Last day of the pilgrimage!

Last day of the pilgrimage! My only injury was a very painful blister on my heel so I’d say I got pretty lucky considering how many times I tripped on rocks. It was very cloudy and windy BUT the sun came out for about 10 minutes on one of our last stretches with a wide view of the mountains which was nice. Like a holy grail!

Didn’t see any musk ox (a rare sight) but I saw sheep and two moose (meese?). It is crazy how I can go from hot to cold so fast, standing still feels like an arctic blast and then walking feels like an oven. I will definitely miss seeing the fall colors (since we’re up in the mountains it changes sooner than in Ålesund). But will I miss sleeping in a wet lavu…? No. No I won’t 😆.

It was so fun to be with this group of people, it helps knowing we are all in this together. Everyone feels dirty, cold, and helpless but somehow we can all come together and try to stay positive (even though sometimes it is hard to ignore our negative side). Let’s just say everyone was a little more excited on the walk today when we knew we had a warm folkehøgskole to go back to. I mean we knew we were beat when we were genuinely excited to sit on a bus for 2 hours, in fact, most of us wanted it to be longer 😂.

I had deep conversations about American vs Norwegian politics and college comparing the two. What shocked me most of all was how Norwegian college works. The only thing that you have is your «score» which is based on your exams and grades in high school. Nothing else. No personal essay. No extracurriculars. No extenuating circumstances. No recommendation letters. Just one number that determines everything. How unfair… So it definitely made me rethink my complaints with getting into American colleges.

My appetite seemed to get the best of me after I ate… 5 pølse i brøds at the school. I won the «competition» for eating the most in our group. The thing people were most excited about though was the opportunity to shower. I have never seen people rush so fast 😅.

Tomorrow’s stop: Nidaros cathedral, can’t wait!

ps: the song is latin and we sang it each day in the church together through trial and error!