2nd of October

Our Nordplus Junior-week will officially begin on Monday, but today both the Finnish and Icelandic students travelled from their home countries to Norway. The Finns left at 6 o’clock by bus from Vaala to Oulu airport. The Icelandic had travelled by bus to Keflavik already on Saturday and stayed the night at the hotel.

The whole day was full of delays and mishaps. The Finns’ flight from Helsinki to Oslo was late as well as the Icelandic’s flight from Keflavik to Oslo was over two hours late due to technical problem. After a 110-minute wait and about 6-7 power outages the Icelandair finally took of. They also needed to replace a battery in the plane. 

We were supposed to meet in Oslo and fly together to Trondheim. We did actually, but three hours later and with the other flight. Luckily we got the new flight tickets for free. Because of the delays we missed both the preordered train and the bus from Trondheim to Brönnöysund. Luckily our friends in Brönnöysund organized us a charter bus. Now we are sitting on the bus and heading for Brönnöysund. It will take six hours to get there and we will be in Brönnöysund after two o’clock at night. It will be too late to be accommodated in the host families at that time of the night so we will stay the first night at the hotel.

This day has been very expensive for the project, but let’s hope the Nordplus Junior officials in Stockholm will understand the situation. Most of the  kids were meeting for the first time and it was fun and they are excited to see what the future holds. The students were tired, sweaty but lucky. They got acquainted right away and had fun together. We didn’t let some problems to spoil our first day together but especially Almar was very disappointed because we missed the train. .

Tomorrow morning we will meet our Norwegian friends at school in Brönnöysund. Looking forward to it!