Adventures of Norway: The Journey's End.

Hello all,

This blog will be my second to last blog. I plan to write another when I arrive home and in that blog you will be able to see a review of the past year. Along with that, you'll be able to see what I did during the 9 days following this entry (which I will also briefly preview today).

I want to start this entry be giving a brief look at my most recent travels, then I would like to give, as I said, a preview of what I'll be doing over the next week and I'd like to spend the final section sharing my thanks to all of you and many others. Let's get rollin'!

I was recently in the small city of Lillehammer here in Norway over Easter break. I had originally planned to go to a somewhat famous cliff called Trolltunga. Unfortunately, the cliff is inaccessible before mid June. So instead of heading to Trolltunga, a group of friends and I headed to Lillehammer in hopes of finding some nice trail hiking.

I traveled to Lillehammer with 9 others. The weather was beautiful and the scenery was even better than I expected. Although the tourist information wasn't extremely helpful, we were able to find a nice route that led us up one of the small mountains in the area. Overall, the trip was a great time! Hope you enjoy the pictures below!

Here's me being 'adventurous' This was probably right before I fell into the water

Don't worry, I hadn't fallen in at this point either

Here's a view of Lillehammer's surrounding mountains

Serious time

Now, lets move on to what I did over t7he 17th of May! As many of you Midwesterners know, the 17th of May is Norway's constitutional day.I celebrated with some friends and it was a grand ol' time as they say. The plan was to have a "Norwegian champagne breakfast" which includes waffles with fruits and, obviously, champagne. I did in fact have champagne, but I chose to enjoy it after breakfast. During the day, some friends and I headed to the city to catch the parade here in Oslo. The city was extremely full during the 17th and we had plenty to see. Supposedly the city shoots blanks from the canons mounted atop the Akerhus castle but I didn't get a chance to witness it. Here are just a few photos from the 17th.

Here's a picture of the street heading down from the royal palace. It was impossible to move effectively throughout the city

Here is the set up from our breakfast. We made Crepes with fruits, cream, powdered sugar and chocolate sprinkles

Not to shabby, huh Mom? 

Now that the 17th of May is over, I have two exams to study hard for (don't worry mom, I'm still a student here). I will soon head to Rome, Italy on the 24th of May and stay through the 27th. For those who don't know yet, I return home the 31st of May, so I'm sure I'll be frantically trying to tie up any loose ends before I leave Oslo. And there you have it. This is the end! Well, not quite yet...but its getting closer and closer!

Now, as I said before, I'd like to give some shout outs on my final European entry (the last entry will be written in the US). First off, I'd like to thank my parents once again for helping me so much. Not only did they do so much to make this trip financially possible, but they've been extremely supportive overall throughout the whole process. Next, I'd like to give a thank you to all of the extended family that helped me. Your letters, money, and advice helped make this trip so amazing! As many of you may remember, I gave a large thank you to my friends from last semester and I'd like to thank you all again! Thank you to Nils for letting me join you over New Years. Thank you to Manon for hosting me afterwards (and Marius for joining us). Thank you to Eva and Miriam for housing me while in Groningen (and Sarah for joining the fun!). Now, I'd like to give a thank you to the whole O Boo Shi Na Tin Ta Tin group from last year. It was wonderful to see all of you again! I wish all of you the best! Also, I want to especially thank my former roommates Marius, Nina, Claudia and Sarah for making me feel so comfortable in my first semester abroad. Now I'd like to thank the group of friends that made this current semester so awesome!! So, thank you Daniel, Alicia, Jorge, Mechthild Dominik, Stephen, Caro and Jin Jin! Also a thank you to all of you who aren't mentioned in here! You ALL made this crazy semester awesome! To my current roommates Sarah, Mona, Juhan and Xin I'd like to equally say thank you. You all helped make this second semester a fun filled and exciting semester that I guarantee I will never forget!

I recently saw a post from Leah Black in which she mentions how a part of her will always remain in Rome. I am going to steal that idea, Leah. Hope you don't mind! I can honestly say that I've experienced far more than I ever expected here in Oslo.  Norway's expensive prices and unpredictable weather may not have made life here in Oslo an ocean side paradise, but the memories that I made while abroad more than made up for all of that. I cannot express how truly grateful I am to have had this opportunity.

That's all for now.

I hope you will all tune in for the final blog from Adventures of Norway in a few weeks!