Either it’s Wednesday, or it’s not.

The long awaited, at least from my side, rain came today! Leaving me looking like a drowned rat after the twenty minutes walk home from school, but no matter, I’ll always dry up again sometime. Like in June or something. Seriously though, it could have been worse. It’s been raining the whole day, but when the end of school came around it really wasn’t more than a shimmer of rain. It got worse though, but now it looks like it’s stopped again. Just my luck, eh?
And now it’s raining again, what on earth?!

Okay, here are a couple of things I’m not going to talk about in this post:
My house
My room
My school
Disappointed? Now that I think about it, what will I talk about?
Never mind, here’s the reason:
Lena and I have decided to have a weekly segment, don’t know how long it will go on for before we run out of ideas, but if I get my way it’ll be around for the whole year. It’s called Challenge of the Week and we’re going to fix it so that there’s a poll under each post so that you all can vote. (This blog isn’t called Alloa vs. Blackpool for nothing!) We’ll come up with different challenges and you’ll vote for one of us! Easy as that. At first we’ll probably start up with some stuff like whose room do you like best, whose house is coolest, who’s got the nicest view from their window. Stuff like that, and then we’ll just make it up as we go along. Now, we’re not starting up before Lena has arrived in Blackpool obviously, and that is why I am holding back a bit on some of the information.

However, out of the goodness from the bottom of my heart, we will not have a challenge called coolest school attire. Therefore I will post a picture of my uniform here! When I figure out how to do it of course. Great! It’s all good fun.
...
Okay, so the picture thing is going to be a bit delayed (I’m rubbish at taking pictures of myself and I haven’t found the magic button that will make the camera do it for me yet.) But I figured you’d be happy with an update instead of waiting for me to stop farting about with my camera. (I love that expression!)
But, I guess I can tell you a bit about my school now as well. Just because I’m feeling oh so nice right now.

I am enrolled at Lornshill Academy, United in Effort (!), and the school building is brand new! Of course that just means that no one really knows their way around yet.
I’m not sure if I’m in fifth or sixth year, according to my age I’m a sixth year, but it’s an ongoing debate.
Also, I’m in Devon house! How cool is that folks?
Now, to all of you who have been dying to know how we get sorted, here’s the truth:

Step one; wander out from the school theatre looking like you’ve just fallen down from the moon.

Step two; ask a random teacher about when you’re supposed to go see the study counselor.

Step three; random teacher will say this (at least if you’re me): Oh, right. I think you’re in Devon house, go stand over there.

And that’s about it. Later I realized that the fact that my host mother is head of Devon house probably had something to do with it as well, but as one of the students told me, the houses really don’t do anything at Lornshill. As I understand it, it’s just a way to keep better track of the students or something.

The subjects I’m taking this year are as follows: Psychology, philosophy, modern studies and drama! It all sounds pretty good right now, but drama is definitely the best! Also I’m trying to get something worked out so that I’ll get some sort of English lessons as well. The day at Lornshill is pretty different from a day at a Norwegian school. We start the day with tutorial, that’s a registration class where you go to get registered (oddly enough), and then we have two periods before break. Break is about fifteen minutes and the students hang around “the hub”, often grabbing a bite to eat. The cafeteria at Lornshill is open trice a day. Once in the morning, offering breakfast to those interested. Once during break, where they among other things sell something called ‘rolls’, which are pretty ghastly. It’s basically bacon or an odd sort of sausage in the whitest bread imaginable and nothing else. And of course once during lunch, where they have quite a lot on the menu, my favorite being the Panini’s at the moment. After break we have two more periods before lunch (which is fifty minutes long) and then yet another two periods before we go home. All of my classes at Lornshill consist of different people, because the students can chose whatever they like from the subjects and then they’ll put together the classes based on that.

In other news, I am happy to announce that I’ve been working on getting my whole phone dilemma sorted out and that I have now succeeded. Of course, as some of you already may know, it wasn’t all that easy. I somehow during the process managed to get my phone blocked and all of a sudden I needed a PUK code. After some advice from someone not as technically retarded as me I went online to my networks homepage, searching for an answer. Just as it happened; how do I get a PUK code, was a part of the most asked questions section. I was told that all I had to do was signing in to my account or register, and then I would receive the code. The only problem was that to sign in I needed to type in my phone number and then a code to verify that I was in fact who I claimed to be. That code happened to be sent to me as a text, to the phone that was blocked of course. So, to get my PUK code so that I could unblock my phone I needed to register using another code that was sent to my blocked phone. Who on earth could ever think that would be a practical system?

The solution: I bought a new sim-card.

It was actually the cheaper solution as well, and now my phone is working! (Mostly…)
And that’s about it for this time! Now go make Lena write something again and I’ll try think of something clever to tell you about for the next time as well.

And I am still in Molde

First, unlike Ane, I don't have too much to tell. Second, I must apologize if you expect a witty, well-written post.
Not everyone can write as well as Ane, but I realized to late what a mistake I had done when I agreed to share a blog with her.

I am still in Molde, and I won't be leaving Norway until next Saturday. Since Saturday is really not that far away I should start packing soon. Well, if you know me, then you know that I'll end up packing the day I leave and thus making me forget things at home.
On Sunday (I have to stay in Winchester until then) a bus will take me to Blackpool. There I am staying with Val, Tony and Jade and Elisabetta, a student from Italy. They all seem very nice and I can't wait to meet them.
I'll miss my friends and family though, but on the other hand I don't have to listen to my fathers poor jokes (he is the only one laughing) and my annoying sisters for a while.

I am in Scotland

Okay, so I wrote this a couple of days ago, but haven't had a chance to post it untill now, so you'll probably feel that this is a bit outdated and this is what you do then. Nag on Lena to make her post something and I'll promise to update a little quicker with the actual life in Scotland.

As you probably understand I am in Scotland. Right now. It’s kind of unbelievable. I’m just going to start with a quick summary. I am in Scotland, more precisely in a small town called Alloa. Alloa is the largest city in the county Clackmannanshire, and it’s actually a bit smaller than Molde! I’m staying here in a very large, old English house, with what seems as a very pleasant family of four. I haven’t actually met the daughter in the house, but the rest of the folks seem very nice.
I left Molde a rainy Friday evening (just last Friday really), with the plan of driving to Oslo so that I could reach my flight at a quarter to seven. This of course meant I had to be at Gardermoen airport at a quarter to five, which was jolly fun obviously.
Now here’s a quick little fun fact before I proceed: When travelling (at least with planes) you need your passport. Leaving without it and then driving for say, thirty minutes means you’ll have to go back and then leave again which will cost you about an hour. Not that I would know anything about this by personal experience. Of course not, I’m just saying.
Anyway, we finally reached Gardermoen in the early morning, just in time, and here we met yet another challenge. This is probably a good time to tell y’all that I always get these sorts of troubles when traveling, and that this time I had a lot of them.
In the last letter I received from EF I was told to meet up at a BIG stone sculpture at the right of the entrance. Now, when you enter Gardermoen it is quite correctly a big sculpture shaped as a stone that catches your eye, only it’s to your left. So my mum and I walked over there thinking whoever had written the letter didn’t know left from right although that seemed a bit dodgy. Still, by the big stone sculpture we actually met another EF student so it couldn’t be all wrong. Then my stepfather called and told us that on the other side of the airport (to the right) there was a sculpture as well, only this wasn’t BIG, it was actually quite small, shaped like an upside down U and made of steel. See how I was confused there? Now, to all of my friends who are also travelling with EF this year. If your letter says to meet by the BIG (yes, in capital letters) stone sculpture, what they really mean is the small steel sculpture.
Then EF realized that because of some technical problems they hadn’t actually booked my ticket. Now, if I may ask, why does that kind of thing always happen to me? This made it so that I was placed by myself on both flights and then, as if that wasn’t enough, the grumpy tax free lady forgot to give me my boarding card back so that I had to run across the airport like a maniac, in heels as well, while the other passengers started boarding the plane. Luckily things went a lot better after that point, the other EF students travelling to Scotland were all quite pleasant and I had a good time travelling with them. After a short wait at the airport in Edinburgh my host-parents came to meet me and we drove to their home in Alloa where I got to meet their oldest son. Their daughter will be home in a couple of days.
Scotland met me with a clouded sky and lots of wind, the best weather we get here according to Fraser. And tomorrow I’m starting school; I’m sort of starting to dread that to be honest. It feels very strange being here, I can’t really explain it, but I believe Jannicke and Lena will understand when they have arrived in Tokyo and Blackpool respectively. It feels like so much has happened, but at the same times nothing really worth mentioning. Also, I feel a bit like a nag right now. This became quite long, but in my defense there was a lot to tell. And I think I’m all out of words now, I’ll write some more later or tomorrow or something.