Fødselsdag

I'm 19!
I kinda feel old, but as I told Chase, he's older, so I guess that makes me young.
(So that probably isn't very good logic, but I like it, and I think I'll stick with it the next 60 years or so...)
Interestingly enough, we learned how to talk about numbers and ages, dates and birthdays, and also telling time in class yesterday so:
Jeg har Fødselsdag (FØT-SELS-DAG) den tjueandre August. Den var i går! Jeg er nitten år gammel!
(I have a birthday on August 22nd. That was yesterday! I am 19 years old!)



The birthday celebrations last night were crossed with the school wide "Bodega-night", the opening night of the pub at the Blœstad campus. (Above) The campus at Blœstad is for agriculture, so it was out in rural area east of Hamar. Their campus looks like a huge farm, without the animals. It was kind of Iowa-esk, only more fun. (Oh, believe it! It's possible!)
We had a competition, where the students were divided into groups to do various tasks, including: Throwing milk jugs, pulling a tractor up a hill, building the tallest tower of cartons, getting all group members through a web in under 5 minutes without touching the ropes and without using the same hole twice (Yes, it is as hard as it sounds. I think it may have taken us a bit more than 5 minutes...)





CAUTION: ALCOHOLIC CONTENT
It was LOTS of fun. There was also a BBQ, with ample amounts of wieners and lompe and alcohol. The pub there is cozy. It's a student-built and decorated basement of the barn/school there. They've got a dance floor, where they swing dance to Norwegian country music --HOW FUN IS THAT?? Organized dancing?! in bars?!=good times. One nice Norwegian boy, who heard it was my birthday asked me to dance; I was terrible, but it was really fun!
I have discovered yet another love about Norway: Smoking is strictly prohibited in all public buildings in Norway. This means I can actually stay in a bar and chat it up and have fun without my throat & sinuses clogging up and I don't have to send my clothes through the superwash 5 times to get rid of the smell after only wearing them 3 hours. SCORE! Also, the Norwegians are so incredibly reserved, even at 1 AM when I left, you wouldn't have known that everyone had been drinking for the last 5-7 hours. No one was standing on the tables screaming or smashing bottles...just talking, laughing, and dancing. These are my kind of people!
I even got to meet some people (Norwegians) who live in my apartment building..and after a...couple...of birthday beverages, (courtesy of my American cohorts Kyle, Joe, and Kristin) I was whipping out some mad Norwegian skills.
(Who would have thought I could say "My name is Chelsea" "I want to speak Norwegian" and "I like Norway" in Norwegian??)

In any case, my birthday was a lot of fun! Our bus brought us directly (& safely) back to the apartments, and as I stumbled into my apartment and crashed into bed, I felt like a true 19- year- old in Norway.