Normal life

Sorry for ten days no post! I had problems with my blog. I deleted me as administrator and I had to write to the AFS office in Switzerland for fixing it. Now I'm administrator again and everything is fine :-)

The Russe-time is going on everyday. People tried to catch me and throw into this little pond up in the fortress. The one time they almost carried me out of school a teacher came and they stopped. Everyday is some party going on and sometimes I'm with them. This weekend most of the Russ are in Tryvann near Oslo, one of the biggest Russ-meeting in Norway.

One day I was in the cinema watching "The Avengers". Go and watch this movie. It's awesome!

This would never happen in Switzerland. I'm at home in a house in the middle of Halden and I can see a deer in the garden!

Maria got the driving license and we had to go on a little roadtrip. This is in Skjeberg, a village near Halden. (with Maria, Karro, André og Knut)

The water is still a little cold, isn't it Karro? :-)

Ahhh.. the sky burns!
The zoom function is quite good on my camera.

Yes, this is my fitnesscenter. I'm there 3-4 times a week. I really enjoy it to work out there and the best thing after a hard work out is the sauna. On the picture below is just one of the three floors with fitness machines. I didn't have the heart to take pictures from the whole building :-P The people watched a little bit strange when I took the pictures.

Most of the time, I work out with Eirik and Knut. Sometimes I go alone. Today I trained the breast muscles and the triceps. I began with a short but very intensive interval running training.

I'm going now to a concert of Thorvald's choir. I'm looking forward to that.

Silvan

Summer!

Yeaah! It's summer here in Halden. It feels like 25 degrees. I was out on the pier, ate an ice cream and chilled. Yesterday night began the Russe-time and now you can see people in red trousers everywhere.
The red minibus on the picture is the Russe-car of my hostsister. The name of their group is "Beercraft".

 

All the names of the members in their group are written on the minibus.

 Summer! :-)

First time this year we ate outside!


Silvan

School, Pizza, Russedåpen

Today I want to write about something I should've done long ago: My school. I'm there almost everyday and of course should you see once how it looks like. It's quite a new school, someone told me it's ca. 5 years old. How you can see I took the picture on a day before Christmas but it still looks like this just without the Christmas tree.

Last week I was at Casa di Espen one day. We made some pizza and just chilled all the day. Unfortunately the pizza was a little bit to long in the oven.

The Saturday last weekend was Russedåpen (Russe-baptism). All the students from the last year got "Russ" this day. I uploaded a video how it works. It started 12 am in the fortress in Halden. The whole show was presented by the people of "Paradise Hotel". That's a TV show in Norway which is almost the same as "Big Brother". Just more embarrassing. I never watched it and I won't ever do it. But of course lots of girls there were like "Oh my god, it's the guy from Paradise Hotel!!!". Naah..everyone likes something else ;-) But they did a great job and the baptism was funny to watch. It lasted ca. 2 and a half hours.

This place is called "Atria" in my school. It's at the time of the big break in the morning.

The architecture is really nice in my opinion.

And two pictures for my mother ;-)

Of course the tree isn't there anymore.

Kantina..

The lockers

It's quite big.

That's in the old part of the school.

The old part from outside.

Next to the school is a big paper manufactory.

The new part from outside

Pizza with ananas..normally I like that, but not when the ananas is from the 90's.

Maybe a little bit black..

Knut, Espen and Eirik are enjoying the pizza :-)

Emely and Anne Marit on the Russedåpen. Maybe they drank already a little bit ;-)

First could all the Russ go to the stage.

As Russ you wear this red trousers. The rule says: You have to wear the trousers from 1st til 17th of May without washing. But when you do it then are the pant legs gonna be cut off the trousers. And that's a big shame!

As Russ you are normally in a group with 5 til 9 people and you have a Russebil (Russ-car). That's mostly a red minibus. Sometimes you can also see green, black or blue Russ, but that happens quite seldomly. Most of them are red.

You can see the video of the Russedåpen here.

The rules: 

There's a time limit where you have to drink a 0,33 l beer. Boys get 10 and girls 12 seconds. The moderators said sometimes: Oh no, now we got a letter.. and that meaned that during this round counted special rules. For example fewer seconds to drink. If you didn't clear to drink everything in time, you got the rest of the beer filled over your head. If you cheated you got extra buttermilk over your head. And then you are Russ!

This whole Russ-tradition is one of the things most of the people don't know about Norway. But I think it's a very important thing to know because it's that big.


Silvan

Easter Holiday 4

Day 7 and 8

This two days I was Kim showing a little bit where I live. On Holy Thursday it's a big party in Halden and in the first town after you cross the Swedish border. Everyone was out in the town. That was kind of special because Halden normally is a very calm city. Friday, Anne and Thorvald drove already to Koster. Anne Marit, Aleksander (her boyfriend), Kim and I drove there on Saturday.

Day 9 and 10

On Koster we were eating good food, we fished and walked around the island. Kim and I took some nice pictures. On Easter Sunday we ate cheese fondue ca. 2 pm and baked trout for the dinner.

Day 11

Kim and I drove home again with Tormod and Nina in the morning. We were just watching some movies and spoke about stuff like, when we gonna see us the next time (30th June).

This beach is called Ikea-beach, because there is lots of wood which came from the sea.

So, that was my Easter Holiday 2012. I really enjoyed the whole week and I looking forward to the rest of my exchange year.

Silvan

Easter Holiday 3

Day 5

"Hei Silu, wake up!" Kim sounded really stressed when he woke me up 7:30 am on Tuesday morning. Our train was leaving 8 am and we didn't know where the trainstation was. As fast and as quiet as we could, we packed our stuff. Fortunately the trainstation was just 5 minutes walking from the hostel away. We bought a little breakfast in the Narvesen-shop. In the train we watched movies or just the beautiful coutryside. The train between Bergen and Oslo passes Finse, the hightest trainstation in Norway with 1222 m. There are no public roads to Finse. Therefore the train is quite important for this region. After 6 and a half hour we arrived Oslo. We put our baggage in a safe deposite box at Oslo S. It was fantastic weather and this day we just chilled at Akerbrygge. Unfortunately we broke our deal, not to visit a McDonald's. The temptation was to strong. In the evening we took the Underground to Harald's apartment. We ate a very good Lasagne together. Suddenly, this long and nice day was over.

Day 6

We wanted to wake up early because we had some plans for this day. The day before we bought a public transport ticket. For 24 hours we could use every bus, underground, tram or ferry boat. So, we took the Underground to Holmenkollen. I think most of you have heard about it. That's the big skisport center in Oslo with its famous ski-jump. 90 NOK poorer, we visited the skimuseum there and the ski-jump. We had a fantastic view over the whole city with the fjord. Back in the center we decided to take a ferry boat without knowing where it goes. Our 24 hour ticket ended 3:30 pm. For that reason we took the Underground back to Harald at this time. We bought some barbecue stuff in the city and walked to a very pretty lake where we chilled some hours. First we wanted to take the train on Thurday morning but we decided to take it already on Wednesday evening. 10:45 pm we arrived Halden and Anne-Marit picked us up.

Bergen trainstation

Finse

Holmenkollen ski-jump

Ski museum

Fantastic view

 The lake near by Harald's aparment

Easter Holiday 2

Day 3

The hostparents of Kim wanted that we drive with them to the sister of the hostfather. While they drank a coffee and ate waffles, Kim and I were fishing. Suddenly came the son of Kim's hostaunt with a gun to us and asked us if we want to shoot a little bit. We said no and he went away.. NO! Of course we liked to try shooting. It was just a 2.8 mm bore but it was fun anyway. In the afternoon we drove back to the cabin and then back to Molde. We were going to take the Hurtigruten 9:30 pm. The first thing we did there was asking for the saune and the whirlpool. Unfortunately the whirlpool was closed because there was snow outside. So, after we had a look at our cabin, we went to the sauna. Then we watched a movie and the day was over.

Day 4

We enjoyed being on a ship, watched the countryside, ate good food and 3 pm we arrived in Bergen. First we thought it is nice weather there but 30 minutes later it rained, 30 minutes later the sun shined and again 30 minutes later it snowed. The weather really changed that fast. After we found our hostel we visited different places in Bergen. We wanted to visit the aquarium but we would've just had 40 minutes left to be there and it was quite expensive. Before our trip we both agreed that we'll never ate in a McDonald's in that week. In Bergen we saw the first McDonald's and it was really difficult not to go in there :-). In the hostel we slept in a 8 persons room together with a man from Iran, one from Italia, one from Great Brittain and two we didn't speak with.

 My ship card

 Our cabin

Nice countryside

Bergen

The weather changed really fast

The aquarium was to expensive