Maybe it is time at last to write a little summary about my experience when I had two funny girls from Spain, Mireia Castellà and Queralt Puig Mas, living at my house.
We had some contact on Facebook before they came to Norway, but not much. The day we were going to Tromsø to meet everyone from Spain, Ireland and Bulgaria, I knew many of us were very excited. How are they? Will they be very different from us Norwegians? We couldn’t know before we met them.
When we arrived at the airport to meet everyone, we were a bit modest. It took some time before everything loosened up, but when we finally broke the ice on the bus, everything went fine. There were some language problems, though.
After a long bus trip, and for the visitors a long trip from their home country, was it good to just go to bed and sleep.
The next morning we ate breakfast. I got the girls to try “brunost” (brown cheese), which they didn’t like at all.
At school they experienced how our Math was. Many of things that we were learning that year were things that they had already learnt many years ago, and we were having the “hardest” Math at school. I showed them all the classrooms and where the toilets were. They were surprised over all the buses, and that the students had to travel so far (many have to travel over 70 km from their homes to school).
After school all the students from the Comenius project + others went to Storslett’s café, Bios. We ate ice cream and had a really good time. We talked about what we liked to do in our free time and about our culture.
Later that day, we went to Nordreisa’s sport hall where boys and girls were playing at a football tournament. I was also playing, along with some of the other girls from the Comenius project. We won the tournament, and that was really cool!
The next day, Saturday, we woke up early so I could show Mireia and Queralt around Storslett. I thought that it wasn’t much to show them, but it seemed like they had a good time. I remember Mireia was very fascinated how we Norwegians could drive our cars when it was ice and snow on the road. I just laughed and showed them the spikes that are stuck on the tires. We went with the others to Kronebutikken (Krone store) where they sell a lot of Sami and Kven (Finnish) stuff.
Later in the evening we went to our school to meet the others and eat dinner, finnbiff, which one of our teachers had made. To dessert we ate cloudberry cream. We, from Norway, taught the others how to count to ten in Norwegian and Sami, and they taught us to count to ten in Spanish. Many of us already knew how to do that, but maybe not all the way to ten.
When we came home that evening, the sky was clear and there was a possibility that one could see the Northern lights. Me, Mireia and Queralt went to an open plain where it wasn’t so much streetlight. We could see some Northern lights, but I wasn’t impressed and I think that they weren’t either, or I don’t know. It was kind of sad, because it seemed that they were really looking forward to see the Northern lights. But I must say that we were lucky! J
The next day, we went with the others from the Comenius project to a place called Manndalen. On the trip we played games and listened to the “guide”. In Manndalen we visited the Sami language center where we ate bidus (the Sami “national” dish) and learnt a little Sami.
At the evening we planned to have a movie night at my place. Almost everyone from the Comenius project was there, and it was really fun. We had rented the movie “Alice in Wonderland” and watched it. There wasn’t room for everyone, so some had to sit on a mattress on the floor. I don’t think I’ve ever had so many people in my basement at once.
Next day was Monday, and it was time for everyone to leave. It was really sad. That day we were divided into groups. We were supposed to make sentences in English from different occasions.We ate a last lunch together in the school’s canteen.
I had a really good time, though it lasted for only five days. I am looking forward to see people from the project again later some day. J
