Fall or Winter?

We had our fall break here recently and I decided to go visit a friend in another part of Norway. Below is the city of Ålesund:

It was a good break for me and good times with Eleanor... but I was not prepared for Winter to visit on the last day of October! It was fun, though... I felt like a kid again... snow always gets me excited since we never had much growing up in Victoria. It was funny to watch the kids at a school across the street playing in the snow... doing things like we would.. snow angels, snowball fights. But there was another thing that I noticed - they had all this fancy equipment that I never imagined. Norwegians take EVERYTHING outdoors seriously, but that is a subject for a future blog on living in Norway. They had ski's and these sled things with steering - it really looked like fun. Wished I was smaller and I could play too :-)

The snow lasted a few days and then the famous rains of the west coast came... I got to glimpse the mountains a few times! And then it was back to the south coast again - boy did I enjoy the return of the sun! And back to Autumn called for a good old-fashioned pumpkin carving! This pumpkin was carved by an amateur carver, who is now the most experienced of probably all Norwegians! Everyone here came up and looked at it and many told me they had never seen a real pumpkin carved before!! Well, it's a good thing I am here to help give these people an international experience!