Isbading

Yes, I went ice bathing. I voluntarily jumped into ice cold water and stayed there for thirty seconds, not to mention put my head under the water. The best word to describe this experience is: cold!

Look at all of us smiling, naive, exchange students in Norway...before the ice bathing :)

You think it would be obvious that it is cold, and it is. But the mystery is how cold. Well I solved the mystery, it is ice cold. When I took off my clothes and only had my bathing suit and wool socks on, the air was cold. Then you sit down on the foam mats next to the hole in the ice, and those were a little bit wet because we were the third group to go. So you got a small taste of the freezing water before you even wanted to. Then he told us to go in, we slid down into the water, and almost immediately all 5 if us began to scream. Well, I know I did.

I believed that this would be the longest 30 seconds of my life, but actually it went rather quickly. I thought we were only half way through when the leader told is we only had 5 seconds left and we should put our heads under the water. I was overjoyed! However, after the first five or seven seconds in the water your body goes almost completely numb. So that is good because then you can't really feel how cold the water is, but then it is not so good, because when you try to get out you can't really feel any part of your body. So when I attempted to get out after the 30 seconds of freezing my ass off, I ended up looking more like an elephant seal that was attempting to run, than the graceful ballerina I was trying to be.

But the worst part was yet to come. Sitting in ice water is no problem compared to standing outside of the water, fighting for foot space on the foam mat, while trying to change out of your bathing suit and into your three layers of wool. Thank the heavens it was positive degrees that day, a whole +4 degrees Celsius  But I was extremely glad, because if it had been below zero I would not have been able to change by myself and I could have gotten frost bite, and I am just glad that it was not -20. We actually had really nice weather, +4 and sunny. Not that you can actually feel any warmth from the sun, but it was a nice way to trick you into thinking it was okay to go swimming.

After the ice bathing

The best part was we got to watch them cut the ice and pull it up from where we were going to take our bath. So we knew that moments before that water was covered by 2 feet of solid ice. And then we were going swimming. There were 10 AFS students there and most of them made it the full 30 seconds. I think there were 2 that came out early and 1 that once she saw what she was in for backed off and just took pictures of us.

Ultimately, it was a great experience as I am glad I took part in it. I am not sure I will be doing it again any time soon, but now I can say I went ice bathing I Norway and that I am part of the Norwegian Polar Bear Club. Yeah!!