2 months

As many of you know, I have been in Gjøvik, Norway for two months now. You are probably thinking: Why start a blog now Kate? Well, I'll tell you. I have gotten tired of creating a giant group email that I have to send to 30 people (even though I still might have to send a email to some people who are less technically advances).

I am staying with my first host family right now and will be changing families on December 1st (my second host mom wants me at their house for Christmas). I have one host sibling at home (I do have 2 host brothers but one is at university in England and the other one is on exchange in the States).

Well, the school that I go to is Gjøvik Videregående Skole (which is bascially the equavilent to high school in Canada). I am in vg1 which is the first level of the "Videregående" school system. You go to "videregående" school here when you are sixteen and you finish when you are 19. School here is almost completely different from back home. For example: my schedule is never the same from one day to the next (I almost never have the same class 2 days in a row), some days I start at 930 and end at 1330 while others I start at 800 and end at 1500, we call the teachers by their first names, there is no bell to tell you to go to class so you are just expected to so up at the right time, there is no such thing as detentions, we get to use a computer in all our classes, homework is optional, I sometimes have days where I have one subject all day long, etc....(I could go on and on about the differences). School somewhat sucks right now because I am only able to understand half of what is being said so it takes a while to figure somethings out.

I am playing on a U17 Boys Ice hockey team. I am the only girl and there is about 10-15 members in total ( I am not quite sure how many there are because different people keep on showing up for the practices). We practice 3 times a week in the Fjellhallen ( an arena that was built on the inside of the ski hill for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer).

I have not travelled very far yet in Norway. I went to a language camp in week 36 in Halden, Norway which is in the south, very close to the Swedish border. There I was taught "some norwegian" (all we basically did was sleep, eat, and go on Facebook). I have also been to Oslo during my høstferie (which is autumn break)My host family and I went to 2 museums and did a butt load of shopping.

It has gotten cold fast. The trees are bascially bare and they are predicting snow in the next 3 weeks.

I guess this is it for now.....