The Longest Day....

Now, saying goodbye to my Norwegian family and friends was not by any means easy, but saying goodbye to the other exchange students was the hardest thing I have had to do all year. I know I am going to come back to Norwaynat some time for a visit, and it will probably even be next summer. But, with my international friends, all of us will never be in the same spot at the same time ever again. So the goodbyes could actually be goodbyes...

On the 26th of June all of the exchange students from all of Norway were all together once again. All of the exchange students left on the 26th of June back to their homeland. All of the exchange students arrived at the Oslo Gardemoen Airport between 03:00 and 04:00. Half of our region left on the flight at 06:00, so we had to say goodbye to them at 04:30. It was the Brazilians, French, Venezuelans, and Spanish. But, I must say the hardest goodbye was at 11:35 when all the Italians left. Some of the Italians were my abest friends, so I was crying my eyes out, and so were they... 

It was awful, after the Italians and Germans left there were only about 7 of us left that had to catch a flight. After about another hour the Americans said the rest of their goodbyes and we went through security. Our flight was supposed to be at 14:45 (2:45pm), but it then got delayed to 17:10, so we were in the airport for a long time. 

By the time we could actually board our flight, a lot of the passengers actually started cheering. Then we took our 2 1/2 hour flight to Iceland, had to run off the plane in Iceland to catch our connecting flight ton New York. We were lucky in the fact that the held the flight because there were abut 40 people from our Norway fight that we taking the flight to New York. But, one of the girls I was traveling with happened to get piled over for a random security check. So, by the time we actually got to the gate the gate agents were almost punching us on the plane because we were the last ones to board. We were only four Americans traveling from Norway to New York. 

Then, it was a 5 1/2 hour flight to New York. Good news is there was one other exchange student that was from the LA area, bad news is by the time we made it through customs we missed the last flight to LA that night. But, my sister and mom met me in New York, so they were standing outside of customs waiting for me. It was nice to see them, but it was also really strange. At that point I came to a sudden realization that my Norway trip was over. 

We had to walk outside to get to the other terminal and the first thing that I said was "it stinks!!" Which, in New York it stinks anyway, but especially after you come from the fresh, clean air of Norway. Also, the water in the US isn't as good as Norway, but it wasn't as big of a difference as I was expecting. From there we slept in the airport a d went to our flight at 07:00 the next morning. Sleeping on a concrete floor in the airport was great fun. But, I did buy a donut, and that was delicious!

We took our flight home and arrived back in LA. I was exhausted and very confused as to what day it was, but it was good to sleep in a bed again after Lmost 3 days worth of traveling.