Rah Rah Rilla in Russia!

So as part of our Cross Border Entrepreneurship course we were able to attend an Entrepreneurship meets Culture business week in Murmansk, Russia. This was the school we went too; Murmansk Humanities InstituteWe flew from Alta to a small Norsk town called Kirkenes, it was very near the Russian border. Though it takes 30 to fly straight from Alta to Kirkenes, our flight was not a direct one, we stopped at this small town call Vadsø, then for a 7 minute flight to Kirkenes! Though it did turn out to be around 10 minutes cause the pilot missed his landing, he came over the intercom saying he wanted us all to get our money's worth! So we met up with another class in Kirkenes and went by bus to Murmansk, the trip was made much longer because of the customs. I guess where we were entering was a very dense military region. Lots of guns, many passport checks, in and out of the bus. What a welcome to the ussr! We stayed in a very low class hotel, which just added to the adventure of it all. We had many classes; morning, afternoon and evening sessions. Some I just was not able to attend, due to shopping and site seeing distractions. The first evening my friend and i thought it would be nice to get a hair cut because it is so expensive in Norge. It is very hard to communicate what you want while speaking different languages. After a test piece of my hair turned green, I decided to go with just a cut.
One evening lecture took place on the atomic icebreaker 'lenin'. After the lecture we got a tour of the ship, it is docked in the Murmansk harbor. At the harbor there was this long fence, and on it where about a ton of locks. Lovers engraved a lock and put it on the fence, so for as long as the lock remained there their love would last! So romantical!
We went to so many markets, mostly selling fur coats and hats and vodka..
2 friends and i found the cutest cafe that we visited everyday. We pretty much tasted very cake in that place. Well i told my friend to order me a glass of hot chocolate (cause she speaks russian) and they gave a glass of melted chocolate! ha it was awesome! Exactly what everyone needs first thing in the morning, that and a creme puff.
At one souvenir shop I found the greatest matryoshka doll set. It had the last 5 american presidents inside each other!
On the return trip, we made 5 stops! It was crazy took us 4 hours total with no flight duration lasting over 15 minutes! I never had so many stops from Saskatoon to Alta.(Murmansk at night, it looked very beautiful with snow!)

HUNTING

Alright so for our last outdoor activity trip we set out to the gargia peninsula to hunt grouse! We stayed at this beautiful cabin owned by a nearby folk high school. Both teachers joined us and brought their dogs, unfortunately we lost the one dog! But it was found later and brought into town. So we hunted as one large group.We started target shooting by setting up magazine pictures in the tress. I was so terrible at this I missed every target. Later the next day we hung small bottles, and i hit those! Then on the last day we through up bottles full of snow, and i hit those too! Watch out Saskatchewan gophers! On the last night we were given the option to sleep outside in a gapahuk, just one tarp tied onto 2 trees. So only 5 of us crazies did it. Oh and this night the northern lights were incredible! They weren't an extremely bright green. But they stretched from the far east to the far west! Actually lighting up the sky! ps. as i am writing this it is dark: 3.30pmThis is me with my two teachers Kolbjorn and Daniel.
We walked over this peninsula it was all white and the wind was blowing very harshly, it really felt like the arctic!

Haldde Peak

So from the town of Alta there is a very large mountain that can be seen. It has a very steep peak, and on the top has 2 buildings. In the late 1800's a family of 17 lived up on the very top. They had a tunnel built between the 2 buildings because it would get too stormy to walk outside. From 1900 to 1930 it was used as a northern lights observatory. In 1944 the buildings were burnt down by the Germans, only the stone walls remained. The climb was over 9 km, but very steep. And as we neared the top the snow was very deep. That night 2 boys made this finnebif (er something) it had mushrooms and reindeer meat over rice! It was incredibly tasty! It was kind of a shame the sky was very cloudy so we were unable to see the northern lights. It was a beautiful cabin, lots of bunk beds, and was kept very warm by a wood burning stove. After the decent we stopped and explored the remains of this old coal mine, then to this old church.

dam reindeer

Alright so a few weeks back, our class biked out onto the Finnmark Plateau to see the Sami mark and butcher there reindeer. It was big family affair. Sami of all ages were present. Even the smallest of children had long knives attached to their belts. I learned that even if they have other jobs they must be present during these events. We arrived just as they were finishing up for the day, so when they all left we set up our tent by this small lake. That night it was incredibly cold, when we woke up out tents were covered in snow! As soon as we finished breakfast some Sami boy came to us with his dirt bike, and informed us that they wouldn't be doing anything with the reindeer for at least 4 days. So we biked around a little bit then headed home. So my dream of riding a reindeer was slipping away. The hills were covered with reindeer! As we'd bike they'd run right in front of us. Oh and they make the strangest noise, its like a really low bellow/ pig snort. It is quite scary when they are in big groups the sound is so loud! Oh and they all have antlers; males, females, babies. How the Sami mark their reindeer is they carve the name of the owner into the antler. One person is only allowed to own a certain number of reindeer, so every member of the family each owns some.

The next week the international student group took a bunch of us to this dam in the Alta river. We got to walk under this mountain to get to where we could walk out on the dam. I guess there was alot of controversy over the building of the dam. It interrupts the reindeer route, and also the quality of salmon in the river. There was a big protest before it was built they had to bring 30% of Norway's police force, over 400 officers came to arrest these people. My outdoor life teacher was in on the rejection of the dam. And now it doesn't even provide very much energy.

northkapp

Last Sunday a group call ESN an International Student group took a large bus of foreign kids to the North Cape. It is the most northern point in mainland Europe. On the way we saw many reindeer just on the hills and also in the middle of the road! Before we arrived at the cape we stopped in the very small Sami town. There was this house there that an old lady had made it Christmas every day. She opened her house to tourists and served Christmasy food and drinks. When we got to the end of the world as we know it, we all watched this promo video. It was really awesome, it showed the cape in all seasons, and gave a little history about the area and culture. Then we just took alot of pictures around the monuments and such.. and spent alot of time in their giant souvenir shop. In the bus we watched Norwegian videos that i did not understand at all.

LoFoTeN

Last week a group of friends got an idea to visit the Lofoten Islands, quite a bit south of where I am here in Alta. So we boarded a cruise ship in Hammerfest called the Hurtigruten the coastal voyager. It took us a day and a half to get to Svalbær. That night we just hiked out of the town and found a beautiful space to set up a tent. It was in a valley by a lake with a hug waterfall flowing into it. The next morning our plan was to get the other islands with the beautiful beaches. So we hitched hiked, and happened to get picked up by a man who did tours by boats in the Trollfjord (which we went into with the boat. Extremely beautiful!) Anyways this man Harry drove us around all afternoon told us the local history and showed us landmarks. We drove through Stamsund and through Leknes, then dropped us off at this beautiful beach called Vik. We set up camp right on the beach, with giants mountains surrounding us, and they were covered with sheep! The sand was so white! And the color of the water was so bright! It felt like i was back in Hawaii, though the only difference i was wearing woolen long underwear! The sun came out for a few minutes so we decided to go for a swim. It was crazy cold!! We had to make a huge fire to warm up. The next day we just hiked hoping to get to a surfer town call Unnstad. We i guess chose the worst route imaginable. It took us forever to reach the next town! All the hike was steep and rocky. (I now have terrible blisters) We finally got to this small grouping of houses to find out that it was not our destination, but we got picked up my a man that drove us straight to the beach of Unnstad. I guess it is world famous for its awesome surfing conditions. We even saw a few surfers! crazy people. We made friends with an old norsk man who was making a fire on the beach. He only spoke Norwegian but my friend speaks Swedish so we got by alright. Anyways he told us he was burning the remains of all the party's he had had that summer. He was real nice to us. He gave us firewood and let us come up to his house to fill up our water bottles. His cute little wife was making jam from berries they had around there house. She painted all these rocks in front of their house. Then we got to see his party barn. It was in the hayloft. This guy had it filled with old norsk antiques, and a huge hand made wooden table, lots of reindeer hides, a piano. A very cool place! Since it was such a small town the only way out was to catch the school bus. So that was how we traveled! The bus dropped us off at the Viking Musesum in Borg, unfortunately it was closed for the season. But there was alot to see outside, they tried to portray how the vikings would have lived. There was all sorts of animals, a huge ship in the water, a black smiths shop etc. etc. When back in Svalbær we went to an ice bar called Magic Ice! That night we returned to Alta on the Hurtigruten .. then back to school.

FISK!!

So we have been spending a lot of time fishing lately, a group of us would go to the sea to try our luck, I would get much too bored and go for a swim, in the incredibly cold water! Then out class went to the Alta river, which is quite famous for its abundance of salmon. Actually in the grocery stores here salmon and other fish are by far the cheapest meat.. when I come home that is all i'll want to eat (hint to jenna and mom). So we fly fished in the river. It was really fun, we camped all day on this rock bar in the middle of the river. We had gorgeous weather!! Unfortunately none of our whole class caught anything, but our teacher being prepared for this brought some that he'd caught earlier in the season.

Over this past weekend a group of rented a small cabin in the middle of the woods. Nine of us fit in this tiny shack. And we ate pretty much what we found, we fetched a bunch of mushrooms and blueberry's and found a bag of rice in the cabin so they made mushroom rice goo ( which of course i didn't eat) then blueberry rice pudding.. which was surprisingly tasty. This cabin was 25 km away, with a beautiful view winding the coast.

Yesterday our class went boating in the Alta fjord with traditional wooden row boats. In my boat there were 2 other girls, one czech, one german. I pretty much stuck to rowing while the other two fished. Us 3 caught 10 fish, my job was once they were caught i got to kill the fish. It was so awesome. We made a fire later and i got to fillet everyone's fish! We ate and sat around the fire till past midnight, then had to walk an hour back home. Needless to say we were nearly all late for our marketing class the next morning and smelled like fish.