Discovering the neighborhood

Wow, that was a weekend! Mentioning that it is almost the end of November now and that we are in Norway, it was a happy surprise for us seeing the sun again Saturday morning. For the last two weeks it has been predominately raining and it felt like the darkness would not really unhand the daylight. It had not been very cold until Saturday: Maybe 5 degrees minimum. So the weekend had this eccentric combination of freezing cold and and clear blue sky. The ground was frozen and everything was shining in the sunlight. What to do with this beautiful weather? 

Well, on Saturday there was not really much to enjoy, because two of us were working at Folken for a concert and Cristina had to watch the football match between Barcelona and Real Madrid, of course. But before that it was at least sunny enough for a run around Hådansvatnet. But on Sunday we decided to show Cristina around in our neighborhood. She had neither seen the lake nor the Kvernevik rocks yet, so we chose the Kvernevik coastline for Sunday. We started at noon and just had to walk 15 minutes until we came to the sea. It was beautiful! And our Spanish girl really enjoyed the frozen puddles. Dancing on the ice, singing on the ice, dipping our hands into the surprisingly warm ocean and enjoying a marvelous sunset - such a wonderful small weekend trip for such a wonderful small family. We cannot wait to tell Vincent about that when he comes back, but he will probably have some nice stories to tell, too. 

So now it is Monday, it's raining again, the sky stays grey and we are all missing the sunlight already. But hopefully it will not be a tough week and there is tons of fun ahead next weekend :)

Ha det!

November

Hi !

After a few months in Stavanger Vincent went on his first trip to Bergen and Dale yesterday! Flying, hitchhiking and insecure cold nights (maybe outside?) are about to come!
We already miss him. In autumn we did a lot of projects together with the teenagers in our youth clubs, such as Halloween parties, lantern workshops, the undergrunn concert, where all the bands from the different clubs played together and now gingerbread baking. Seriously: Christmas is coming way too fast! It feels like we arrived yestderday and now they start preparing the lights in the city centre!
The weather is quite "autumn" now, too. Storms that disconnect us from the WiFi (no joke!), hail, thunderstorms and pouring rain are our daily friends and sometimes we feel like our house would just fly away.
But nevertheless it is beautiful here! We now all work at Folken, which is a concert house, run by students. The work is voluntary as well and a kind of a hobby for us. It is great! Free conncerts, free beer after work, but most of all: 150 other young people being like a huge family! When you work two times a month, you can enter all concerts, so we spend almost 3 nights a week at Folken or just meeting other Folken people in the city centre.
And the darkness is not that bad yet. The sun sets around 4pm, which is like half an hour earlier than in Germany or France. But the shortest days are still about to come, of course!
We also finished our first Norwegian course this week and are now without training until Christmas. We received a nice diploma, even though we do not really feel like having learned enough...
But we will probably start again in January! That would be helping at least since our supervisors said that they will start talking Norwegian with us after Christmas...
We will be so lost ;)

Introduction 2: "Kyviksmarka"

Hei alle sammen!

Today it is time to introduce you to Vincent's Workplace: Kyviksmarka and/ or Bakgården.

This is a building close to the City Centre, where two youth clubs are located. The first one is Kyviksmarka where Vincent works three or two evenings a week and which is similiar to Tasta. The youngsters just come there in order to relax and have fun. They can play on some instruments, the Play station, dance, listen to music etc. They also have some special evenings like a Japanese evening, a French one, theatre and massage workshops or (as everywhere) a Halloween Party. His job is to take care of the kids, sell food and help them.
The other youth club is Bakgården. This one is more special. Bakgården consists of a close group of teenagers to have some social problems or feel more insecure. They have a lot of helpers and Georg, the boss to lead the youth club. They do a lot of activites together  such as swimming, trips to the zoo, a bike trip etc. Vincent here helps as a youth leader as well since it is his profession.

Kyviksmarka is also one of the most beautiful and new places in town. A few weeks ago a new parcour park opened next to it.

So many activites!