Where did I leave off???
OSLO WAS INCREDIBLE!!! Better then I could have imagined--We probably shouldn't have gone because now I know it exists and can't imagine anything as good.
Sarah, Bethany and I found tickets for 60€ round trip to the most expensive city in the world, and jumped on them. Bethany has a friend that lives there so we had high hopes for an authentic Norweigen stay... Type Oslo, Norway into google and look at the pictures--when we found the tickets we didn't know where Oslo was. When we saw the pictures we couldn't sleep until we'd been there.
We arrived by plane at midnight on Friday with our backpacks stuffed with food and underwear-tuna, crackers and apples for dirt cheap lunches. After getting there I realized I didn't pack anything with long sleeves so I was a little chilly at night...
The moment we stepped out into the street, our jaws were dropped, our eyes wide, and our feet hovering three feet off the ground. There were still traces of the sunset on the midnight horizon--it was taking a short rest before rising again at 3am.
We woke the next morning to 65 degrees and sunny. A children's choir lead us through the town to the Warf where we hopped on a ferry to the Museum Island. We saw hours of folk art and Viking ships and picnicked in a recreated 1600's Norwiegen village. Heaven. Then Beth's friend grabbed us and took us to the ski jump to see the city. Amazing. Fjords and farms and hills in every direction...
Norwiegens spend as many hours outdoors as they can so of course we bought a ''one time grill''---the best invention ever-- and sat in a park grilling hot dogs with her friends. Young people were everywhere in the park, all with these little tin foil pie pans filled with charcoal. Then her friends took us out--they were all so friendly and easy to talk to and happy. The three of us didn't pay for a single thing all weekend because the locals took care of us...Hot dogs at the stands were $10. No exageration. A cooking magazine I picked up was $24. We girls stayed up until 5am talking in our hotel room after that--the sun was up and I was in heaven.
Sunday we went on a hike with Bethany's friend--because that's what you do on Sundays--and the view from the top of the mountain was unbelievable. Farms, Fjords, boats, houses, rolling green hills, blue skies and fluffy clouds--all at 65 degrees and sunny still. It was the worst thing to leave after such a short, perfect stay, but we finally made our way back to the airport...
Have you ever heard Norwiegen?? Not to overkill, but it is breathtaking. The language has so many extra vowels that the words strung together sound like joyful song lyrics. Everyone sang a melody as they joked with each other or debated the names of berries or described old memories. I had no idea.
Now I have two days of classes left and four more until Mere, Chris, Martin, Kayla and Brian get here!! I can't wait to see them, and I can't wait to come home. Berlin is wonderful and this has been an amazing month. I've learned so much...about myself, about the world, about the Lord...and I love the friends I've made. This isn't the last blog, but I'm getting ready to say goodbye to a lot of people I've grown to close to and it feels like the end of something grand. I can't wait to see you all, two weeks actually sounds like a long time, but if a month went by this quickly, two weeks will be a blink.
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