hello family, friends, etc.
i am indeed in norway! i left thursday afternoon...cried myself to the city & through the winnipeg airport :) but all of my flights were really good. i've been having a really good time out here. i'm missing everyone a lot....but it's good to be out here. this is basically what's going on:
right now there are only four girls as students here (Lenneke, Cherob, Rebecca) there's going to be one guy coming on the 18th of september(i think his name is leivur?lievur?hmm, i'll get back to you on that one) and possibly one more lady from russia(they're not sure if the money will come in for her)
so what have i been doing these last 5 days? hmm, well where do i begin?
ok, well on saturday we had most of our morning to get ready for our ARCTIC EXTREME. what is arctic extreme? i'll be honest, it's hard to explain....but basically just look at those two words: arctic & extreme. basically we had this list of things that we needed to pack & could not bring anything extra. no deodorant, no toothpaste....3 days. so at 11am on saturday we met outside and began out journey. honestly, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. the other girls and myself weren't worried at all about it, until some of the staff (who had just done their dts last year) gave us a couple of worried looks, and said a couple of things that made us think...ok, this is going to be difficult. so we get into some cars and drive about 20minutes away from our base. stop at the side of the road somewhere, load up our big backpack & start hiking. now, this wasn't like hiking accoss a manitoban wheat field...no, this was like in the middle of bush with lots of ups and down. there was us four girls and then 7 staff. each one of us four girls took out turn leading. basically geoff (Dts leader) would say:"you see that mountain over there, and that sharp peak at the top? ok, lead us in this direction." it was really hard, b/c sometimes you weren't able to see our 'guide point' and so we'd just try to walk as straight as possible. which wasn't always possible, b/c sometimes there were things in our way. anyways, it was a tiring first day. they gave us the food to make for ourselves (a couple of things include dried fish, fish balls , flour, oatmeal, potatoes, carrots) just so you all know, i did eat some of the dried fish....all though nobody touched the fish balls.gross. the first day was really tiring, i'm not sure exactly what time we stopped at....b/c we had our watches taken away from us. but we had enough sunlight to set up out tent. so we went to bed that night, but b/c i was still going through jet-lag i couldn't sleep for a very long time. then just before the sun came up we heard the wonderful sound of............anneka(dts staff) opening up our tent and saying "ok, girls, it's time to get up. you have 20 minutes to pack everything up, including your tent" AH! it was a mad panic to get everything together. but i think we were only 2 minutes late (which resulted in us having to do 10 sit ups for every minute we were late) they told us after that it was 4am when they got us up. lovely. so once we had everything packed up we started hiking again. it was along morning & we were all so tired. i wish that there was some way that i could describe it better....but i just can't. it was hard! finally we stopped somewhere & geoff told us we had 3 hrs off, to use our time wisely, and that it would be best if we set up our tent. so i was allowed to have one of the leaders watches so we knew when our 3hrs was up. it's was 8 or 9 when we stopped. after 3 hours we started up again...up up up up. as in up a mountain. ya, no joke, i climbed a real mountain. there were times when if anyone of us fell, we would just keep on rolling down. we went very slowly and carefully. there were loose rocks everywhere, so we had to be careful where we put our feet. at one point i just about fainted. i think it was a mixture of lack of food/water/sleep/energy/basically every good thing my body needs. but we sat down for a moment & i ate some raisins (which have never tasted so sweet) and water. the fainting feeling past & we continued up. it was really hard. we were struggling a lot with our attitudes on the way up. but we made it!
ok, i'm going to try to type fast now, it's midnight and i'm not to sure what i'm running on right now...
so we climbed up the mountain, down the mountain. were looking forward to our supper and sleep. we eat supper. it gets dark out. we all settle around the camp fire. hear a little message. i'm so ready to fall asleep. geoff says "you have 20 minutes to pack up all of you stuff" and panic erupts. ha, no actually i think that we did pretty good. but it was hard. so we walk in the dark for about 40 minutes (keep in mind i was exhausted and had no watch) had to solve a couple of problems...passed all of the problems. then we get to this one area and geoff tells us " ok, you guys stay here. we'll let you know when we're moving on. use your time wisely" *sigh* so we sit down for a bit and pray. then we look over and see them setting up their tent. we weren't too sure if it was a trick or something. but we figured, they climbed the mountain too, i'm sure they're just as tired as we are. so we found and area and set up our tent in the dark. thankfully we found out our skills at interpreting are great. and we did get to got to sleep. i think they said it was about 11:30pm at that time.
so that was my 4am to 11:30pm mountain hiking, forest searching day. the next morning they let us sleep in a little bit. 8am, they have big hearts. we started the day off with some team building games. you know, ones with blind folds, etc. we were all super sore and tired. but it was pretty fun. then we started the journey home. steep downhill way home. ummm, we also crossed a river...
then we made it back to the base at around 5pm. and the first thing everyone did was SHOWER! ah! try to imagine hiking for 3 days straight. my shirt was basically just pure sweat. it was gross, maybe you shouldn't imagine it.
so now i'm sitting in my bed, pushing my bed time back so i could fill you all in. be thankful! but yes, that was my arctic extreme. every muscle in my body aches, but i'm glad i did it.
i love you all so much! i have some pictures to post but it wasn't working right now....so i'll have to try again later.
miss you all! *muah*
