My First Weekend in Moss

It was a busy weekend in Moss—lots to do, and lots to see.

I don’t have a stable internet connection in my apartment, since this unit is only temporary until the ACN people move me into a different unit because of scheduling conflicts. Because of the temporary locale, they gave me a little wi-fi hotspot to use in this apartment, but it has a data-plan attached to it, and I’d hate to go over the data-plan and get overage charges, so I keep sneaking down into the school and into my office to use that stable wi-fi connection.

On Saturday morning, I went to my office at the school and played video games on my laptop for a while. There was a festival going in the downtown area of Moss, and there was also a 10K race—I know what you’re thinking, NO, I didn’t run the 10K race. I wouldn’t be sitting here typing if I had run that race (I would be dead), but one of the ACN staff ran it, so a few other members of the ACN staff went outside to the street with Norwegian flags and a sign to cheer her on as she finished the race.

After we stood outside for all of a minute as our colleague ran past us, we decided to walk downtown to the festival. When we got there, I was struck at how much it reminded me of home. There’s one street that someone told me was the “walking street,” and there are shops on either side. It was almost like a sidewalk sale, as the different shops had pulled racks out into the walking area. There were also plenty of food stands, as well—someone mentioned that I should get a “pølse med vaffle,” a hotdog wrapped in a waffle instead of a hotdog. It was an odd mix between the sweetness of the waffle and the saltiness of the hotdog. (Burt, to my right, said that we were getting funny looks from the Norwegians as to why a waffle-wrapped hotdog was picture-worthy.)

We went into the fenced-off concert area at the festival, and a big banner said that it was “Frederiks-Dagene,” the Frederiks-Days. I’m not entirely sure what the story is behind Frederiks-Days, but there was a festival involved! My group watched a couple of bands play, and we started shutting down after that. We walked the few minutes back to ACN and adjourned for the day.

Sunday, we went to an activity center outside the city of Moss. We took the highway out a few miles, and it was really beautiful countryside to look at—huge boulders were sticking out of the cliffs by the highway, and the trees were thick (and as a flat-lander from North Dakota who’s never really seen a forest, the verticality of the forest was something to behold).

The activity center also reminded me of home, particularly Upper Missouri Ministries where I worked for a summer. At Upper Missouri Ministries, there’s a small area cordoned off called the “Co-op Course,” and it’s meant for team-building. There are all these different little obstacles to cross, but you can only do so with a group of people working together.

In the same way, the people at ACN wanted to welcome the students to the school and show them that, as students, they were something like a team. It was meant more so as a fun “welcome weekend” type event. The students played paintball in big teams on a full-fledged paintball course complete with rugged terrain and places to take cover—one student went loping across the field at the enemy, tripped on a root, and broke his glasses in the process! (I learned a new word, but I’m not sure of its spelling: “stakkar,” meaning “poor, pitiable.”) The students also rode a mechanical bull and went down a 300’ zip-line over the barbecue grills that were cooking lunch. Once they were all tuckered out from running and riding and zipping, they got onto a bus and headed back for the dorms.

In all, it was a long weekend, but it was a lot of fun. (Of course, I’m not thinking of my frustrations with the washing machine in my apartment—“stakkar.”)