Lista

Oh boy, am I overdue. I think I'll have to split this blog post into multiple smaller posts so that people won't spend all day reading it and that my friends won't come looking for me in my room, wondering whether I've died or whatnot. A lot has happened. But it's at least four weeks since last time I wrote anything here, and in the meantime I've been to Lista, had autumn vacation and visited Belarus! I'm back at school now.

Our trip to Lista happened the week before autumn vacation. We brought two lavvus (which weighs a ton by the way) with which we camped close to the beach. This was our first trip that was more or less picture-oriented. We thought maybe we could take some cool pictures of waves, buuuuuuut...

Lame waves are not very exciting.

So instead we took a little trip around the place and to the big rock you see in the picture above.

Yee! Camera trip. From the left: Rasmus, Hallvard (who's really just posing), Kine, Marthe, Nicoline and Vanja.

Not much more to say really... So here's pictures!

The new face here (or rather back) is Kenneth. Rasmus is too cool for school.

You can almost see Denmark from here!

Nightfall.

We wandered around, took pictures and played kubb until the sun went down and we couldn't even see where we were throwing the sticks. The night was damp, and even the warmth from our campfire couldn't do much to fight of the chill, so I went to bed.

... And forgot to put on warm socks. This was very sloppy and very, very, very stupid. The next day I was completely ravaged by a terribly potent cold. This can actually be seen in the pictures I took the following day. They looked fine to me when I took them, but now I see that most of them are either too bright or too dark.

Anyways, we went to Morten's cabin. It was a nice little, white-painted house in a small, secluded fjord, completely shielded from the strong winds of the sea. The other guys (who didn't take pictures with us), had been out the previous day and set lobster traps and fishing nets. While we ate breakfast they went out in the boat to haul in the catch. And was that a catch to remember... At least if you think seaweed is a memorable catch.

One lobster trap filled with crab. Doesn't English have a word for a contraption that catches crab?

On disgruntled crab (several disgruntled crabs underneath disgruntled crab).

Everyone helped (I did too)

Even Rasmus was an asset :D

Oh well, we did get something in the net. Several small Rødspette, a few sticks and another couple of crabs to add to our collection. After we'd cleaned out the net, we cooked the crabs and went for a walk; to this sunny place which name escapes me:

Sunny.

Idyllic?

Here Morten told us this interesting story about how the whole place was built on stolen and pirated money. Talk about sunny and idyllic. You don't need to go all the way to the Caribbean to find badass, dirty pirates. These guys wouldn't offer a sea battle, broadside to broadside like you see in the movies; or even a fair fight for that matter. For instance; they would outfit cows with lanterns to make sailors believe they looked at a lighthouse in pitch darkness, and then pillage the leftovers as they ran aground. Oh, and this was all perfectly legal! If you had a consent, you could pillage and loot foreign ships as much as you pleased. At least the English ships. And this area is dangerous enough on its own, even with the proper, non-cow-related guidance. It's full of reefs and dangerous currents. The whole area around Lista is one gigantic ship graveyard. Even to this day you can find the remains of ancient ships and their cargo.

Pirates or not, it looks pretty sweet to me.

IT'S GONNA BLOW!

And then we went pack to the minibus and drove to Lista lighthouse.

The lighthouse.

Inside the lighthouse.

Sheep roams freely here.

As does these guys.

After everyone had their turn in the lighthouse and gone berserk with their camera, we drove the minibus to a forest where we could really go bananas. The forest was one of those old forests with trees getting really intimate with their branches. Like this:

Yeah, can you see the sun? I pointed my camera directly at it, just for the record. And the ground is not even visible due to a thick, dense layer of pines. It's this kind of forest in which there lives fairies and witches.

What was that? Did you see that?

And the water runs like jelly.

Too bad I didn't have a tripod... That could've led to some pretty cool pictures. Later we went to yet another place.

Pteroglyphs.

Windy? Oh no, not at all...

This is where Lista has gotten its name from. See the wall of mountains in the distance? To seafarers this would look like a doorstep or a list. (List is the same in Norwegian, hence the name)

Afterwards we drove back to Morten's cabin and ate the fish and crabs we'd caught, and some shrimp we'd bought earlier. And I realized why people tend to eat shrimp in the summer when it's warm. When your fingers are cold, trying to peel the scales of a shrimp requires a ridiculous amount of effort. And being ill the whole day, while driving to all those places didn't really help at all. Oh well, I was almost completely healthy again the next day. Which was most welcome. Sleeping outside or in a lavvu or a tent apparently seems to speed recovery up. Then we went home again, to our warm, cozy rooms and soft beds. Man are we spoiled...

That was all from our trip to Lista. The big scoop comes in the next entry.

'till then.

Assassin.

So the following days have been used for not so very much. There was a long weekend followed by a normal week at school. I've started having selected courses on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On Monday we have ballgames, which is basically just having fun with ball games. And apparently "snow ball" is in our arsenal later this year (this is partially why I signed up *cough*). Tuesdays I have language training. Well, technically I'm not training any language, except maybe English (which I've heard I talk like a native... And a prick) and a bit German. What I do is I've been chosen to help Vikki with her Norwegian. And she doesn't really need much help yet =) On Wednesdays we have volleyball. Also fun.

We have a lot of spare time outside of classes. This time is usually consumed by playing games. Card games, board games and other games. I've been playing Magic with my neighbors, and a board game called "Arkham Horror", which is insanely complex and required about 9 hours to play the first time we played it... We didn't even finish it.

Every day we discover new people who play Magic. Or at least that is how it feels, and we're considering organizing Magic lessons, to teach people how to play and eventually have a large tournament later. A lot of people here have an inner nerd it seems.

The coolest thing is perhaps the game we play called Assassin. It's not a card or a board game. It's a game that we play all the time, and about half the school is involved with. In short we go around and try to kill each other. With spoons and rolled up newspapers that is. Everyone playing Assassin gets a target and their goal is to "kill" their targets and avoid being "killed" back. The only permitted weapons... I mean "weapons", is spoons, rolled up magazines or papers, "poison" which involves simply spicing someones meal or drink so that they can taste that it has been "poisoned" (putting salt in someones tea for example). Bombs are also allowed. You just have to hide a cell phone in a box or something and set the alarm to go of when your mark is in the vicinity.

The first round of Assassin is already over. I failed. Miserably. Will do better in the next round though.

I feel like we're back to kindergarten when it comes to playing. I've never played so much in my entire life. And the Saturday two weeks ago (the 11.) only goes to show. We had what we call "Agderlørdag". Agderlørdag is set in stage by one of the classes on the school. What they do is make dinner for everyone and an activity or two to fill the evening. The jazz class arranged it this time. They made it a 1920s kind of dinner. Everyone was supposed to dress like they did in the 20s. If they could obviously (I couldn't. Closest I got was like the 1990s or something...). Then there was a dinner. And then there was a murder; which I managed to sniff out already when the "Lord Ilkana" left for his study with a glass of gin or whatnot (it was actually Earl Grey tea, we found out later).

Yes, the activity for the evening was solving the murder of the lord. It was really fun and I'm amazed of the creativity and originality in their group. They made a really tricky puzzle, and the acting of the group was really good, come to think of how only a quarter of everyone there actually took them seriously. So after a while I ditched the blockheads of my class (yes, I know you can read this too >:( ), who were trailing of in a completely contradictory line of thought and solved the mystery. On my own! Would you look at that. All those hours of playing Phoenix Wright on my DS wasn't completely wasted after all. After solving the mystery we had dessert - ice cream.

Thanks Jazz =)

That is all.

Last week.

Monday 06.09.2010: We went on a mountain trip. We drove in the schools mini-bus to a place called Hovden. The ride took about 4 hours... Or would have taken four hours if it had been completely uneventful. What's the first thing that happens?

Tire blew... So we try to elevate the buss with the jack, which we find is way too short... While others set out to find something to elevate the jack with, some of us try to loosen the spare tire from under the bus. This proved to be difficult because it was a lot of rust and dirt in the picture. When we finally manage to get it out we find that the tire is rusted beyond recognition, and besides is a good few centimeters wider than the old tire. Every attempt to jack the bus had also failed, so after about 40-50 minutes of fiddling with the bus we drive back to a repair shop. Luckily this is also the last thing that happens. After about one and a half hours we're back where we should've been.

 We arrive at Hovden and unload all our stuff. Fully equipped with tents, heavy backpacks and warm clothes, we begin our trip up into the mountains. There's a slight chilly wind and a damp feeling in the air. We get a quick briefing about our heading, and get a map over the area each. We walk for about one and a half hours before we set camp for the night.

From the left: Tent, tent, Morten, Einar, tent, Vanja and Rasmus.

This year is a lemming year, which for us meant one thing: The ground was littered with dead lemming bodies. We stopped counting after we reached about 20...

The next day we would venture over this hill, and further into the mountain where there are no trails to follow.

After we had set up camp, some of us went fishing while others prepared the dinner or did whatever they pleased. When night fell we made a camp fire and talked until the fires went out and one couldn't even see the tip of ones nose.

The next day we packed everything up and walked further into the mountains. I'm not entirely sure, but I think we walked 15 kilometers that day. The trail we followed ended halfway to our destination. We walked for about 2-3 hours, with a slight but constant ascent and a sour wind blowing from the south.

Morten, waiting for someone lagging behind... Far behind. We've already lost the track, it seems.

A quick stop while we're waiting for the slowpokes =)

And then some lunatic ran ahead to take this picture (it was me).

This is where we were headed. Into this... Somewhere.

Another quick stop to adjust the heading, and onwards!

Everyone is exhausted when we finally reach our destination by a lake. A constant harsh wind keeps blowing from the south, so we quickly whip up the tents so we don't grow too cold.

Strong wind doesn't really show in a photo.

The lake.

 Here we had a quick lunch and... Well, we stayed mostly in our tents because we were pretty beat, and the winds didn't really let anyone stay warm for very long.

The road back... Is somewhere out there. Also a stone ward which is marked on the map. Nifty for finding your location and bearings =)

We played cards and talked before we ate dinner and started to shamble out of the tents later in the evening.

Brilliant sunlight and fishing.

More mountains.

Espen is still fishing.

The campfire we made that night was incredibly social and wanted to jump out and hug anyone sitting to close to it. Stupid winds... We talked for a bit until the cold got the better of us and we went to bed.

The next morning no one seemed too keen to stay much longer. The tents literally vanished and everything seemed to get packed down and tucked into backpacks faster than you could say "strong winds today too, hi-ho". Or shout it; so anyone could hear you over the strong winds. According to Morten the trip back would take another three hours, but 2 hours later we were unloading heavy backpacks and relocating shoulders down at the schools cabin. The journey was rather uneventful except for more lemming (some alive too!) and this:

Sweet jebus!

 No one fell in =(

We took a quick trip to the local food store and bought dinner. Taco!

Yum.

And then we sung a birthday song for Morten, since it was his birthday :D And later he also got cake (small brownies with lights on them). We watched movies until the middle of the night before going to sleep.

And that was all from that trip. All in all I must say it was an exciting trip. I've always wanted to go into the mountains and see what's beyond the first few tops. And I would do it again. Exhausting as it might be, it was an experience worth keeping. Home again on Thursday 09.09.2010.


Later!

More pictures!

Hi, I've not had the time to write anything much, so heres some pictures from the canoe trip, and then some =)

We arrive. I couldn't take any pictures of the actual trip, since water and electronics does not mix all that well.

Morten talks and points. No one seems to be listening.

It's nice and sunny.

We walk over to the other side of the island...

... And found this. It's a troll.

Einar prepares what he caught.

This is my catch. It was the largest fish we caught on this trip.

Campfire =)

And lastly, a picture of an unwanted visitor:

Yeah, it's pretty fat. We caught it in a glass. It's one of the largest in Norway, and apparently they thrive here. Agder FHS not a school for the arachnophobic.

And that was all for now. I might get some time of to write tomorrow since It's my day of =)
See ya!

Pictures!

What a boring Saturday. No money and no one at home. Oh well, I'm not complaining. I'm too beat after the canoe trip anyways. I'm glad to get a day of. The only thing I don't like right now is the lack of candy ): How am I supposed to have a nice Saturday without candy?
Well then I suppose I can distract you with these pictures until something happens.

The school (in no particular order):

This is the school. Well, the back side of it. Picture is taken from the doorway of dorm building where I live.

The area that we share brotherly with our neighbors. Toilet and shower on the left hand side, my room (the open door) and the neighbors on the right hand side.

This is my room. I share it with Rune, who sleeps on the right side. He's pretty cool. He listens to the same music as I do, and besides both loosing our wallets we actually have quite a lot in common.

*turns around*

And here's my corner :D

Billiards!

Entrance hall and stairs down to the living area (the really bright area).

I was going to take pictures of the living area and the dining area, but I never got that far... This is the photo-teachers puppy Bruno. Bruno says hi.

Speaking of dining areas. Every time I sit down for dinner I'm thinking "heck, this is the best thing I've ever eaten here!" Today was no exception. Pancakes, porridge, bacon and leftover pizza. Go junk Saturday! All of the food we're served here is delicious. I'd go so far as saying Agder has probably the best food of all the schools in Norway. I can't imagine how it could possibly be any better without it costing a fortune.

I digress. Here's pictures from our trip to Kristiansand:

A church.

FLOWERS!? IN A CITY!? This is something you wouldn't see in Oslo. Ever.

Did I mention...

... Kristiansand is so much better looking than Oslo.

This is a car. This too is prettier than cars from Oslo.

Even the birds know how to strike a pose. Pretty, pretty city.

Now, a price goes to whoever manages to guess what the Crazy Scottish Girl (Vikki) is leaning on. (hint: It's neither a bank nor a hotel)

I did mention everything is prettier in Kristiansand, right?

Later!