Part 2: Most Amazing Christmas...Presents!!!

The next day we joined our family at church, to watch the children's concert and mingle with other members of the community…

By Christmas Eve we were having a grand time.

For Norway, presents come on Christmas Eve, and a jolly little elf decided to make a visit…

But then it was on to the actual tree…

Opening presents took the rest of the evening and we had a lot of fun…

Lots of hugs…

Lots of fun making my sister think we only got stuff from ISU instead of the UI stuff she helped find…

She blamed me of course…

She stuck to her guns though…

And was happy when the UI stuff showed up…

What is funny is that she fell for it every time…

So there you have it another house divided…

As the title says, most amazing Christmas ever!! God Jul!!

Most Amazing Christmas Ever: Part 1

Alright everybody, first off I want to start with an apology (again) and an explanation. After finishing up four amazing months in Lisbon with some amazing people, I jumped on a plane to head to the far north of Europe. Destination: Skage, Norway via Oslo Trondheim & Steinkjer where we would meet Sig and her family. To give you an idea, it is roughly at the same latitude as Fairbanks, Alaska. Best part, my parents and my sister were coming to. In fact, we were taking the same plane from Oslo to Trondheim. Well, for me it was a bit of a rush. I landed in Oslo with fifty minutes to collect my baggage, re-check it, go back through security and hopefully make my flight. This entire trip, I have not felt homesick until roughly the moment I was completely through security and walking towards the gate where I knew my family was waiting. That’s when Megan screamed and came running to hit me like a ton of bricks :)

We didn’t get much time to talk until we were waiting for a train to take us to Steinkjer. We had to wait, so what else are you supposed to do…

Norway wasn’t much of a culture shock for me since I had already been, but it was fun watching the things dad found amusing…

Yep, fish eggs from a tube. What was strange was the number of sunlit hours of the day. This was taken at 2:30 in the afternoon as the sun is setting after coming up only four hours earlier…

Did I mention that there is a lot of snow…

Actually, no one worries at all about the light situation considering that with all the snow on the ground and a full moon it is actually really bright. So, we went out to have some fun with a campfire, in -15 weather.

We had some help from other sources as well…

All was well though. It was as though our two families had known each other for ages…

Big thing for us was experiencing the traditional Norwegian food that comes with Christmas at our Norwegian family’s home. One of which is Lutefisk. Look it up, if you are disgusted by what it sounds like, you should be…unless you have an expert fixing it like we did…

But just so you know, before you go digging into some lutefisk, there is another prerequisite…

Look that one up too. Akevit is what it is called. It is wonderful! There are also several varieties for varying purposes during Christmas :) Here is the full meal…

Then it was off to decorate the tree…

It was a wonderful couple of days, but the holiday was far from over.

Obidos with good friends!!

Two days before leaving Portugal, I experienced one more thing on my bucket list: visiting a true medieval city with castle. To make it all the better, I traveled with some good friends from the Catolica program. We went to the little town of Obidos…

Obidos was the last Moorish stronghold seized in the region of Estremadura. Afonso Henriques, the first King of Portugal, took the citadel in 1148, one year after taking Lisboa. I find this interesting, since Lisboa is about an hour’s south of Obidos. It is a beautiful little town with the medieval wall intact, though reconstructed. It was also all decked out for Christmas…

Here we all are…

It was a lot of fun to walk through the streets, with the walls and the keep overshadowing you…

Specially enjoying ginjinha in chocolate cups…

As I said, it was all decked out for Christmas. Mostly for the kids, but we had fun too…

Obidos has an amazing view of the surrounding countryside…

That was the morning. Then we went for lunch at a very traditional Portuguese restaurant. The first dish was octopus and potatoes served in olive oil. As always, the octopus was amazing. If you go to Portugal, you must eat it. However, the main dish was cozido, which was basically one massive bowl of pork and vegetables for the five of us. Here is my buddy Diogo dishing up my plate…

Cozido is basically a stew, made with pork shins, ears, hocks, potatoes, carrots, and a variety of traditional sausages. Chouriço is a cured sausage made with chunks of pork and fat, wine, paprika, and salt. Morcela is blood pudding Portuguese style. The other type of sausage was farinheira, which is a smoked sausage made with wheat flour and pork fat, along with some seasoning. In short, the meal was an exercise in “eat until you are full and then eat some more.”

It is, of course, served with wine…

After the Meal we returned to Obidos. Stopped at a very old church along the way and it gave us a wonderful view of the medieval town…

Then we did what I have wanted to do for a long time; walked the castle walls…

Awesome views of the town…

As the sun set, we headed back into town for a final drink before heading back to Lisboa…

We had another meal at our professor home, which was more time to catch up with friends, and stuff ourselves with Portuguese food…

It was a wonderful day, easily my amongst my top two days in Portugal!!