On a Quest for Peace: Happy Birthday to Me!!

What a wonderful day it has been.

We had class this morning until about one o'clock and from one until around 5 I read for class and then napped for an hour. At six Catherine came over and we started to make my birthday cake, which was an adventure.

Everyone at dinner

My flowers from Gabriele

The instructions on the cake mix were in Norwegian so we were guessing. Normally in cake mix you add water eggs and vegetable oil. We had no oil so we biked over to the store and stared at the shelves. There was sunflower oil and olive oil and a few others that I had never heard of but no plain vegetable. So we asked on of the clerks and he stared at the shelf for a while until he said he had never heard of vegetable oil.

This seemed absurd, we told him we were baking a cake and needed something... and in Norway they only use margarine. Which in my opinion is hardened vegetable oil. He also translated the rest of the instructions for us and showed us where the frosting mix was. If I am ever in dire need of help while I am here I will head straight for a grocery, they are the nicest and most helpful people I have encountered in Norway (other than people at school).

At seven people were suppose to arrive to start cooking but of course in Latin time that means eight ;) Catherine and I attempted to make a cake, luckily there was enough for two cakes because the first one didn't turn out too well. It tasted great because we put Nutella and peaches on it, it just didn't look good.

Birthday Cake!!

Gabrielle (from Italy) made us all pasta which was wonderful, he is a master chief. Catherine made some tomato soup, Katie and Hailey made scalloped potatoes, Daniel brought Coke, Dani brought more soup, Kirk and Ted contributed a pizza. Guillermo, Sara, Gonzalo and Elena brought homemade sangria which was very good.

Sangria!

After about an hour of crazy cooking we sat down to eat. The eight Americans Sara Elena Gonzalo Guillermo Gabrielle Gerson (form Namibia) Mangus (from Norway) and Martin (from the UK). The food was great and everyone was having a great time. Everyone sang me happy birthday in there native languages at the same time, such a beautiful sound. Then we ate all of both of the cakes and drank the whole bucket of sangria. We spent the next hour of so in conversation and then cleaned up the kitchen area in one big group effort.

The whole night was a blast. I seem to have some of the greatest birthdays ever. This one was wonderful, so many new friends coming together to have a good meal. We have all only known each other a week at best an yet we are close enough to spent this sort of time together. I was hoping to make some international friends on this trip but this is far more than anything I could have asked for.

Magnus took a bunch of us internationals on a little trip to see the Cathedral Ruins and to see the paddle boat