so back to 1983....

After three days in New York (first pictures)we loaded on the plane Finnair and headed for Norway via Finland..when we got to Finland we had a 5-6 hour layover. At first they said we must wait the entire time in the small international area.....but they gave in after awhile....they couldn't keep us inside all that time....our small group wondered the area and took some pictures....and then we went back inside.....they had to at least stamp out passports. I can prove I was in Finland...even if it was just for a few hours.

Then next two weeks we (52 students) would be together in a small town called Torpo. We were to spend time together learning about the Norwegian culture, food and language. Of the 52 students half were from the US and the rest from other countries around the world. Chile, Paraguay, Canada, France,Switzerland, Germany, Iceland, ...just to mention a few. We were all in a new 

country, far from our familiar homes. We became very close very quickly. It was difficult to then 

think we must all go our own ways to our host families. 

 

(A few pictures from Torpo)

It was a great two weeks and we all learned a lot. One story though ....of the 52 students there were only 7 of us adventurous men...the rest were girls. ( it was difficult...lol) so one day we had the afternoon free and we men needed to gym time so we went and played basketball while the girls went down to the river to get some sun and swim in the river. It was a long walk down to the river. After we played an hour or so we decided it was too hot so we too decided to make the trek down to the river as well. About two thirds of the was down there was a long bridge and we stopped there to yell down to let them know we would soon be joining them.....as we looked down from the bridge, we from the United States, saw something we had never seen before. Many of the girls from Europe were sunbathing without their bikini tops on!  Now as we stood on the bridge we thought perhaps we shouldn't go down....just as we were about to go back up we heard them yelling to us, "come on 

down, come on down" being the proper gentlemen that we were we did not want to disappoint them so we ran the rest of the way down. I must admit this made us all a bit uncomfortable....they thought it was funny and said if you don't want to look...just don't look....we all decided to go swimming. Boy that water was cold....and for that we were glad.