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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.
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.
So our first day of class, our outdoor activities teacher challenged us that
if we hiked these 3 peaks surrounding Alta he would give us a free t-shirt. (---thats what it looks like)
So in 5 days some of us hiked these three peaks. They were really breathtaking, we got to see the town from all perspectives, and the whole Alta fjord. In this group picture are a few of us international student (l-r) Thomas (germany), Bruno (portugal), Artum (russia), Luba (russia), Katsia(russia), Annette (germany), me (hawarden), Friederike (germany).
On the top of every mountain there was a little mailbox that had a guestbook in it. So we got to write our name, and where we are from, and see how many people before us had climbed to this peak. So if any of you dont trust that ive been there, you climb to the top and see for yourself.
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. 
