Øyvinds blog

…and it is like an anniversary or isn’t it? I am celebrating the event in this country:

Yep, it is Iceland that got the honour of being number 50, and that feels great since I always wanted to come here. We arrived a couple of days ago, and despite the weather and really bad luck during today’s whale watching, I am enjoying this place so far. Reykjavik is a very nice city. We’ve done a city sightseeing, eaten some good (not too local food), we’ve been to the Geysirs, we’ve seen Gulfoss (in terrible weather), we’ve been to Þingvellir, and like mentioned earlier in this paragraph, we’ve been doing some whale watching today where at least two of my students were vomiting and we did only see a couple of dolphins :P

Tomorrow I will have a free day, and I am really looking forward to just walk around in the city for a whole day :D

Will post some photos soon…

So, our trip has finally started and we are currently in Bergen watching the rain… We are staying in Bergen for a couple of days, and hope that it will stop raining so that we can go to Fløien to have a look of the city from above.

The trip started on Saturday. We were all up very early (5’ish), and the bus left the school at 6:45. Too early on a Saturday really, but it was no problem motivating the students to get up. The flight to Oslo was ok, even though I hate flying. And then in Gardermoen we were waiting together for four hours, for the bus to leave for Hønefoss. From Hønefoss we took a terribly expensive taxi and ended up in Hedal at around 16:30.

The first day was mainly spent on just relaxing doing nothing except eating the food that Alam prepared for us.

Second day started with Margaret, Elena, Leah and me joining Bror for the service in Hedalen Stavkirke. This church is pretty impressive. It is around 850 years old. After the service Bror did a little tour telling about the church to the whole group.

Then the skiing started. We started with some skiing in some tracks that were too difficult for us due to the warm weather the day before, so we found another track to practice in, some fifteen minute drive from our house. Didn’t really stay there very long, but we were all looking forward to going back there the next day to do some real skiing.

On Monday we all went skiing, and we all ended up taking the wrong track at some point going downhill for an hour without understanding that at some point we have to go up again. It was not too easy, and I am very impressed by the lack of fear and actually quite big talents of my international students. We ended up next to a farm along some road, and decided that the students walking down the road until they found the house again, and I had to do the quite tough skiing uphill for the next hour to get the car that I borrowed from Bror. It was a nice day out in the forest :)

After the skiing, we all went to the primary school to talk to the pupils of Bror’s wife. It felt kind of like in a zoo, where we were the main attraction, but it was fun and the pupils didn’t want their class to end.

In the evening we went to Bror’s place for a nice chat and some pizza. I think everybody agreed that we had some nice days there :)

If it stops raining we may have something to write about from Bergen too in a couple of days :P

All this news about people travelling at the moment makes me feel a little bit jealous and eager to go travelling very soon myself. And guess what? In only 17 days my next travel will start. It’s not going to be the usual “travel-as-far-away-from-home” travel that I usually do, but a class trip with my international students to this country:

So, I will actually go to Iceland for the first time in my life, making this my 50th country visited :)

We will however not only go to Iceland. We will start the travels with a few days skiing at Hedal in Valdres, and then go to Bergen and Oslo before flying to Reykjavik, and then spend about one week in Iceland before going to Copenhagen and Stockholm… I hope it will be some interesting few weeks!

So, who wants postcards?