn't as hard as I expected to say good-bye to them but just because I gonna see them again in 4 weeks. Otherwise it would've been much harder. To say good-bye to Anne Marit was funny. She had to take the train 6:00 am on Wednesday because she was going to travel to north Sweden with her boyfriend Alexander. She woke me up 5:30 am and I was just to tired to be very sad. To say good-bye to all the friends was harder. Of course I gonna see some of them again in 4 weeks too but I can't say for sure who I gonna see and who not. 
I miss you all!

I hated to pack. I had to let a lot of stuff there which we gonna take with us when we're gonna visit my hostfamily in the summer holiday. At the end I still had 6 kilos overweight and I thought it's gonna be quite expensive at the airport. But when I was there the woman on the desk just said it's ok with the weight. Lucky me!

To return home after 10 and a half months is really strange. It's like feeling like a foreign person in your own home. It's nice that all my friends here want to meet and do something. So I don't have that much time for just doing nothing and think about everything. Then I also have to clean up my little room. I just have to much stuff now. :-)
The life continues like before just that I don't have to speak Norwegian anymore. One little thing more I have to tell you. On Monday when Kim and me walked through the old city of Solothurn we began to speak Norwegian and said things like this: denne personen er stygge (this person is ugly). It's cool when nobody can understand you ;-)

Anne's birthday on Koster

 Harald and Jessica got engaged on Sunday on Koster. It was so nice when they told us :-D

 Once more the cabin with Whiskey in the garden.

 On Tuesday I was out with Karro, Maria, Eirik and Nacho.

Love you guys!

The packing was kind of difficult but at the end I made it. :-)

So, I hope you liked my last post. I wanna say thank you to everybody who read my blog!
Wish you a nice time!!!

Silvan

Last post from Norway!

Ladieeeees and Gentlemeeeeen! This is gonna be my last post which I gonna write here sitting in my room in Norway, Halden. Maybe I continue to blog maybe not.. I don't know yet.

Last weekend I was at the cabin of Eirik with him, Knut and Espen. We were going to go to a party on an island near there on Saturday. The sea was quite wild and almost everytime we drove the boat we got wet. On Sunday when the guys drove me back to Halden with the boat (I had to leave a little earlier) we decided to wear rainsuits. Look how pretty we were!

On this picture you can see the new Svinesunds bridge. If you have kind of hawk eyes you can see another bridge and this bridge is..

..this one. It's the old Svinesund bridge. On the left side you have Norway and on the right side you have Sweden. The border goes in the middle of the fjord we're driving in.

I had to be at home earlier from the cabin because we had our last meeting with AFS Østfold. We were meeting at Kari's place, she was my local contact and I ate every second Tuesday dinner there.

Yesterday I was drivingn around with Eirik in his car. I love his stereo system! When you're sitting in the back seat and he's turning the bass on, you get a really good back massage :-) Yesterday was also a really nice sunset. Unfortunately we came a little bit to late to take a picture when it was at his most beautiful.

Today I got my school certification. I'm not gonna write some comments about it. It is how it is. ;-)

I wish you a very nice time and my next post I gonna write sitting in my room in Switzerland! Did I tell you when I gonna travel home? I think I did but I just gonna say it once more: I gonna travel home on the 30th June. 8 days left :-O.. 5 in Halden.

Silvan

Göteborg

The time is just running away. In 13 days I'm already in the last AFS Norway camp.

I was in Göteborg with my hostparents, Anne Marit and Alexander (her boyfriend) last weekend. For the people who don't know where or what Göteborg is: It's the biggest city on Sweden's westcoast. We took the car and drove ca. 2 hours on Saturday morning. We had a **** hotel in the middel of the city. The first thing we said when we entered the hotel: I'm looking forward to the breakfast.

Thursday one week ago we had Historyday in school. All the students from the 2nd class walked up to the fortress and a teacher who was also guide in the fortress told us interesting storys there.

Thorvald asked me if I can help him with painting the garage. I worked ca. 4 hours and I got some money for it.

I love this car, and this girl :-)

Who can find the special "thing"?

Woohoo Göteborg! Ale and me were tired after 1 and a half hour shopping but Anne Marit wasn't finished at all, so she continued alone for 2 hours. In the evening we watched the fotball matches in a O'Larries sportbar. Ale works in the O'Larries at Gardermoen and therefor we got the beer quite cheap.

On Sunday Anne Marit, Ale and me went to Liseberg, an amusement park in the center of Göteborg. I took this picture after we were on a water coaster. Anne Marit and Ale got really wet but I stayed dry :-)

Yeah! That's the best roller coaster in Liseberg. Kanonen is it called. Somemone who knows the Europapark in south Germany would compare this coaster with the Bluefire there.

Aaaatmosfeeaaaarr! Two pictures below I explain what that is.

We took a little break in the crystal house for relaxing after that much roller coasters.

Aaaand this is Atmosfear. It's the highest free fall in Europe. It's 118 meters high and the first time I was on it, it was really scary. You sit there and it's driving up and you think: shit it's already really high but then you have a look up and see that you are just in the middle of the tower. The most scary moment is when it waits on the top for ca. 10 seconds. The fall is actually not really crazy. After 2-3 seconds it's over already. The second time we were on it this day Ale and me could persuade Anne Marit to come with us :-)

We went also to the spooky house. That was fun. There were working real people who's job was just to scare the visitors.
On the way out we stopped at a wheel of Fortune and won this big m&m price. That made our day :-D
Göteborg, you were great!

Silvan

AFS canoe trip

24 days left..! It's soooo crazy. I can't believe that my exchange year is over so soon, but I'm really looking forward to the time which comes now. We have just very little school every week and the weather isn't that bad actually. Sometimes I think about how the last couple of days gonna be. It will be great to see all the exchange students again and then coming back home to Switzerland even though I have to leave my second home.

Last weekend I was on a canoe trip with AFS Østfold. We were all the exchange students (6) plus two girls who gonna travel to an exchange year this summer. We met at Børtevannkafe somewhere in Østfold and then we paddled ca. 3 hours to Speiderhytta. It was a little, dirty cabin which we had to clean first, but after that it was a nice place ;-)

I write some more stuff under the pictures..

Grilling on Saturday evening. A really big steak :-D

  

Swimming in the lake there was freaking cold!

 

 

 

Give me my towel, I'm freezing!

 

 

Breakfast around a fireplace

 

 

And the paddling back to the cafe..

 

 

On the way back we just had to take out the canoes and kajaks once but when we paddled to Speiderhytta we had to carry them 3 times.

 

 

Nacho and his yellow kajak :-)

 

 

 Me on the yellow kajak

 

Two kajak pros chilling :-P

 

 

 

And the whole group.. I want to say thank you for a really nice trip!

I don't know if I gonna write often on my blog the last days I'm here. So you just have to wait and see if there's a new post.

Silvan

Dugnad, Kruseter, Koster

Summer, summer, summer! It's just awesome. 8 days with 25 degrees and more. The sun is still shining but it got a little colder. Today I have lots of pictures and I just write comments below them.

I took this picture 10:30 pm. It's still very bright.

The last week we often drove to Kruseter. It's a swim and grill place outside the town. The lake was surprisingly very warm. (Anders, Kristoffer, Adrian, Daniel, Karolina, Maria, Oda and Katrine)

 Hmm.. What are we thinking about.. (Anne Marit, Emely)

Woohoo! Eirik got the driving license. The last few days we drove quite often. Yesterday they kidnapped me. Knut and Eirik called me and told me I have to go out of my house and sit in the car. I asked them whats going on, but they just turned the music really loud. Eirik drove me down to the harbour and then they tried to throw me in the sea. Fortunately they stopped a little bit before they really did it. On the picture are we in Sarpsborg eating McDonald's food.

On Saturday I had to do some volunary work for the volleyball club. It was a big bike race in Halden. We were the first people who the participants met after they reached the goal. We gave them a bottle of water and took away the chip for measuring the time. The participants could choose between a 70 km or a 130 km distance. We should work from 10 am til 4 pm but fortunately we could leave 2:30 pm.

I was really surprised when I saw a racer with a Swiss dress. I asked him, but he wasn't from Switzerland and he was to exhausted to explain something.

After volunary work I drove with Anne Marit and Emely to Koster. All the others were already there. The weather was fantastic. We had two very good barbecues.

Sunday we just chilled on the beach. The thing I don't like by swimming in the sea is that you always have to look if a jellyfish is near you.

Thorvald and I were paddling back to the cabin. I felt it in the shoulders afterwards ;-)

 Woohoo, waterfight :-)

Sunday evening we drove to Ursholmen. It's an island in the south of Koster and on it is the westernmost lighthouse of Sweden.

 On Ursholmen

This is the whole island..

We wanted to watch the sunset, but we had to wait 2 hours, so we took some nice pictures.

The Koster gang: Nina, Tormod, Harald, Jessica, Anne, Thorvald. Anne Marit and Emely were somewhere else ;-)

31 days left.. Wooaah, the time is running away!
See you!

Silvan