Summer vibes

Hi everyone! Sunny greetings from Norway – yes, you read right, SUNNY! We had amazing weather for some time now and I spent my time outside whenever it was possible. That is why I skipped my blog last week. Actually, the weather is still too good to sit inside and write a blog entry, but I thought you might want to hear something from me and of course, meanwhile I have some things to tell you about.

The nice weather lured us all outside in the past few days and that way Oleksandr, Barbara and me met a group of young refugees while working at a community event concerning leisure activities in Eid. They were eager to play football, volleyball and dart with us, even days later. Although they didn’t speak proper Norwegian nor English, we communicated somehow, mostly through sign language, which was quite funny. In any case we had a good time together and it was so nice to see how easily we could get along with each other, even without spoken language, just by sharing a common interest. I hope we will meet more often from now on :)

The weather was also of advantage for Barbara’s own project, which had its premiere today. During her stay in Norway she got more and more concerned about the trash humans produce, especially plastic trash, as well as where it remains – often in the streets, thrown there by less concerned people. Now she organized a project to pick all that trash up and to dispose it properly.

With this in mind, a group of around 45 people – children, students, adults, senior citizens, our group of refugees and of course the mayor – met in the park near the fjord to be grouped for the six different areas. Barbara, Hilde-Kristin, my landlord Agnar, a neighbor, a mother with her little daughter and me tackled the worst area around one of the gas stations, a former campsite, which resembled a garbage dump. We found everything from barrels over parts of a gutter to common plastic bags and filled quite a lot of garbage bags with it. The mayor himself picked them up with his tractor and collected them at the meeting point, where we all gathered after two hours of work – snacks ready to be served.

On the whole it was a huge success and you can see the difference in the green areas now. I am really proud of Barbara for organizing this and happy to be part of it, because I actually care for this place, even if I am only staying on a temporary basis. But it has been some time now and Eid became much more than just a place I passed in my life – it is connected to new experiences, friends, ups and downs, decisions and discoveries I made and above all,  getting to know myself better. It feels more and more like home and the closer summer and my departure gets, the more I think about the things and people I will miss. But I don’t want to get sentimental now, I just want to be happy about what we achieved – together. So thanks to everyone who made it possible, I hope we will meet for a second round soon – unfortunately not long and it will be necessary again. But I guess for now the only thing left to say is: Bra jobba, folkens! ;)

Ha det bra,

Alisa