Fjellkyrke. Porsgrunn. Dyrskun. Oh my!

Anjuli and I in Porsgrunn

Hei alle sammen!

Først og fremst I want to say THANK YOU to all my loyal blog readers. I love reading your comments and I'm so happy that I have an audience. Having a blog would be just a tad bit boring if I didn't have people to read it! So a nice big shout-out to all you cool readers.

I guess I have many random topics to touch on today.

First: Last Sunday, a week ago today, I went to church! It was wonderful. There is a pretty little church here in Bø, which looks a lot like good ol' Cambridge Lutheran back home, actually. Just subtract that big addition. Typical Scandinavian-Lutheran architecture I guess. Anyway. We didn't go to that church. It was a special Sunday...the service was up in the "Mountain Church." We got a ride from a very nice woman up a long winding mountain road to the very top of Lifjell, where we ran into Lifjell Fjellkyrke (Lifjell Mountain Church). It was a gorgeous wooden building built in 1968-ish. The service was very tradtional, almost exactly in order with the services I grew up with at home. Announcements. First Reading. Singing. Second reading. Gospel. Sermon. Communion (with intinction). Even though the whole thing was in Norwegian it was quite easy to follow along, because I knew all the rules! We even did the Apostle's Creed and Lord's Prayer...and they both seemed to have the same rhythm as they do in English. I said it along in English, which confused my brain but which was kind of fun. After the service our good friend the pastor gave us buckets and bid us go pick berries on the mountain. Which we did. But I must learn to always be dressed for hiking. Lots of times you end up going on a hike when you least expect it. These Norwegians sure do love their nature. Church, for example. You wouldn't expect to go casually climb a mountain after the service to gather some blueberries. But. That is just what happened.

Church was great, actually. It was a very homey feeling to be there, with all these nice people (who were so impressed when we could speak a bit of Norwegian...good for the self esteem) and with all these little kids running around...just like church at home. And then, after the berry picking, there was a delicious beef soup thing with flatbrød and 50 different varieties of cake. Not bad.

So that was last week. Then, on...Tuesday, perhaps? Anjuli and I were invited to ride along with our Norwegian friend Bibbi to Porsgrunn, which was about an hour away. She and a coworker had a meeting there in the evening, and so they dropped us off at the mall while they proceeded to their meeting. So Anjuli and I got to explore Porsgrunn a bit. They had an H&M there!! Exciting. However, it was about 6:30 by the time we got there, and it began to get dark while we were exploring the town. We wished we'd come in better lighting. But it was very pretty in any case...it's on the water, which was cool to see. Unfortunately we did not make it to the china factory. Oh well. Next time.

Driving to and from Porsgrunn was also a highlight...Bibbi's friend was from Southern Norway, and thus he spoke in an interesting dialect, which was fun to listen to. Bibbi's very good at checking in with me when we're all speaking Norwegian..."Forstår du alt, Kelsey?" "Nei," is usually my answer, unsurprisingly. But it's fun to practice. I do a lot of listening. Not a ton of talking. I contribute the odd sentence here and there. It's very difficult to gage my progress in this whole learning-a-new-language thing. I used to think it would be so cool to know another language...now I'm like, oh. All you do is learn a different word for everything. Put them all together with a different accent and there ya go. You're all thinking, well, duh. But, I don't know, it's just not as complicated as I thought. I have dreams in odd mixes of English and Norwegian. Sort of like my life here, I guess.

But moving on. Videre! Yesterday we went to Dyrskun, which is a big "folkefest" in Seljord, which is about half an hour from here. Basically it was like a Norwegian culture fair. It was fun...I bought some very Norwegian-looking hand-knitted mittens and a hat of the same variety. We also ate rommegrøt (romegraut...I can't get over this Telemark dialect thing) and some waffles and coffee. It was very fantastic. Afterward we drove up Lifjell just to see the view. It was freezing up there, but I got some great pictures. The sun was just going down.

In other news, this week has been the get-out-and-explore/start-exercising-you-lazy-bum week. I went on a couple runs and walks this week just to see what kind of potential there is for running and walking. Lots! Beautiful farm roads through hayfields...interesting neighborhood roads with all sorts of twists and turns and houses hanging off precarious ledges...and secret hidden walking/biking paths everywhere. It's amazing all the beautiful things I see in one little normal Norwegian neighborhood. Maybe it's just because it's different that I think it's so great. I don't know. In any case, it's just a ton of fun to explore all the back roads here. Next time I'll bring my camera along so you can see.

Also...I bought a plane ticket to Copenhagen today! I'll be there for 5 days, from October 8-13, and I am SO excited to hang out with Emma. Apparently one of those days is "Kulturnatt" in the city...I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds exciting. Also Anjuli, Bibbi, and I have officially planned a road trip to Trondheim for the third weekend in October. Bibbi is driving (she has a best friend she wants to visit there) and it's going to be so fantastic. Road trip through Norway...it's about 9 hours to Trondheim. I CAN'T WAIT to see more countryside and just everything. Insert several thousand exclamation points here.

Well I think that's it for now. Here's some pictures for your visual pleasure.

These were at the top of Lifjell.

Attn. John: troll sighting!

This is where we bought waffles...see the cute old ladies sitting at the waffle irons?!

Johan and Hope petting a horse. Awww.

Dyrskun...supposedly 70000 people go through here during the course of the weekend. So many RVs, etc.