2012-04-01 Gathering on April Fool's Day

On the way of driving my students home after playing basketball for almost 3 hours on the night of March 31st, I got a phone call from Barrett and he told me on the phone that we were going to have a gathering with our teacher Abbie and Helge at his house in the afternoon the next day. It was totally a surprise especially the date of the gathering was really suspicious! However, I was still thrilled by the invitation.

Barrett's wife, Jonas and crying Smiley, Abbie, Helge, Barrett, Jerry. Picture taken by Summer

Summer and I couldn't help thinking of the special gathering on the way to Barrett's house and still, the idea of getting tricked couldn't let go of our heads. When we arrived at the front gate of the lovely community where Barrett lives, there were about FIVE excited dogs waiting for us behind the gate. At first, Summer and I were pretty worried because we could hear the hostile grumbling sounds from them, but we felt a great relief when Barrett showed up and greeted us. To my surprise, one of the dogs whose name is "Bandit" was really interested in Smiley and kept sniffing her little feet and followed us close to the baby buggy all the way to Barrett's house. What a fun greeting!


Jerry was the first to be at Barrett's and of course, he brought his wonderful coffee with his own professional equipment. By the way, we were really lucky to have Barrett's wife with us on that day She's a great teacher who teaches at a special education school in Taipei and she's also a wonderful cook and handiwork master! You can see lots of delicate hand-made handicrafts all over the house. 


Abbie and Helge got held up by a box of new friends in front of Abbie's house. It's a long story and Abbie would tell us about it in class today. After they arrived, Helge came to the second floor to join us first and shared some interesting pictures taken with their new aboriginal friends in the mountains the day before. They went to South Mountain to see the cabbages and they ended up with a special adventure with those friendly aboriginal friends there. Helge even tried the raw goat meat and he told us that he really enjoyed it! It was like sashimi and actually Helge also told us that it's pretty common to have raw meat in Norway.


We shared lots of topics and Jerry took out the map of Norway while we were talking about the place where Helge comes from. We were all stunned by the distance between Oslo and the place where Helge lives. It's about 2500KM! It's over 2 times farther than traveling around Taiwan. Abbie also said that you need to take the train for 24 hours and then take a boat or drive a car to get to the city. I have to admit that sometimes it's really hard for people who live in a small country to imagine traveling for such a long distance. 


Helge brought us more surprises that he gave us some Norwegian chocolate and postcards. The pictures of the postcards are so beautiful that it's hard to believe they're real natural landscapes. It'd be amazing to be there in person to witness the magnificent scenery. The chocolate was a delicacy and it carried one more surprise that inside each wrapping paper was a Norwegian fair tale. I have to ask Abbie for help to translate the story for me soon. :D


It was an unforgettable time and I really hope that in the future, we'll still be able to sit at the same table and share everything with the same good old friends. It was a pity that Summer and I had to leave early for our family gathering. We all understand that happy moments fly! Dear CI classmates, come join us next time and I guarantee you that we'll create something incredible and unforgettable!

Our photographer: Summer