Day 16: Snowboarding and dinner

Today was a definite cultural experience.  On Monday we heard a rumor that we might be gong skiing on Wednesday.  Then that rumor was confirmed on Tuesday when we found out that we were going to go skiing on Wednesday.  It took a bunch of planning in order to make sure that all of us had the gear that we needed to go skiing.  I needed to find some snow pants and goggles.  There was already a snowboard and boots at the cabin that I thought would fit me.  I was able to get a bunch of things from Nate because he went a while ago.

This morning we were able to sleep in because we were getting a ride with one of the teachers that lives here in Rosendal.  That was really nice to get a ride.  Even though the teacher has a small car we were still able to fit the skis and the snowboard in the car.  Then we were off.

It was fun to see all the kids come to the mountain.  I think that there were like 5 different schools that came to the mountain.  There were a lot of kids.  There weren’t many people that were on snowboards so I didn’t really have any good example that I could try and watch in order to snowboard better.  I spent a lot of time on the ground but oh well.  Siv Hege was really impressed by my efforts on the snowboard.  She said that I was courageous because I was trying to snowboard.  That was nice.

Then on the way home we got a ride from another teacher, Leif.  It was nice to try and get to know him as he was driving us home.  It was really nice of him to give us a Then the next day 2 different students come so they have a total of 10 students that come.  The idea is that the students that come are those that don’t really do well in the traditional schooling environment.  The main focus of the school is to practice practical skills.  They had a couple tractors that could be worked on.  Woodshop is another common activity.  We were shown a couple projects that students had worked on.  Steiner, one of the teachers in charge of the farm, was saying that each day the student should be able to say what they had accomplished.  For example: changed the oil in the tractor, some other step in a long process.  It is a very good goal so that the pupil knows that they will be doing for the day.

Then, after we shown around the farm and the facilities that they have there we were lead into this really old house (as in it was built in the 1600s or something) in order to have dinner.  Dinner was excellent!  We had some leftse, bread with ham, deer meat, bacon covered date with a strawberry, eggs, salad, smoke salmon tortilla rolls. To drink we had some Black current kampot.  That was really good.  I had seconds on that.  Then for dessert we had two cakes.  One was a very dense chocolate cake and the second was a fresh berry cake.  They were both very good.  I really liked the berry one.  We were all very grateful and thankful to the family that had hosted us.  Then the family also gave us all beanies and a “headnecker” which looks like a scarf?  It was so nice!  Then we went home.