Wednesday 17 May 2017

May 17th

I would have liked to wear this today, but alas...
I had to work
Congratulations. That's what I have been hearing all day. Happy birthday. Not mine. Norway's! 203 years ago, the nation now known as Norway started. After Denmark 'lost' Norway due to the side they took during the Napoleonic wars, it was given to Sweden. However, Norway felt it might be the time to do it themselves and wrote their first constitution. It took another century though before they finally became independent. 

Anyway, that fact is celebrated each year on May 17th and there are children's parades in the morning (got stuck in four different ones this morning), people's parades and the graduate's parades in the afternoon. Plus lots of other things. Here where I made my home, there is the rowing race. Old fashioned wooden boats, six rowers and a cox and off you go. 

In my first year here, aren't they the cutest?
I took part in my first year here in Norway, not really knowing what I had signed up for and after that I took over as organiser of our little band of rowers. Ie, I organise the training sessions. This year for some reason, I managed to get several other people interested in joining and all of a sudden we had two boats!

I thought it might be fun to row against each other, the rest didn't agree. Then we had to anyway and in the end we didn't. Team two was on first, but unfortunately the boat they were racing against, didn't get out of the way enough and it was hard getting away. They did in the end though and finished after a respectable 6 minutes and 53 seconds. 

During our last training session
After that it was our turn. Team one. We got away finely, but were playing catch-up with the boat we were racing. However, we had decided to take it slightly easy on the away stretch and then going full tilt on the home stretch. They rowed, I yelled, they rowed some more, I yelled some more and we slowly crept past the other boat. My voice went everywhere, but when we got over the line, we had beaten our direct opponents by one boat length. 

But that wasn't the most important to us, we wanted to beat our colleagues and we did with a time of 6.28. Only because they were hindered at the start, otherwise it would have been very close! However, even though we did beat our direct opponents (who were a mixed team as well), there was one more mixed team left and they eventually beat us by 14 seconds. So, team 1 ended in second place, while team 2 ended in fourth (out of five). 

Team 1 was green, team 2 was pink
We will have a great competition next year!

12 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday to your adopted country. Ohhh too bad you could not wear that very pretty outfit but it would have been a hindrance driving.
    Hugs madi and mom

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  2. Hari OM
    Oh my - at last more than a two boat race!!! What fun and real suspense. You look GORGEOUS in your costume Mara. Brava brava!!! YAM xx

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    1. There tend to be lots of different crews, but for some reason they are either male or female, never mixed. So it came as quite a surprise to learn there were to be five mixed teams this year!

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  3. Congratulations. I admire the way you get stuck in to your new community right from the word go.

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    1. Thank you very much. The first year I said yes to most things and I thought I would figure out what I would like to do again in the second year and onwards. The rowing race is definitely a yes in my book. A few weeks in late April/early May for training and then the race itself. Brilliant fun!

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  4. Wow, you guys should be very proud of yourselves!

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  5. I think you should have worn that outfit (first picture) in the boat.

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  6. You seem to have fun with the boat competition. Good for you!

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    1. It is, and with two crews this year it was even more fun!

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  7. Wow! Happy birthday Norway! And great job with your rowing!

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    1. Well, the team's rowing. I only spur them on and steer the boat.

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Any weighty (and not so weighty) comments are welcome!