Cross country skiing with Lisleherad school

Today we were some students and the pupils from lisleherad school in Blefjell. The pupils where divided into three groups: the youngest were staying at the playground made with the help of the students. Others where going to a little trip, and the last group with the student's of the 5th grade (9 or 10 years old) had the chance and the honour to go this year because they are old enough, to the highest mountain of Blefjell: The Bletoppen (1342 moh).

We had not so much chance with the weather, because it was snowing, and foggy...but it ad also could be worse...so lets be happy! We started with a big up hill, of 200m, the children are full of energy, the race they were waiting for has started! it looked like it the physical proof to grow up to another level...now they are children and they are becoming teenagers...this is their Rite of passage...

I have to say that they did it very well, they reached with success the next level! they were all running up hill with their skis (here the words:"Norwegian are born with skis on their feet takes all its meaning"). When they fell they were again up after few seconds...

Unfortunately we didn't reach the summit because the visibility was very bad, it became to be cold, and we have to say it for few minutes we were lost, but we enjoyed the way going down, we tried telemark skiing with a lot of falls....and at the end we had an applause by the other pupils and students who stayed at the playing are (lazy boys).

waffle time !!

On Thursday like you know we usually have the traditional coffee hour, with nice waffles and warm drinks...Last week on we had the epic waffle hour, the idea was a big event, with a lot of waffles! 

The FOMI sponsored this event again! thanks to Fomi and organisators, we could have a lot of stuff to make waffles and a lot of things to put on. 

It started first with 25 minutes of baking waffles we were divided into 7 teams, and the aim was to bake the more waffles you could.  

And during this 25 minutes, at the end, they asked us to bake one beautiful and one tasty waffle, we had 5 minutes for it. 

This is how the beautiful waffle looked like....

Some are also funny :-)

And this is how all the waffles looked like the beautiful and the tasty one.

Because it was a serious competition, we had serious judges! they were two: the chief of the cantina, and the erasmus coordinator. they had to give a mark from 1 to 7 for the beauty, and for the taste. 

This is our winning team :-) 

When the waffles were made, the second part of the competition could start, with first by team, we had to eat without hands 3 waffles. 

(look at the video)

And the final task was to eat the most waffles you could, first in 1 minute, and after because it was too short..in 4 minutes.

Cat walk in University of Telemark

Today in The university of Notodden, it was open day! you could enjoy a lot of creations made by the art students, in wood, iron, textile, and at 12h30 you could also enjoy in the gym the cat walk with nice creations made by the students.










The first part of the parade was with own made clothes with no paricular theme. Espacially body parts.

And after came the original creations with a lot of fun and imagination.The creation i have most appreciated is i think this one: the skirt with written on it lyrics of life, and when she pulls on the cord, the skirt opens and........

....TADAM !!! wonderfull !

Of course all the creations were nice, but i can not put everything on my blog, so i will show some few...

This is the hood when it's opened.

Trip to Dovrefjell

During this last week, like I told you before on the blog, Mathilde and I went to Dovrefjell. Dovrefjell is a moutain area bewteen Dombas and Oppdal. (see on the map)

We choose this area to ski, but also because of some particularities... Dovrefjell is the only place in Europe where you can see the last genetically pure wild reindeer population. In 2003 There where about 1800 reindeer in this area, so we have some chance to see some ! The other reason which was the main reason was because you can also find in this area Musk Oxen which have been reintroduced some 50 years ago, now there are about 135 Musk Oxen. We where really looking forward to see some.
We took the train from Notodden to Kongsvoll.

We skied up from the train station Kongsvoll to the plateau, where we had a nice view on the Snohetta (2286moh), it's the highest moutain outside the Jotunheimen area.

After about one hour skiing on the plateau we saw on the white snow some dark spots. we went in their direction, were we going to be lucky and find from the first day some musk ox ? or maybe just some stones without snow because of the hard wind there is in Dovrefjell....

When we came close, it really looked like if it where not stones, but some animals...

Here they are !!! we are very lucky !!
They say that they can be aggressive, and unpredictable, that's why you need to keep a distance of about 200m...
Of course we didn't that's the range for those who have a very good camera. We came closer...to 100m , 90m...hum some few more ?... we stoped at around 60m from them to take this nice pictures for you !

After this nice break and 30 pictures later, we took our skis again to reach Reinheim cabin at about 8km from where we were at this moment.

Again some hours later, we could see in this snow desert some dark spots....again some musk Ox ?
no not this time, it's Reinheim cabin.

At the end of this big wide white valley (hard to say) we finally reached the cabin where we were going to spend the night.



....To be continued.....

Dovrefjell

I go with my girlfriend on a little trip for one week in Dovrefjell to ski and to see the Muskox (if we are lucky), I hope we will bring back some nice pictures. The blog will not be updated until we are back. thanks for your understanding.

Ice fishing in Krotjevann

Last week we went with the children from lislherad school to a cross country ice fishing trip. When  we went to the lake by cross country skis, the snow was very bad, so some of us had some difficulties to go up...or down..

When we arrived at the lake after one hour an half of extreme cross country skiing, we were divided into four groups, the aim was to catch has many fish as possible... I was in the Yellow group, we started quite well because a girl caught the first nice perch, and I got the second one!! there is fish in this lake, it's the same lake where I came with my friends before, we fished during some hours without catching anything and now after few minutes a nice perch !

After some more minutes the green group had one fish, then two, three, and they took the first place with 8 perch !
We cooked them and had a nice taste.

At the half of the day it started snowing, so there was more people around the fire than fishing, but we had a nice time.
We put our bag packs on our back and went down, the new snow made the down hill much easier, so we came back all safe to home sweet home!

Last lesson of Snowboarding!

On Friday we were again in Kongsberg skicenter for our last lesson of snowboarding. In the morning we had some snow, but the weather fast get better, and we had a warm sun all the day!
After one descent, our snowboarding skill were back! time to learn new things.

We learned again to do carving (be on the edge).
The sensations are very nice, and you take a lot of speed!

After we learned to jump, unfortunately I have no pictures of it, but most of us did a 180°, in my opinion it's much easier than with skis :).
In The afternoon we went of tracks to enjoy the deep snow!
It's much more difficult to turn in the deep snow than on the tracks, and when you fall, it's quite hard to get up again !

This is how the snow looked like before we snowboarded on it....

....And this is it after several passages !
Yes we where a lot of students :-)

Now the snowboarding lessons are finished, we enjoyed it very much!
Thank you Runar for the good teaching :-)









Enjoy the two video of our progression: Me

Mathilde:

Ice Sculpture in HIT

I told you last week  that we had a ice sculpture day organized by some Erasmus students and with money from the Fomi. I am going to tell you more about it. First were made different different boxes of snow and water.

Then we had to choose a bloc where to do the ice sculpture, and we started sculpting with different tools...

It was a very nice and sunny day with music, refreshment and a delicious goulash soup (thanks to Adam)

After a good refreshment we could go and work again on our nice snow sculptures, at the end, that's how its looked like:
The toilets and the sea shell

The seat.

The Aztec sculpture:

Our climber:

This has to melt away:
ignorance, fear, oppression...

And the last one: the bottle of coca-cola: