Annika's Year at Agder

On Sundays, we are provided 3 meals instead of 4. Brunch, dinner, and supper. There is no other classes or schedule unless the stipps decide to start a volleyball game or put on a movie. I woke up at 10:00am, got dressed, and went down to breakfast. One of these days I will remember to take a picture of the meals, but until that day, I will just tell you what was provided. We had some Norwegian pancakes with jam and bread with cheese, meat, and spreads. Yumm! After that a group of us gathered out on the front lawn and Silvana, another student, gave us all haircuts! Silvana is from Norway, and she went to 4 years of beauty school. She told everyone at the beginning of the year that she would cut our hair for cheap, so we took her up on it. It was so much fun. We just sat on the front lawn in the sun for hours and listened to music while everyone got a trim or something more dramatic. She just trimmed my hair haha, I don't have much of it. For my trim, it cost 50 Kr (About $5), nice.

 Yo!  So on Friday evening, we had an assembly where we presented our dorm hallway groups to the whole school. My group, Tudille, put our own words into an already written song and performed that. I sadly don't have any picture or video evidence that we did this, other than this photo.  hmmm But, there may be some videos on the Agder Instagram which I was gonna mention anyways. Go check out both @agderfhs_nlc and @agderfhs. Later that evening we decided to watch American Pie in the NLC room. Interesting choice, I know. We had fun though.  Now, this morning we attended our first Saturday seminar. Every Saturday, we have to option to sign up for a Saturday seminar. One must attend 14 throughout the whole year, and so you can pick and choose which piques your interest. There are usually 2-3 options. This week the options were fishing and bookbinding. I chose bookbinding as I saw some pictures of it last year and it looked fun. So here I am, staring at the 3 tiny books I made. I'm

Hello! It is now Saturday, but I'm gonna bring us right back to Wednesday evening.  I'm gonna set the scene. It is Wednesday evening. My 3 roommates and I are cleaning our dorms. There is much commotion and music pumping through the halls (Music + speaker courtesy of the Stumme family, miss you guys) This would usually happen every Monday and Friday, but we had a little trip on Friday, so the cleaning was moved to Wednesday. Here at Agder, cleaning is quite the ordeal. The whole hallway, ours is named Tudille, cleans together. Jobs like cleaning the hallway, steps, and kitchen and split up shared among us. Everything from the shower to the toilet to the windowsills is wiped down. After cleaning, I went on a brisk walk around the lake with a friend named Irmeli. She is a native Norwegian, but speaks amazing English and is super fun to talk to. I am really glad I get the chance to be here with her!  This is the view from the opposite side of the lake. Beautiful! Later that evenin

The first day of school began bright and early Monday morning.  Here is what the current daily schedule looks like.  Sorry, the text is small.  We begin the day with breakfast and morning assembly. Breakfast consists of bread, cheese, meats, some spreads, and veggies. Drinks include apple juice, orange juice, tea, and coffee. At 8:45, teachers stand up for announcements and sometimes an inspiring bit of wisdom for the day. On Monday, the principal stood up and read some sort of story in Norwegian. Afterward, my roommate, Julie, leaned over the table and told me the story was about Jesus and a tree and stuff. hehe. I still don't know what story he told. Today (Wednesday), we had sticky notes stuck to our foreheads with unknown numbers on them. We were told to gather and follow the largest numbers we could find. After, Marianne explained the difference between being a 10 and a 1. All the low numbers were forced to follow others, while the high numbers had tons of followers. She told

Me on some rocks. Hello! Hello! Annika here, yet again. I am about 3 days behind at this point, as my days are packed to the brim. I haven’t had a spare moment since Saturday. On Sunday, around 80 students moved into the dorms. It was chaotic and scary and there was a lot of introducing myself and forgetting Norwegian names. I joined in on my first game of indoor volleyball (found out I kinda suck), and met my roommate, Julie! She is super sweet, and we get along great. In the dorm next to us, lives Mathea and Guro. Good friends of mine at this point, and super fun people to live next to. All three of my roommates are really helpful when it comes to Norwegian announcements (All three girls are native Norwegians) and pronunciation of song lyrics haha.  Julie is close behind me, and Guro and Mathea are behind us (Left and right).  We had an introductory dinner at 5pm or 17:00 (They use 24 hour time here), and then a short concert by an up and coming band called Car.Pool. Please check the

 Well hello again!  It is Friday, and some exciting things have developed. This morning Yhan, Keegan, and I got up around 9 to catch a bus. We walked to a nearby stop, called   Årosskogen. We hopped on the bus, scanned the tickets to be bough t on our phone, and rode 15ish minutes into Tangvall, a small town nearby. From there we could see the S øgne sign, sort of like the Hollywood sign, but less glamorous. There is a hike to get up to the sign, we will do that one of these days.  We stopped by a few thrift stores, grabbed some coffee, and grocery shopped. I got some much-needed melatonin from the drug store. I find that I get so excited for whatever is happening the next day, that I actually just can't sleep. Last night I played solitaire for 2 hours before getting drowsy. Keegan and I picked up some little plants from the floral shop to spruce up the rooms.  Keegan's go-to pose. My plant. Any name suggestions?  We also stopped at an antique shop of hidden treasures. It looke

 Hei Hei!  It is now Friday, yesterday we hauled our luggage up the hill into the dorms. Very exciting. Being able to fully unpack everything was a big relief. This post looks like it's gonna be mostly pictures. I am not in the writing mood today. As you will hear about in my next post, I just had a large meal and my eyelids are getting heavy (despite the name I took today, whoops). Anyways, pictures.  The dorms are split into sides A and B. There are 3 levels on each side. My room is B311, which is on floor 3, right on the end. There are 2-3 dorm rooms in a pod, and each pod shares a shower and a bathroom. My pod only has two dorms with two people in each dorm. I have yet to meet my roommate. The majority of the students move in on Sunday. A little scary.  A view from the door.  This is me. It's nice to have a sink in the room.  My clothing. I stole hangers from all around the campus. My little side of the room. Many pictures. I had a dream last night that they kept falling of