Hei, jeg heter Kaitlin. Min mamma er Norsk og min Pappa er Amerikansk. In English, those Norwegian words translate to: “Hi, my name is Kaitlin. My mother is Norwegian and my Father is American. I occasionally like to think that I’m trilingual; English being my native language, some background in Norwegian, and with a soon-to-be minor in Spanish, I like to consider myself trilingual. Impressive, right? My mother moved from Norway to the states when she was eighteen. She met my dad and they lived happily ever after. Growing up, we would travel to Norway almost every other summer since the majority of my family resides across the Atlantic Ocean. In the last five years, I’ve been to Norway about three times. One of which includes the past five months that I spent studying there. During my freshman year, I found out that West Chester started a new partnership with a school in Moss, Norway called the American College of How I disapointed my relatives all fall in Norway By Kaitlin Lederer Special to The Quad Norway. I immediately jumped on this opportunity. In telling my mormor (grandmother) and my aunt, they were obviously ecstatic that I would be living in their country for almost five months. Instantly we began discussing what to do and they already started “fighting” over who would get me on the weekends. Who would be “weekend mom?!” By the end of July, a “jenta tur,” as the Norwegian women like to call it, had already been planned. Three nights in Barcelona with seven Norwegian women sounded ideal. It was evident that even before I arrived, my family was quite excited.
Following my arrival at Gardermoen Airport in Oslo, I stayed with my aunt and mormor for two nights before leaving for school. After my mormor moved me into my new apartment in Moss, we hugged goodbye and said see you soon. The following week my aunt, uncle, and two cousins came to visit to see my new home. The next weekend I went there for a visit and homecooked pizza. Things were looking bright for them. Seeing me three weeks in a row, we were on a roll! After that, they invited me on two different occasions to the cabin in the mountains for a weekend, but I politely declined. I thought it was necessary to stay at school and continue to get to know the people that I had begun to make friends with. Of course they understood. Soon time started to go by fairly quickly and it was already mid-September, time for our trip to Barcelona. I was looking forward to it, but I also felt that feeling of missing out back at school. My friends walked me to the train station, and waved as the train took off. Barcelona was my first trip of the semester, and it was the best start. Naturally, when I came back on Sunday night, I was thrilled to be back in my home and see my friends. I had only been gone for three days and they had so much to catch me up on.
After my trip to Barcelona, life started to pick up. We lived in a small town so our everyday lives were not as exciting as most students abroad might experience. To compare, Moss is a slightly bigger town than West Chester. It’s on the coast so of course the major difference is being right next to a body of water. Our biggest outings consisted of going to the grocery store, and the occasional swim in the Oslo Fjord. With just 80 students, we became an incredibly close-knit bunch. My roommate, and I [who is also American] surrounded ourselves with all Norwegians. Including ourselves, there were seven Americans there. The two of us shared a bedroom, with a bigger living room and kitchen area. Our friends’ apartments were set up differently, so they didn’t have the luxury of a big living room. Because of this, our apartment became everyone else’s home. It was essentially an opendoor policy; it became the norm to just walk in and plop yourself down on the couch. There were no classes on Fridays, so our “big” nights were Thursdays and Saturdays. Although we were the legal age in Norway, we rarely went to any bars or clubs. We created our own traditions, beginning right in Apartment 4C.
October quickly came around, the month we had all really been waiting for. In the first weekend, my roommate and I went to Paris. Like all other study abroad students, we made our way to the Eiffel Tower and experienced our first hostel. We quickly decided that “There’s no place like Moss.” Being away just two nights, and even being at one of the biggest attractions, we were eager to be back with our friends in our little bubble. After almost missing our flight back to Norway because I am not to be trusted with military time, we unpacked and re-packed for our next trip. We had 36 hours after coming back to get our things together for a week in Dublin with the whole school. Yes, the whole school of 80 students. After our Dublin came to an end, panic sort of began to set in. Dublin was over and the semester was halfway through. Although we were slightly frightened by how quickly time was going by, my family was amazed by the traveling we had done in just two weeks. Within the months of October and November, my aunt saw me once each month.
It’s difficult to put the rest of the semester into shorter terms. After Dublin, we made one last trip. 35 dollars to and from Brussels on Ryan Air, I’ll take it! As remarkable as traveling was and is a big part of someone’s abroad experience, nothing compared to being in Moss. If it wasn’t for the small town, the friendships and the close bond we felt would not have been the same. The activities and options weren’t the same as being in a big city, so we got to know each other on a completely different level. Within 80 students, we formed our own little family. I would never trade Moss and my experience for being in a city like Paris or London. There really was no place like Moss. In the last week of school, sleep was not an option for my roommate and I. We stayed up countless nights, anxiously analyzing what our life was going to be like when we weren’t going to be surrounded by these amazing people, the people that made us laugh and smile every single day. We realized there were only so many hours in the day, hours we wanted to spend with everyone. Within those last seven days, there was an excess amount of tears. These tears that symbolized the best four months that we had together. Mid-way through December, my parents came to Norway to celebrate the upcoming holidays. As they awaited for my arrival in Lier, where my aunt, uncle, and cousins live, they all noticed that I was certainly not the person that they last saw me as. I was drained of emotion, exhausted from the lack of sleep, and incredibly sad from saying goodbye to the best of friends. As Christmas approached, I started to feel the holiday spirit more. My family learned that they could begin to joke around with me. The most common gag was the fact that my aunt and mormor were highly disappointed that they barely saw me in the past four months. I suppose I did give them false hope in August, but never did I ever expect the semester to turn out the way it did. I went in with no expectations and came out with an experience of a lifetime.