Olivia Takes on Norway: Thanksgiving

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

I have had one of the longest, most tiring weekends of my exchange. To start off my mom (being the amazing, kind woman that she is) mailed me three boxes of food to make for Thanksgiving. She actually sent me a 5-pound bag of noodles. Thank you, mom!

On Wednesday, after I picked up the boxes, I made the pies! Both apple and pumpkin. Those turned out really well. Thursday night I began making some of the actual food. My older host sister Linn Victoria took me to the biggest grocery store near us to get all the vegetables I needed. Less than 5 minutes of walking in the store I had lost my wallet. I began to freak about because all I did was walk down one aisle. So Linn went to talk to someone in the front of the store and someone had found my wallet and turned it in! And all of my money, credit cards, medicine, and IDs were still in it! Norway truly is an amazing place.

Now enough gushing about the kind samaritans of Norway. My host family decided to have Thanksgiving on Friday night because my parents were dancing on Thursday night. So after skyping with my family back home I got to making all the wonderful food. I made mashed potatoes, which I apparently didn't know how to make so thanks to everyone who helped out. I also made stuffing which turned out amazing. I like baking them in muffins tins because they get so crispy. Friday morning I stayed home to cook more food! I actually ended up forgetting about a lot of food, but we still had a ton of leftovers. Here was the menu for Friday; turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, candied sweet potatoes, stuffing, Brussel sprouts, buttered noodles, gravy, and cranberry jelly. There was 8 of us. My host parents, me, and 5 of my host siblings. We also enjoyed some pie at the end. It was good practice for my friends coming over on Sunday.

Then, on Saturday, my friend Dula came over and helped me and Ida bake pies. After that, we worked on a 500 piece Pittsburgh puzzle. We didn't finish. It was really difficult.

Finally, it was Sunday morning. I got up bright and early (11). I meant to get up at 10 but I kept hitting the snooze button. Whoops. I got to work baking the stuffing, then cooking the noodles, and baking the green bean casserole. Plus getting our 5.83 kilogram turkey in the oven. Ida helped me get the house all set up for our guests. We moved our kitchen table out into the living room so all 15 of us could be in one room. Yes, I said that right. 15 people. I'm not going to name everyone but there was some girls from my class, some of Ida's friends, and two other exchange students (a girl in my school from Brazil and the other exchange student from the US with Aspect named Eric). When everyone got there I was still working on the potatoes. I had made the mistake to make them on Thursday and try to reheat them for Friday's dinner. They were still cold when we ate so I just planned on making them before we ate on Sunday. I had one of the guys I invited mash the potatoes and just as he finished that, the turkey came out of the oven.

Everyone got their food and we did the whole thing where we went around the table and said what we are thankful for. Basically everyone said friends, family, and food. A lot of people said they were thankful for me which made me feel really nice, haha. Everyone loved the food! I definitely made too much pasta, though. It's going to be my lunch for the next week. A lot of people went up and got seconds which was great. Even though the cooking went well and no one got food poisoning I don't think I'll be cooking for a while. It was a lot of work. Now I understand why my mom doesn't like to cook.

After we finished eating, we played a game that's basically a more difficult version of charades. My team came in second! While we were doing that, we also ate pie. Funny thing about Norwegians, they think pumpkin pie tastes like gingerbread (pepperkake). I personally don't taste it and neither did Eric. That was the nice thing about having another American around, they could validate that all the crazy things Norwegians said were actually crazy. After the game, basically everyone went home. A few helped clean up while and Ida and I did the dishes.

Well, that's basically it for my Thanksgiving adventures. It ended up being better than I could even imagine.

Until next time,
-Olivia