Getting to know the area

Last night we were invited to a wonderful dinner that included all of us and our host families.  It was a great evening filled with delicious food and rich conversation.  We quickly became quite comfortable with our hosts for the upcoming week.  It was a great night however, I am fairly certain that I feel asleep before I even reached the bed!  

    

                                         [Eidsfoss]                                          [Eidsfoss]

Today was our day to "get to know" the Holmestrand area.  I was picked up at 10am and then we proceeded to go house-to-house to pick up the rest of the girls. Our wonderful guides, Hans Arne & Espen took us to Eidsfoss.  This picturesque little town fit the profile of what I imagined Norway to look like before arriving.  Nestled between the hillside and a lake, Eidsfoss was a booming place back in the 1800s thanks to an iron works company. As we walked along our guides shared some of the history to the area [including a ghost story or two.]

[Hans Arene, Espen, Mary Kay, Jennifer, Carsolina, & Christy]

We popped into the local grocery store - and twenty minutes later, Hans Arne & Espen were laughing and saying that only 5 women could take 20 minutes to shop in the smallest grocery store in the area [pictured below]

After leaving Eidsfoss, we had a picnic lunch and then proceeded to downtown Holmestrand where we were given a presentation about an exciting new development project that intend to bring a lot of energy and excitement to the city.  Today also included our first Rotary Club presentation.  Our host club was so gracious and very interested [or at least they pretended to be] in the information we had to share about ourselves and the Mid-South.  We were all a bit nervous for our first presentation but everyone did great!   If it was any indication of what future clubs will be like, we found that we will have nothing to worry about.

Tomorrow we go to Oslo for a day of museums, lunch, and possibly a bit of shopping!