i Norge - 6. dag

I am becoming accustomed to life here - riding trains, hiking, practicing my Norwegian, etc. This morning I got up to find Kanutte prepping a smörgåsbord (a word, ironically, they've never heard) for breakfast and Tor-Helge raking up apples with Magnus. The lower temperatures here mean fallen apples are mostly good to eat! We had a lazy breakfast and then spent the noontide learning to make bolle, a traditional Norwegian sugar bread. Then we lazed around the house and Magnus finally got warmed up enough to talk to me. He's just started learning English, so he cannot switch to that language when we have difficulty communicating. We just have to muddle through in Norwegian. For me this was great practice! I am glad that there will be more opportunities to talk to him.

In the late afternoon we headed down to Hvervenbukta to swim and do a little hiking. The Norwegians also use the more common European word strand to refer to a beach, but today I learned that a bukta is one that's specifically in a bay. Being in a bay meant that swimming out to the diving platform was a lot easier than in the heavy seas Brittan and I encountered at Huk on Friday. Also, Cara was there and swam out with us too! On the way we found some starfish; the little ones are white, but the normal sized ones are purple. I was glad because although I knew they existed here I had yet to find any. We also saw some (non-stinging) jellyfish and schools of minnows out by the diving platform. Diving off the floating platform is a lot of fun, and Tor-Helge joined us from the shore after taking a bunch of pictures of us. The kids played in the sand and the kiddie swimming area - a floating, gated, underwater platform - and we all enjoyed the bolle we'd made earlier. Then it was back to the house where Kanutte made us another Norwegian specialty for dinner.