NUK

On Friday, I got out of school early after my Medie class where we are making a movie based off of the harmfullness of online dating. I walked to Rådhus in the beautiful weather and just took my time. Once I arived I wated a bit for the bus while reading a message that Vincent left me a couple of weeks ago. It was about God and the significance he has in our lives. I remember reading it before, but I just realizid that it was STILL minimized on my screen. God does amaizing things at just the right moments.

When I got home I started to pack. It took forever even though I would only be gone for a weekend. I got all of my stuff gathered up, ate a delicious fishy "hamburger" sandwich. While wating for a phone call from Malgorzata Tumidajewicz. (Her name is spelled differently, but Blogger wont let me include the "weird" letters in her name.) While waitng for the phone call, I was able to help Therese iron some cloth that she was using to make some purple skirts for her UB job. Her and three other firends take pictures like Chole's. They are making matching outfits for when they work. I was able to get two peices ironed before the phone rang and we had to jump in the car and head to Drammen.

When we got to the gas station where we were meeting the bus that left from Oslo, Laila hugged me good by, and I packed my bag under the bus, and got on. I didnt know anyone, so I found a seat, and sat down. I turned around to see who everyone was and such. While doing this I saw a group of people in the back. One of them......LUCAS!!!!!!!!!!! WAS WAVING AT ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got all excited and moved back to sit with them. Yeah, as it turns out.....it wasn't Lucas at all. It's weird though because they looked similar, are the exact same age, and have the same sarcasmic personality. The only difference?.?.?. Tomek has a Polish axcent. :) Anyway.....time for pictures: (oh, my camera broke...so I wasnt able to take any pictures this whole weekend. I had to "steel" some from the others...so many of them arn't exactly things I would have taken pictures of. :)

This is Tomek poseing for the camer with his skiis....ready to go on a cross country tour.

Maksymilian Stawiakjlei, Kamil Leonard Karczewski, Tomasz Sebastian Stodownik, and Me.
This is taken on a camera phone while we wait for the bus driver to drive us over to where we will be skiing (since we wern't going downhill)

Renata Jolanta Teter, Maks, Tomek, Kjell, Paul Maric, and me....still waiting to get on the bus (which....aka....the bus driver is Kjell, the guy third over from the left. hahaha)

Now we get some pictures that arn't always the polish klan. :)Bjørn Tao Quoc Nguyen and Alexander Golding. Between the two of these two gents, we have a great leader and a wonderful prayer...able to speak to God unlike any other.

A great bus driver and a father of ALMOST two. :) Kjell was able back up A BUSSSS about a mile once we hit a dead end of a snow wall. Pretty impresive. Later, he went along side the group of us 8 (9 counting him) on our long cross country trip.

Paul!!! Keeper of the Keys (the lift keys)

Kamil and Maks.

Half polish or Polish? Does it matter?

I think you are starting to see who owns the camera that these pictures got "stolen" from. (Yup, Kamil)

Maks and Piotr Henryk Josef Srebrny.

This is when the pictures begin of me trying to learn Polish. They tought be words, that when I said them.....most likley were 99% wrong. They sounded right to me though. :D

laughing

still funny

Havent gotten it right yet.

not funny anymore (for me)

Pronouncing it one last time

I GOT IT!!!!!! Dziekuje!!!!! (Spelled with wierd letters Blogger wont use) Nie Ma Za Co

Sun on the mountain tops.

Renata-first time skiier

Maks and Tomezs....again

A picture of Malgorzata in the middle, finnaly. :)

And this time you get to see Anne Malgorata Sklodowska Lucow on the left there.

Absolutly breath taking.

This was great. We got time to stop and take pictures, because.....the "clip on part" of Tomek's ski shoe completely just came off. Like, he was able to take his foot (and shoe) off of the ski, but the toe part of the shoe was till attached to the ski....so that was a bit weird. But yeah...that was only like 6 or 7 kilometers into the trip...and we still had 15 kilometers or so to go. Try skiing on one foot...or sking on one, and randomly sliding along on the other...trying to keep your foot on top. So, we stopped often to take pictures and rest. CHOCOLATE BREAKS! That was so fun. We would stop along the track randomly to eat our lunch and eat chocolate. When people went by, Tomek would stand on the sie of the track and offer the bag of chocolate as they passed by. After a few had gone by, we waited for the next group to come through. When we saw some more comming, I got on the other side of the track and we did spirit fingers while Malgorzata ran after them with the bag of chocolate. :) We had a great time. You can tell we wern't Norwegian....we actually talked to strangers. :) What a risk. ;)

With these next pictures, have some patience...just skrol down. Notice that when Kamil took them, he took one, moved the camera a bit to the right, took another one, moved the camera to the right, took another one, and so on and so forth...until we got a 180 degree turn. :) It might have been easier if they were side by side instead of one ontop of the other.

The 180 is now complete. Below we have a few inside pictures though.

This one is of the hall way upstairs where we all slept. My room you can hardly see....its allllllll the way down on the left. Renata, Anna, Malgorzata, and I were in there....across the hall were the guys. Well, kinda.....I know that on Saturday night Tomek fell asleap on the couch after playing a bit of poker with Me, Mariusz, and Maks. When he fell asleap, Tommy took over for him. Probably not so great... he lost quite a bit. :/ hahahaha.

Im not so sure how he was able to get these long looking pictures, but this one is like up above the door somehow, looking down on the hallway that leads to the front door of the cabin.

Same stairwell, just from a differnt angle. Once you get to the bottom of the stairs, you can turn left and hit a bathroom and Sauna (where some of the guys took a snow dive after being in it WHILE the rest of us were out on our long cross country ski trip.) If, once you get to the bottome, you turn to the right, you hit the living room, dinning room, and kitchen area.

This is the living room to the right and the left is the tables of the dinning area.

We spent our first night here by the light of the fire playing the guitar and singing. The second night was poker night. ha. Polish Catholics....drinking Vodka straight, and gammbling....probably not the best role modles I've ever met.

I was in group two, not really sure who all was in "group 2" because I just kinda hung out with everyone and when our group had a task....I did it without worring about who was helping me or who was supposed to be helping me. Anyway....this is the job that "group 2" did while setting the tables. Please notice that there are 5 plates on one side of the table alone. Half of the fun of supper time was the scrunching of the elbows.....aka, spreading out as far as possible making it okward for the others to ask you to move, but you can tell they are uncomfortable. Wow, I love sarcasmic personalities. :)

The ski sloap from the dinning room table. It was so nice to be ablet o see the view while simply sitting there. Later, on Sunday morning, I was able to take this black diamond slope down.

Im not so sure why this was a "black" slope. It was like half as bad as all of them put together...maybe they had their collors mixed up....or maybe we had our map upside down. :)

RENATA......so glad I got a big picture of er. Isnt she cute? awwwwwwww

So, time for a scary story. I had been taking the sloaps with Tomek and Piotr on Sunday before we left at 2ish I think it was. We had been going down all the little baby slopes all day when finally right before it was time to leave, we decided we could all go down one last time wherever we wanted. Piotr went to the top and took the easy one again, while Tomek and I went down a little harder one. The terrible thing is that the snow was sooooo white and the sun was soooooo shining. The track took a quick 90 degree angle, and I went straight. Straight over the edge. I hit the side of the "cliff" and free fell for possibly about 6 seconds. 6 Doenst seem like that big of a number....but think about how many seconds it would take you to jump off the roof of your house and hit the bottom.....like 2? yeah! This was by far one of the MOST scariest moments of my life. Not kidding. I remember my eyes were shut and I had time to think about things. The first thing I thought about was "this isnt going to turn out good", "how long am I going to keep falling", " nobody is going to find me".... and sooooooo many things. Now that I think back to what happend, I dont see how that many thoughts could have gone through my mind in such short time. When I landed my neck was in the most pain I have ever felt. I kept my eyes shut for a while and just prayed right then. I was so glad there is a God! Then.....I opened my eyes. There was a TREE right in front of me that my left leg was wrapped around. I immediatly prayed again. This was the biggest mericle of my life by far. The next thing was just sitting there. I didnt want to move. The snow was so fluffy and about maybe 5 footish or more. I landed like down in it, and was unable to get out. At first though...I just didnt move, I was so afraid I broke a leg or something, and when I tried to get my leg from around the tree I noticed the pain in my hip. This scared me now, because I realized that I didnt have the phone number of anyone on this trip with me. The only numbers I had...were Narve, Therese, (which were about 4 hours away) and Laila (who was in Spain) I started to get a bit scared because I didnt know of any realistic way of getting off the side of the mountain besides sliding the whole way down. Just when I was about to pray again....I heard someone above me. I looked up and saw a head. ha. There was a guy leaning over the track up on top where I skiied off. He asked if I was okay...I said yeah, I just needed to get back up there some how. He said "okay" and skiied away. arghhhh. What was the point of asking how I was then. Anyway...after quite a LOOOOOOONG time, I got to the top. Its not too easy to do when your body is stuck half way in the snow, and every move you make just digs you deeper and deeper. Youll be glad to know that once I got to the top I rested for a bit, and realized one of my skiis was down the hill, where I had fallen.

:( argh.

Anyway, someone else skiied by, and was able to go down and pick it up for me, along with my poles which landed randomly like completely somehow way to the left of me...like 50 feet or something. Anyway....I skiid slowly down the hill, but going back and forth hurt my hip soooo much. When I got to the bottom, Piotr had already turned in his skiis, shoes, and poles....but Tomek was waiting there. I told him what happend while we turned in our equipment. IN couldnt stop thinking about how good God was the whole rest of the day.

We took a group picture, got on the bus, and headed home. I wont even start to describe my bus ride home....Not too many people should know what happened then. Anyway....when we got to Drammen, Kamil got on the over speaker and gave a little speach about how we will all miss our "Amerikan friend." hahaha. hat kid cracks me up. Narve came to pick me up, I said by to everyone...and ran through my new Polish words one last time.

K..that was my weekend. :)