The best proposal I have EVER gotten over red wine and moose meat

(I decided to split my post on Norway up. This is part 2)

Today the weather was a bit nastier. It was rainy and cold. I roused myself out of bed to go to a nearby swimming pool with Robin, Sarah and their respective younger siblings. Sarah is an artist, and wanted to take some underwater pictures for inspiration. I was tired, but didn't want to miss that. We came home and had a delicious dinner of bacon and omelette, with hot chocolate, tea, salad and blueberry juice. I also made sure we picked some of my long-missed Norweigan brown cheese. Something I was exposed to at UWC and immediately loved. Then Sarah and Robin set off to attend a friends' birthday party. They did invite me to go along, and at first I was tempted, but after all their talk of "I wish we didn't have to go out. It's so expensive and takes so long to get there, and it's such a good day to stay home and watch a movie. But we HAVE to!" I decided maybe I was better off chilling at their pad.

You know how sometimes in life you're just in the right place at the right time? I'm pretty sure I just had one of those moments. Robin suggested a few times that I go upstairs and chill with his parents a bit. I am rarely one of those who needs to be invited twice for that sort of thing. I went up to keep his English mom company as she prepared dinner. She made us some gin and tonics, and we talked about UWC and some other things. I talked to his Norweigan/American dad as well. It turns out, Robin's dad hunts and had gotten a moose recently, and brought back the best cut for dinner tonight. I've had moose once before in my life, back in middle school my music teacher gave me a bite, and I have always remembered it as a very pleasurable thing. So I stuck around and agreed to have a small second course.

The moose was as good as I remembered it, if not better. It is incredibly lean and tender, flavorful and delicious. We had other goodies, and split a bottle of red. At some point during the conversation, R's mom asked me if I sailed. I don't know if it was the sailboat necklace I have on, or just totally out of the blue, but I'm glad they asked. I said, "Not as much as I would like." I have sailed a few times in my life, but I've become rapidly more enthusiastic about the idea since I became a pirate, and I seriously considered spending this semester working on a tall ship in the Carribbean instead of backpacking around Europe, but in the end chose this.

So there it was. All of a sudden Robin's dad was asking me if I would like to sail to Germany with him. I can't tell you how excited and thrilled I was at the idea. Now I get basically every adventure I've wanted recently, all in the space of this one trip. He wants to leave on Tuesday (three days from now). I had been planning on staying in Norway longer, but when the winds of chance call, well who am I to resist? It turns out that if I take him up on the offer, I can see a bit of the coast of Sweden, which I wasn't going to get to do at all, and he can drop me off in Copenhagen on his way to North Germany, which was where I was planning on going next anyway. He said I should think it over, but I'm pretty sure I could never pass something like this up. After all, this is what this trip of mine is all about. What my whole outlook is about, really. Live by the seat of my pants. Do awesome, exciting random things when I get the chance. So it looks like I'm going to learn some new skills, and teach some new people a few sea chanties.

Also, I've decided the best way to deal with pictures for this trip is just to put them in facebook albums. There are two so far. Here are the links:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=19491&id=1348740062&l=2c0de186b8 -Norway and the end of Scotland

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=18909&id=1348740062&l=6dfc4212c7 -London and Scotland