Having to walk a bit to school and being on my own tought me that it’s more relaxing to take yout time for something. In the past everything I did was last minute and in sprinting mode. Now I choose a more relaxing but also more early way of live.
This morning I woke up at 06:30 AM and started making my breakfast and lunch, took a nice shower and started packing everything in the car. Having a car here is a blessing but it does mean that I will take a lot more stuff with me than I need.. Even with my relaxing morning I had to hurry at the end. I was supposed to pick up Laura at 9 AM at st. Olavsvei and that was what I was going to do. So I decided to skip shaving my small beard and started driving. I arrived spot on and the other cars quickly joined. We were heading to Syrtveit a small place above Evje, about 60 km north of Kristiansand. Eventhought it’s only 60 km it takes a long time to get there. The snake like roads are between 50 km/u and 80 km/u. Sometimes stuck behind a snowplower it isn’t fast driving in Norway. Almost at our destination I spotted two moose 50 meters into the forest which was great to see. Small things like that make the whole Norway nature dream a bit more real.
Since last Friday it has been nothing but rain and even here further up north it was still rain. In my head the whole skiing trip would go down because all the snow was dissapering fast and the remains were like ice.
Our rooms were like a hotel. It was way to luxuerious! But that was nice for once as well. There were to small houses where 6 people in each house could sleep. So me and some other people slept in an other, bigger and older building. But this was fine by me because here I had my own room and I could go to bed whenever I want.
After meeting our teacher, Tim who is the founder of troll active, I was kind of bummed out because it looked like he was like one of all the other outdoor instructors.. So at first sight it seemed like the whole trip would be nothing like I had imagined.
After talking about different types of wax and ski’s we were making ourselfes ready for our first day of skiing. After a 50 minute drive to the mountain we went over the basics and learned ways of learning skiing to beginners so we did some flat land skiing and moved on to a small hill and started having some fun. We tried breaking as hard as possible, skiing on one ski and doing other challenging stuff. When we went back we even tried som skating. All in all not the most challenging day but it gave some nice ideas about setting up a course for beginning Nordic skiers. When we got back we had a small lecture about what to take with you when skiing. Tim really turned out to be a great guy and he was having a lot of fun. So I was happy I misjudged him..
When the lecture was over I went to Evje to do some groceries together with Manuel, Kevin, James, Amy, Hayley and …., I ate some great spagethi made by Marcus and played a weird German cardgame. At the end of the night I felt like going into old habits and sepperated myself from the group. Luckely I was aware I was doing this and just went to bed.
When I woke up at 07:30 and went to the house where all my stuff was I was supprised to find that it was locked. This resulted in me knocking softly to hard on the door and window. A minute past before a sleepy and grumpy Nina opened the door and cursed the one who locked the door ^^
I was looking forward to bake some eggs but was confronted with a stove full of ridels. So I ended up just eating some quacemole, bread and knackebrod with jam. I packed my daypack and made myself ready for the skiing trip.
When we arrived at the mountain we started doing some funny games to get warm and tried some more skating. After some time we picked up our packs again and started a nice skiing trip. The snow was really icy and uncomfortable. So we had to skate, walk or push with our sticks. Which was hard work. On our way we did some excersises and half way on our trip we stopped at a big lavvu, made a fire and ate lunch. After lunch we were devided into three groups and all got an diffrentent building assignement. Our assignement was to build a parcours which could learn how to gain speed on bumps. We ended up building one that was a bit to challenging but great fun to try! The other two groups had to build a ramp and a unequel bumpy parcour. A lot of fun!
After trying everything out we picked up our bags again and started our journey back. It was a nice but hard tour with some challenging downhills! Once we’ve got back we had a first aid course which focussed on being able to improvise with the stuff you had. When the course was done I brought Marcus, James, Sarah and Nayara to the shop and bought some new phone credit. One arrival back at camp I realised I forgot to buy creme fraish for the 5th time in a row. A little dissapointing.
I made tortilla wraps for our house and enjoyed the rest of the evening. Marcus showed some awesome card tricks which were really impressive! Did some stretching together with Nina, Hayley, Amy and Erwan. And played some funny card games ^^
I expected Wednesday to be the hardest day but it turned out to be the most fun day of all! We practiced some downhill techniques and went offpiste. This was a lot of fun for me! I really love the offpiste downhill skiing. Where not doing any long downhills but small steep ones with little drops and jumps. It’s just so much fun tot do! I was really having the time of my live. We went out in the forest and kept looking for new challenges. Some with succes, some not.
After a short day on the mountain we went back to camp and did some snowshow walking which was fun to experience. By now I was a bit tired and would’ve loved to hang in the house but appreciated the change to take part in such a great experience. Later on the day we had a lecture about the company troll aktive which resulted in a chat with Tim about starting a company. Tim really gave some helpfull tips and offered me to give some advice whenever I would need it. This was a nice an appreciated chesture.
In the evening Verity made some nice creamy and spicy rice and the rest of the evening was hanging around and talking to Simke.
The following morning we went to the mountain and were planning on skiing down to Evje. Sounded like an great idea but for most people it was to far and a lot of people it was getting cold because of the wet weather. So halfway we decided to take a shortcut to a nearby road where we could get picked up. Nevertheless I had a great time searching challenging ways to do downhills and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.
Back home I was relaxing on the couch and sleeping on Marcus his bed.. In the evening Erwan made some great taco’s with guacemole and some weird doritto dish. With a full belly I started doing some cardgames with Austin, the Swiss and USA. We had great fun and were nagging each other the whole time. At night I fell asleep statisfied and tired.
Friday we had to clean out our house in the morning because some other guests would take over so we had some hard and fast work ahead of us, which was mostly done by the ladies because I had to much stuff and was just walking all my stuff to one of the other houses.. When we finished, the house was shinier as never before!
When everybody was ready to go we went to a nearby mountain and used skins instead of wax to get up te mountain. These were easy going and really nice to use!
On the top of the mountain we took the skins of and had tons of fun going down. Where most stayed on the track Nina, Erwan and I where in the forest looking for challenging downhills and discovering the real nature of Norway. Beautiful pine forest covered in snow! It was a great experience but I was sad that the week went so fast..
We cleaned the other houses, packed our stuff and sayed goodbye to Tim and each other. Laura and Marie went with me in the Subaru. It was horrible weather and there were a lot of snowplows on the road so it took a long time before we got back. Marie and Laura were sleeping a long way of the road and it was allready dark when I got back after dropping Laura and Marie. I unpacked all my stuff and enjoyed the pleasures of being back home.
On Saturday I held my relaxation day and watched some bushcraft clips, a nice documentary about trappers living in the Russian Taiga, looked if it was possible if I could get a hunting license in Norway and went to do some groceries, tank fuel and pay for the tollroads. After getting everything I needed I was off to the Aussie’s place for Amy her 21th birthday. I gave her some chocolate and enjoyed bein in the great company of my class. Sang some songs, danced a bit, ate some cake, muffins and brownies and had a nice talk with Nick about his home in the USA. We decided I would have to visit him in the USA and do a hunting trip with him there.
Today Sunday the 9th of February my brother was having his birthday so I was visiting him on Skype and finishing up my blog which was behind scedule for 2 weeks.. Simke was actually visiting my brother which meant I could see her the whole day as wel. Something I really enjoyed. Just now Nina, Tina and Marie knocked on my door and gave me some cake and went down to the basement to watch the winter olympics.
I think I will now join them and get back to you guys next week.