FIRST SWIM MEET IN NORWAY

'Narviksvømmen 2008' in the city of Narvik, 11/22-23

Here is the indoor pool that the meet was held at in Narvik. Typically the pools are operated by the city and the swim teams are organized by volunteers. Underneath the diving board you can see the Harstad Svømmeklubb team leaders for this swim meet. There is some great history from WWII about Narvik. Check it out on Wikipedia: wikipedia.org/wiki/Narvik

Narvik is about 2 hours drive from Harstad, which is our local city. Narvik is a alpine city with the slopes almost ending downtown. There are some great photos online from it.

Here is the 'kiddie' pool end of the swim stadium.

At the beginning of the meet, all the teams marched in and around the pool. The kids in the blue shirts are from Harstad. You can see Veronica on the far right in light blue T-shirt. Barbara is no 5 from the left. They all received a participating trophy. A great memory to bring home.

Veronica (in the pink swimsuit) getting ready for her first event, 25 free. She was excited to be able to swim 25M. She has not done that before. This meet was a 'recruiting meet', which means that the kids just practice. It is 14 years and younger and nobody gets DQ'd. It is just lots of fun for the kids to try it all out.

Barbara after her first event, 25 free.

Alli, or what??

Veronica and Oda (daughter of the head coach) returning to the stands to take a break.

Because of the drive and the meet being late the first day (until 6:30pm), we stayed at a local public school. Our team had over 30 people including parents and siblings, and we were so fortunate to get the gym to sleep in. The kids swam for a couple of hours, then they did gymnastics for a couple hours, then they fainted!

More fun!

As you can see, a swim meet in Norway is more than just show up and swim. What a great way to build a team!

When the kids played in the gym, the parents had a great time hanging out together. The election committee was hard at work finding new board members for next year.

In light blue t-shirts from the left: Barbara, Oda, Veronica and Jon (sitting down with no t-shirt) won the bronze in the 4x25 free. They were thrilled! On Sunday, Veronica participated in the 4x50back and won a bronze again.

This is the head coach of the swim team, Kjetil Bygdnes.

What a great group of kids. There were 17 participating at this swim meet. About 12 were at a swim meet for the very first time and I think most of them will be back.

The snow came and went and came and went. Now it is back and has stayed for a few days. Mild, coastal winter does that to you, but the girls are happy. These photos are from when the kids had a day off school and we took a bike ride in the snow. A little challenging since the snow packed underneath the tire guards.

I caught a snowflake falling in this photos. Veronica her her sandwich and hot chocolate ready for the trip.

Here we are after about 1/2 bike ride. The local soccer field has a 'club house' where there is a roof over some benches. A perfect pit stop when it is snowing wet snow.

Wet snow means perfect snowballs. We had a great snowball fight, snowball distance throwing and just goofing off! :-) The kids who live here year round is also very excited when the first snow arrives.

After a few cards drive on the road, the tire tracks become very slippery. Here is Veronica sliding on her knees down a hill.

The girls sing in Bjarkøy Barnekor (Children's Choir) and enjoy learning all the traditional Norwegian childrens songs. Here is from a performance at a Christmas Faire on Bjarkøy.

Grethe is the director. She is also a 3rd/4th grade teacher at the school.

We need food! Traditional rice porridge served to the children. Veronica on the front left.

THEN CAME THE SNOW!!

Veronica in her jumpsuit on grandpa's 'kicksled'. This is a commom form of transportation for pedestrians in the wintertime. You can carry a person or groceries on the chair and hold on when it is icy on the road. The girls are having a blast sliding down the hills on these. It is very common that people wear thermal jumpsuits outside, children and adults alike. It sure is nice and warm with no bear area between jacket and pants.

Barbara and Rebecca ready to slide down the hill again.

Our house is on a hillside and it is perfect for sledding.

Barbara's first snow light. It lasted for about 1 hour, then it started raining. We did have fun while it lasted.

Barbara's first snowman on Sandsøy.

Veronica's first snowman on Sandsøy.

Once a model, always a model - even in the snow......

Veronica worked long and hard on her now snow woman.....She also helped make two snow light in front of her grandparents' house.

FIRST LEGO LEAGUE - Climate Connection

Team Bjarkøy entering the stage. Veronica is carrying Tea on her back. The principal right behind them. Lego is a Danish company and the first Legoland built is in Billund, Denmark. First Lego League is an American invention. It has children from 6 years of age building with legos and incorporating it with a robot that they program to do certain challenges. Every year there is a new theme for the competition. This year the theme is 'Climate Connection'. The children get together and compete who can do the challenges most precise and fastest. Teams from all over the world get the same challenge. It starts with local competitions, then national and finally world championship.

The children made great signs for the tournament.

Veronica is excited to get started!

Here are the tables they compete on. The tables look the same all over the world. Two teams will compete on one table at the same time with a speaker commenting what is going on. At the same time, the audience can see what is going on on a big screen. The kids get very nervous, but it is a good challenge for them. 

We had a great cheering section with parents, siblings and Vikings all over the place. This is my neighbor, Veronica. She has a son in 5th grade, Gabriel.

Barbara was helping in the cheering section, too.

Here are two of Team Bjarkøy's robot drivers; Rebecca and Axel. They did a fabulous job with all that pressure on them.

Driving the robots is one part of the competition. There are two more challenges. This year the children had to find connections in our community with the challenges we face with the climate. Team Bjarkøy talked about two different kinds of birds that we see lots of today that we never saw a few decades ago and how much natural gas ferries would save the environment around here. They had to interview people, send e-mail and put it all together in a presentation. Team Bjarkøy did a great job on this. The third part of the competition is a Show. Our team unfortunately didn't have time to put this together. Of 20 teams, Team Bjarkøy ended up on 5th place after robot driving and total 7th place all together. They did a great job. The winning team had hired a professional engineer to help them out with the robot part, so there was no way we could compete with them. They were almost 150 points ahead of team number two. Most of the teams in Norway get to do this in school hours. Our kids spent many hours every day at school putting this together. Quite the advantage in comparison to the Noddin (our home Elementary School) Team where the kids have to meet after school and practice.

The town council gave money for a stay in a hotel for the kids and teachers. They had to go to the city the night before the competition to make it in time the next morning.

Not much sunlight left. This is taken at 1pm on 11/7 when the sun is at its highest, facing south. We can see the sun only for a couple of hours now (11/17) before it is gone again. The snow really brightens up the days, so we want snow!

The Moose Party

Was held Saturday, 11/7-08 at the Community House on Sandsøy.

The food was prepped by many people and the committee in charge. 

The set-up and decorating was done by the committee.

Two of the students from Sandsøy, Marcus and Sigrid, helped pick and put together the letters that welcomed everyone to the party. They played monkeys in the trees to get the branches for the letters and the berries for the wreath below.

Lots of leaves were picked and pressed a couple weeks ago and they became nice decorations at the moose party. We did it on a Off School Day with 1st-7th graders.

A couple moms put together a few things, too.

...and the moose came by.....

Quite an athletic moose...climbing the walls....

There were more than 100 people signed up to come to the party. We even had to set tables on the stage at the community house.

As people were entering, they paid their fee of Kr 200,- (about $65 per person) for the food.

Evald, who is the treasurer in the Community Organization and Kirsten, member, collected the money by the door.

There were small moose present...

...and bigger moose present....

The bar was open all night...with my cousin, Eldar, as the bartender.

There is less sun every day. This photo is taken at 1pm and I am facing south. Not much daylight left. Today, 11/12, the sun rose about 9:30am and set again at 2:30pm.