Juleballet, Juletre og Juleferie

Christmas dance, Christmas tree and Christmas break

Friday night was the Christmas Ball for my school.
Before going to the dance I made a sorry attempt to curl my hair..
I really wanted it to look something like this:

Gotta love T-Swift's hair

Nice and curly and pretty.. 

So after fussing with the hair spray, the curling iron, bobby pins and the hair dryer for about two hours I looked at my brilliant work. 

It looked a little like this:

Oh my lord....

With some difficulty, I tamed the mess and was satisfied.. 

However, by the time I got to the pre-party (true to form) my hair looked like more or less this again:

(Picture from my birthday
not this party)

Straight as ever. 

By the time I was there though it didn't really matter what my hair looked like. 

"There" was one of my friends houses. She had some people over before the party. It was sort of funny how I was invited to this party. One of the other girls just randomly turned to me one day last week and was like "Hey Avery, do you have any skittles left?" I said I thought so and she responded "Ok cool, do you want to come to the pre-party Friday night? Will you bring skittles?"  I thought for a moment and wondered what would happened if I said I wouldn't bring the skittles...

I laughed and said "Of course I will bring them... I love that I get social invitations because I have skittles"

So (for people at home) PLEASE: if you are planning on sending a care package at any point... Skittles! Add skittles and I will have friends! My popularity depends on you!

Well actually not really. When I repeated to her what she had said she realized what it sounded like and told me that is not what she meant at all... I'm pretty sure that people don't just like me for the fact that I have the Skittles.

Anyways, we had a bang-up time there dancing, singing, playing games and eating skittles. 

Of course I made friends
with the dog...

From 7 until 9:30 they served pizza at the party, but we didn't go until a little after 10. It was nuts. I had so much fun! It was a live band, which I think is so cool because in the US proms almost never have live music anymore. 

This area of Norway is very special because... well there are roughly a billion reasons why this area is very special, so let me put it this way: ONE of the reasons that this area of Norway is very special is because swing dancing is very popular here. Also, when there is a live band at a party the music is almost always good to swing to. It is so much fun to watch everyone spinning and hopping around the floor! 

Watching other couples dance like this:

always makes me think "Hey! It must not be THAT hard... They make it look so easy!

....Maybe I should try..."

Big mistake.

Who has ever played the game QWOP? If you haven't click  -->here<-- and try it out before you keep reading.

Tried it? 

Good.

That is what I looked like while trying to dance in heels.

Why won't my legs "Qwoperate?"

Well, I still really want to try to dance.... Solution?

Kick those suckers off...

Did it help?

Meh... Close enough...

I feel pretty bad for whoever gets stuck dancing with me though.. No matter how many times they tell me how to do something right I will inevitably mess it up.

Oh well.. There are few boys who are amazing dancers and also amazingly patient with this clumsy American girl and I always have so much fun and laugh the entire time I dance (regardless how many times I almost fall or run into another couple or smack my dance partner). 

When the party was over I waited for Pappa to come pick me up and when he arrived, Thea was with him! I was so excited to see my sister again! 

Saturday was my parents anniversary! I rolled out of bed a little after 11, showered and went upstairs to help Thea make lunch.  A lot of guests came to celebrate and we all ate lunch together. It was a very relaxing afternoon. That evening Thea and Ragnhild went to a friends house for dinner, so I went to visit Berit. I got to Tante's house just in time to eat dinner with them (but I really didn't plan it like that... honest). We had tacos and watched the news. Then Berit and I watched 3 movies and had some wine. We realized that halfway through the second film we didn't really have a clue what was happening and we cracked up because Ragnhild always picks on us for talking during movies... We never noticed it until then. 

On Sunday I had to get up even earlier so I could go get a Christmas tree!

I wanted this one

We walked through the woods looking for the right one. When we found it, I got to cut it down!

Pappa and Kristian dragged them back to the car. It was a fun trip, but it was so cold!

Before we left it was -13 C (That is about 8 degrees F) and when we were getting back (a little after 11) the sun was just rising!

Sunrise through the frosty window

Sunday afternoon Pappa and I went to a birthday party for a woman turning 80. It was a nice way to wind down the weekend. 

When I got home I made a batch of cookies because one of my friends made me promise him I would give him cookies for Christmas. Monday when I found him to give him his cookies he had also made cookies for me! It was such a nice surprise! I also had another huge tin full of them to share with people during the day. Monday evening I made more cookies... 252 more cookies... 

I gave some to my aunt, grandmother, cousins, I took more into school today and we are keeping quite a few of them here for Christmas.

In school today a lot of the Russ wore Santa hats. It was fun. For lunch they gave us all grøt, which is rice porridge basically. It is so good. Today was a very good day and it was my last day of classes, so I'm basically on vacation!

I can't believe that Christmas is so soon!

God Jul alle sammen! 

Merry Christmas everyone!

P.S.

This song has been stuck in my head for about a week now.

Enjoy. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz7Ak7tyUQE