Lifjell Saturday!

Greetings, good people.

Today was a beautiful day, very different from the crappy weather we've been having lately, and this resulted in an impromptu trip to Lifjell, a nearby mountain. Johan drove, and Hope, Kady, Siri, Anna, Peder, and I accompanied him. Hope, Kady, and Siri are my fellow Americans...and Anna and Peder I had not met before, but they are from Slovakia.

It was very fun, we hiked, made a fire and ate hot dogs, and did some more hiking. It was snowy, wet, and sunny, and we got to watch the sunset as we hiked back toward the car.

Here are some photos.

This is the highest we went. We made a fire up here.

Amazing scenery on the way down. Quote of the moment: "Are these colors real?!"

Fire with hot dogs! Siri, Hope, Johan, and Kady.

Kady and I made a snowman!

The best Norwegian fashion: pants tucked into socks. Yessssss.

A Post About Last Sunday

Last Sunday was a very good day, followed by a very busy week, which is why this is a post about something that happened...well, last Sunday.

I got on a bus around 2 pm headed for Skien. Birthplace of Ibsen, don't you know. Also the residence of some relatives of mine. When texting with Knut (my main relative contact over here) he mentioned some relatives in Skien. "Skien?!" I exclaimed via text message, "That is a mere hour from Bø! This is wonderful!"

So, I had the honor of meeting Ann-Lisbeth (Knut's niece) and her husband Bent. They were the NICEST!! I felt a bond because they are almost the exact same age as my parents, and also have two daughters (21 and 25, close in age to Kirsten and me!). I was at their house for about 6 hours, but it didn't feel that long. We had an awesome dinner (considering my cooking skills, it is great to eat food cooked by someone who knows what they're doing) of pork, potatoes, and a traditional Norwegian cabbage dish (quite tasty) and a dessert of caramel pudding. I also had two cups of Pepsi and roughly four cups of coffee. By the end of the evening I was, as you can imagine, a bit bloated. It was really fun to visit with them, they were so friendly and easy to talk to, and patient when I mangled their language...which I hopefully didn't do too often.

I will definitely be visiting them again. It was such a koselig visit. No other word to describe it. (Cozy, roughly translated?! Still not quite right.)

That is my update! I decided to use pretty colors because of the lack of pictures. Hope you enjoy.

Sweden: Again?! Pictures.

Here we have Ulvön's main drag.

Ulvön from on high! We hiked to the top of the island.

Dick and Birgitta. Behind them are some farms in the center of the island.

Ulvön's highway...

Ulvön from a dock!

Here is Dick and Birgitta's house.

Cards were played, Diet Coke was had. Good times.

Dick and Birgitta :)

Gloomy day for a walk!

View from my bedroom window.

Sweden: Again?!

Hello and welcome to my blog. If you have forgotten, my name is Kelsey, and I have not met with any unlucky accidents or disappeared off the face of the earth...I promise. I am merely slacking off when it comes to this blog. Unforgivable, as my old soccer coach might say.

So, now I must tell you what I've been up too!

After Stockholm, Halloween arrived. That looked something like this:

My friend Anjuli and I were "masqueraders." She bought some fancy masks while in Italy, which we dressed up with lots of sparkly makeup and long black gloves. Pretty cool. Halloween was a lot of fun, consisting of: buying a pumpkin (for the astounding price of $10...64 kr.), going to Grivi (another student dorm) for a party, and finishing at Kroa for dancing. Kady's boyfriend, Luke, was visiting from the US, so it was fun to hang out with another American. Good times were had by all.

After Halloween happened, I found myself on yet ANOTHER trip to Sweden! This time I was looking at quite a different trip...to Northern Sweden, a small island on the High Coast called Ulvön. Some friends of my grandma's, Dick and Birgitta (themselves loyal blog readers), live there. Birgitta is Swedish and was born and raised on Ulvön, before moving to America and meeting Dick. They lived there until they retired--in Shelton, WA, for many years, where they were good friends of my grandma and grandpa--and have now lived for 10 years on the island. I met them last Easter when they were visiting the States, and became a big fan. They are the coolest.

Thus, I decided I must visit them on Ulvön. Travelling there was a bit interesting. There is only one ferry that goes to the island in the winter, and it leaves at 4 pm from the mainland. I needed to be there in time to catch it. This resulted in waking up at 3:30 am, catching a very early bus to Oslo, catching the Flytoget to the airport, catching a plane to Stockholm...waiting in Stockholm for a bit...and catching a 1:15 connecting flight to a town up north with a name I can neither pronounce nor spell. Ör-vik, we will call it for now, which is an abbreviation. Which also, I just realized, is the last name of one of my favorite high school English teachers. Interesting.

In any case, after overusing the verb "catching," I arrived in Ör-vik and was met at the little airport there by Dick and Birgitta. We caught the ferry and soon arrived at their house. It was dark when I got there, so I didn't know exactly what everything looked like. In the morning, however, I was very excited to find I was in the sweetest little "fishing village." Though the weather wasn't great while I was there, and though it was generally dark by 3 pm, we managed to get outside for a couple awesome walks. I will display these pictures in the next post.

All in all, the visit was kind of recuperating for me. I got to sit, listen to my iPod, finish some homework, finish a book, play the piano (!), and eat delicious meals. I also got to sleep in ridiculously late. It was the best. I didn't really want to leave, five days later.

Here come pictures!