I am breaking with the usual title for my daily post. In this case, it should have read “Thirteenth Day in Norway,” but I felt that this title was better. Today was, without a doubt, my favorite day so far here. My cold was feeling better today, although I have started to lose my voice tonight. Today was the day of the Garage Sale to raise money for a project that the seniors, called Russ, have in Africa. I was expecting the sale to have may 20-30 people at any given time, but it actually had more than 100 at all times. It started at 10:00am, and people had been lining up for at least a half an hour. There was a lot of used and dated furniture, somewhat outdated technology, and books and trinkets. And the people loved it. It was busy from the moment it opened to the moment it closed. I loved watching all the people. The sale went on for four hours, and afterwards all the stuff was free. Many of the students at the school took the remaining furniture and supplies to accessorize their dorm rooms. Richard and Magnus, who live in the same complex with me, came away with two couches and a monitor. I even found something, a book in Norwegian about Bill Gates. I am not really sure what it is about, being in a language that I do not understand, but I was able to find Warren Buffett’s name in it. That means that it will be a fun read, if I am ever able to read it. I helped the kids clean up. There were tables to be moved back, and then, we had to get the remaining stuff outside. The stuff that was not worth saving was loaded into a tractor scoop, and the janitor put it in the trash. The rest of the stuff was piled up, and a group that is having a garage sale in a few weeks took the stuff. As I was helping get things organized, the janitor kept asking me to do things. He was very nice, but did not seem to understand that I did not understand Norwegian, even though I had to have someone translate everything he said. For whatever reason, he always singled me out to help, but I had to get help to be help.
I spent some time after the garage sale getting some homework done that I needed to. And then, I went into town with Bogdan to pick up Erich (I probably spelled his name wrong) and bring him back to school. Erich is a student who lives at home in Grimstad. For supper we had hamburgers, which were pretty good. I have to say that I was impressed.
Tonye (I think I spelled that right, but I am not sure) had her birthday party today because her birthday in on Friday, when we will be in France. We all went to her family’s farmhouse, which is 5 minutes from the school. I talked to some people for a while, and had fun. Then, we had desserts and such. They were all very good, just like all Norwegian food. I then spent some time talking to a couple of people, mostly about the differences between Norway and America. By 10:00pm, most of the people had gone, but there were about 10 of us who stayed. We had some interesting conversations, though they had trouble keeping the talk in Norwegian. We just talked until 11:45 when Tonye took us back to school. Here I am, after midnight, writing this post.
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