October has definitely been my most exciting month while being in Norway. For one thing I met one of my best friends Jonas at the beginning of October. We spend a lot of time together playing chess at Bøker or Børst, a local cafe. We also occasionally play pool together. It's how I spend most of my time when I'm not climbing at Sørmarka. I like these activities because they are things I never got to spend much time doing in Canada.
On October 2nd I realized that my favorite comedian, Daniel Sloss, was not only on tour and coming to Norway but actually coming to Stavanger. He had a show the next day on October 3rd. My timing of finding this information couldn't have come at a better time. So on October 3rd I got to go see my favorite comedian. His show was fantastic, his best friend opened for him and was much funnier than I anticipated. I had never gone to a comedy show before but I think I'll attend more in the future. If you're interested in seeing some of his work he has 2 specials on Netflix as well as his tour is continuing well into 2019, his show might even be in your city or somewhere near by.
October started off with Høstferien, which is autumn holiday. It's one week off school which was very nice as it's a luxury I didn't have in Canada. However, we only get one week off school for Christmas break in December. I'll write a separate piece about Høstferien but the itinerary of it was: visiting my Canadian friend in Ålesund, visiting a fellow exchange student in Røros, Phantom of the Opera in Oslo and to finish it off a final day exploring Oslo. The week also included two flights, six trains, 2 buses as well as some car rides.
After settling home from Høstferien I met up with some of the exchange students staying in Stavanger. There is about 20 students in Stavanger from all different organizations. There are students from all over, including Thailand, Germany, Switzerland and Australia. However, I'm the only one from Canada. We try to all meet up about once a month but it can be difficult because there are so many of us. This time we went to a cafe on Fargegaten called Hanekam. All of the cafes here have group games you can play. So after we ordered a round of hot chocolates we settled down to play some cards. I really like my time round other exchange students. They understand the things that my non-exchange student friends don't understand. I also don't have any exchange students in school with me.
The next weekend I stayed at Lisa's house. We made cookies and sushi. I royally messed up the cookies however. In Norway they use deciliters for baking. However, I accidentally converted the cups into grams, because I thought they used grams. When we realized my mistake Lisa and I switched places and I worked on sushi while she finished up with the cookies. It was my first time ever making sushi before and it actually turned out really well. We made about 8 rolls and I was worried it was way to much but it turned out to be just the right amount. Once the cookies were out we ate our sushi dinner and cookie dessert while playing chess. Lisa is a pretty good opponent but she could still use a little more practice.
To finish off October we took a trip to Tønsberg to visit the extended family of the Silseths. Tønsberg is a city outside of Oslo by about 1 hour. There I met my host mom's sister and mother. I also met my host dad's parents and his nieces. One of my host "cousins" is about my age and attends an international school in Tønsberg.
While in Tønsberg I was able to meet up with 2 other exchange students from Rotary who live in Tønsberg. I met up with Ian from U.S.A. and with Flora from Germany. They showed me around their city, the water front and we even managed to find some long Viking ships that are part of the prominent Norwegian culture and history. Unfortunately I visited them on a Sunday, which meant everything was closed. The library was open though and we stopped in to look around. There were lots of traditional clothing on display as well as rock with ancient runic text on it. It was very surprising to see as I had not seen anything directly from the Viking age yet on my exchange in Norway. Ian and I also managed to find an arts class in the library and we sat and made melty beads, I made a Norwegian flag that I have now pinned to my Rotary blazer.
After my time with Ian my host mom picked me up and we drove back towards Stavanger. My host dad was staying one more evening at the cabin so he dropped Kamilla and I off at the Kristiansand train station and headed back to Lillesand. We took the train from Kristiansand back to Stavanger. I very much like taking the train as train transportation has never been very prominent in my life. I took more trains in my week of Høstferien then I have in my entire life before Norway.
Finally back from our quick weekend trip to Tønsberg, I finished off August the same way I started. Playing pool and chess with my friends and, of course, climbing as much as I could!