17th of may!!

gratulerer med dagen!!! 17th of may in norway = big huge country-wide CELEBRATIONNNNNNNNN!!! everyone dresses up their best - guys in their suits or traditional clothes, and girls definitely in their traditional dresses from whatever part of norway they are from... and everyone runs around waving flags and "gratulerer med dagen"-ing ("congratulations with the day") each other!


so to start it off, tor arne & joffe, our cool norwegian friends, got up at 5am to decorate their cars in birch branches & get dressed up in suits and ties to pick us up to go to oslo super early in the morning to catch the ceremony and parade.

me and debbie decided to really get in on the fun... they have this tradition here in norway, when you graduate from high school, you're what they call a "Russ". which means you wear red overalls covered in iron-on patches & signed by friends for all of may 1st to 17th, and have a to-do list of crazy random things, like sleeping in a roundabout for a night! anyways, to get in on the grand-finale of the fun on may 17th, me and debbie borrowed tor arne and joffe's Russ pants & hats and pretended we were Russ for the day!



here we are...the canadian russ girls... a.k.a "canadisk russ"!! hehe... we even made special canadian "russ cards", which ill tell you more about when i get the pictures from laurent's camera!

anyways, we spent a super fun day running around in oslo...

where we met some of our other friends... also dressed up in their cool traditional norwegian outfits!! here we are at the king's palace, where he stood and other members of the royal family stood on the balcony and waved to everyone all day!! (maybe laurent got a good picture of him!)

and we watched the giant huge never-ending parade

with the cutest little kids all dressed up and playing in marching bands, so loud & proud!! =)

hehe... i wonder how many canadians don't even remember that our national holiday is july 1st! i actually can't remember where i was last year for it... i think maybe on a train between montreal and trois-pistoles! =)

anyways, it was super fun and i was super glad to be able to be a part of it!! and with being Russ with debbie and having laurent & our norwegian boys to share it with, i think it definitely made my experience of norway "complete"!!! couldn't have imagined a better 17th of may... and the 17th of may will never be quite the same in my head again! =D

much more to share... but it's bedtime, so it will come soon!!

xox!
rainbow =)