Russ is over

Soo.. That's a wrap.
The russetid is officially over, and it's very sad, as a matter of fact - it's very very sad :(
I've completely lost my voice, all you hear is a loud, high-pitched scraping sound when I try to speak, so I haven't been able to talk properly since May 16th! If this continues much longer - i will go crazy! Speaking of which - gogo May 17th! YAY! Happy Snoreway Time!
I'm sure there's looaads to tell, like that the four of us (Ulrik, Jakob, Elin and myself) drank a crate of beer inside a phone booth for a russ-knot, and later we woke up some teachers at six in the morning! (One of them had baked buns for us, she was supernice). It snowed as well, in fact - it was the coldest May 17th for fifty years.

Go team, we fail at climate, indeed. I put some before/after pictures pre/past russetid here, to describe everything in pictures for you.

And here I am, doing what I do best! In fact, exactly what I am going to do now, and have done for some 16 hours. Sleep!

Happy Birthday Hans-Jørgen

Lol! We went rollin' on ze bus, the Red Lion last night. It was actually kind of awesome, Eivind did a lot of homo-erotic things which made me temporarily deaf and blind. He also had my permanent marker taped to his hand and called himself "Edward Marker-hand". Hardcore. He actually did manage to pull some chick from some other bus, can't remember which, but I mean, yeah, sweet.

The weather is beaautiful, I was home at seven this morning so I only had time to run home, eat and put some more wool on (because even though it's sunny, it's getting colder - for some peculiar reason). Actually I woke up with my head on Hans-Jørgens behind :D

Anyway, I giggled like a little girl yesterday, must've been the icecream, because I usually don't giggle as much. The carpenters working on our house asked me about how late I was home this morning. Funneh!

Last Nights at Tryvann

There you go, we're done with all the Tryvann parties :( It was a blast last night - on Friday Ulrik and I were dressed up as barman and barmaid - it was supercool. It was all part of The Red Lion (their bus) having a pub & bar theme, right? So we had to get into the spirit of the place! It was funky anyway. Though last night we didn't dress up, we were just awesome to bits, and we danced and ate Laffy Taffy.

We then had an afterparty at Even's place. We made omelette and tranced and we jumped on the lawn and other crazy stuff, because that's just how fresh we are. Oh yeah.
So we went home at about noon today and now my feet hurt again, but not as much as before. Either way, t'was funky, there were flashing lights and I can swear i saw a female midget stripper on top of the bus "Scream '08" on Friday! She was topless even. Now that's something you don't get to see each day - eh?

I for one certainly hope not.

Tusenfryd!

Last night we went to Russens Dag (the Russ' day) at Tusenfryd, which is like the local theme park. In any logical sense of local - seeing it's an hour drive from the capital, but it's the only shit we've got. Right? So stick with me here.

For some peculiar reason (*cough*the police*cough*) Drikkepress arrived like almost two hours late, so we didn't really have a lot of time to swoosh around. But we did go on the bumper cars, which was supercool, and the dragon and the squid. The Dragon's the best, it was funky. We bought giant icecreams, and Elin had icecream on her nose, and we also had popcorn! Yay! Popcorn.

At the giant kransekake-house (which is a traditional, Norwegian, nutty-flavoured celebration cake (for christmas, weddings, confirmations, May 17th etc.) stacked as a round pyramid) we did the sinus, cosinus and tangens dance. It was geeky, but funky. We also met Iselin at the entrance, she is a childhood friend of mine, she's shy in the beginning, but I think she's about as crazy as the rest of us. She's also an excellent artist, you should see her stuff, it's wicked.

In the end everyone were kind of tired. The Red Lion (the lads' bus that we're occupying) won two awards on tuesday, including their schools' bus of the year and the nicest interior. Which they totally deserved, because they've done such nice stuff to it. But we're all ill or at least semi-ill after Lillehammer, so we weren't up for much of a party in the end, and we just went home. Iselin slept at mines, seeing she lives far away. I'd forgotten my keys, so I had to climb through my attic-window to get in! Today was such a beautiful morning, and I have fruit roll-ups from America that I'm going to surprise Elin with! :)

I'm in such an excellent mood!

Russ - Knots

These are the knots for my hat that I've done so far. It's not really extremely impressive, but I'm working on it. There is aboslutely no point in being at school right now whatsoever, but I have to. The weather's beautiful, and all the Norwegians are getting happier by the minute, the trees are getting greener and there's flowers and birds. It's quite nice, it better not start snowing now. It can't start snowing, I refuse for it to start snowing.

1. Sit in a tree one hour before school starts.

2. Kiss a policeman.

3. Stay awake for 24 hours.

4. Sit underneath your desk for an entire lesson.

5. Sit with one finger in your ear for an entire lesson.

6. Buy drive-in food at McDonalds in a shopping cart.

7. Eat a hamburger in two bites. (puh)

8. Drive around a roundabout ten times.

9. Been to Tryvann.

10. Watched an episode of Postman Pat and had a sip each time he gears his car wrong.

11. Pink feather! oohoh000oohh!

And I just looove that pig! It's gorgeous!

MAAAH

I am officially ill now, it hurts a bit. Like my legs. But I got to be strong though, to be fair we've only just started!

For those who don't know, I've been to Lillehammer this weekend as part of the russetid. There was this giant party, but it rained and it was muddy, which is why I'm a little reduced at the moment. On the brithg side, it was a blast, and I even took some pictures! You can see them here if you'd like.

//rave on. "Zomygawhd!" - quote, Skjalg.
I might fill you in laterz.

Tryvann part II

Good lord, before and after shots. A little blurry it appears. Ooooh, but I'm still alive! Yay! Now here's what happened!

Okay, so seeing I was a little reduced, Elin and I didn't join our bus Drikkepress until around eight-ish. We drove around town, danced, bought some blue sweets, met a couple of other buses, Work It and Berserk, to name two. We then picked up some of the other Drikkepress girls and headed for Tryvann.

It was insane fog and lots of rain so it took a long time to get the bus up there safely. Whoever decided to throw a party up THERE? Of all places. We were stopped by the police when nearly there and had to fill our bus to the brim with other russ whos buses had broken down and such. Hmm. Well and then we got in to Tryvann and Elin bought popcorn and I bought a colourful twirly thing and we ran around to collect glowsticks. I think it rained all along, so we were probably soaked to bits, but nobody really cared.

In the end we were covered in glowsticks and assorted glowing bling-bling and we danced around and jumped up and down and it was wild. Awesome music. My legs hurt so much I thought I was going to split open, but I didn't. Luckily! We did meet Hugo and Martin and Ulrik and Hans Jørgen and Niclas I think and other people and at some point I was dancing around with a Saami flag. When one of the DJs were playing at the main stage the crowd kind of pushed me to the front and this guy picked me up and held me up above the crowd. Don't know if anyone noticed, it was wet and glowsticky and everyone were jumping superhigh. But it was ace anyway!

Around 2 AM-ish we headed to The Red Lion (which is another bus) and we listened to Hugo's ubercool song. Clicky clicky! And other stuffs, and I drew King Crab with sparkly markers on Hans Jørgen and raved for a bit. While raving I ended up in another bus called Prestige, where I met some lads from my school, but their music was really bad so I decided to get off - but they wouldn't let me! They closed the doors and blocked them and were getting ready to roll! EEP! I did yell at the guy until he let me off though.

Safely back at The Red Lion we danced around some more, played some more good music and then started to leave for the drop-off route. Like the different stops we had to make to let everyone off not too far away from home. The lights were off in the bus, so Elin and I kind of lit up the place with all the glowsticks, t'was funky. Ulrik then launched the idea of an afterparty, which was gratefully accepted, and we were dropped off by his place and danced some more! We had Cocoa Pops and did "The beetle that has rolled over on its back and is unable to get up again"-dance. Which kind of looked more like a "don't do drugs, kids" advert.

I think I danced the most really, even though I was in a lot of pain. Martin wrote "badger" on my arm, and then we drew shrimps on our russebukser to see who could do the best ones. Everybody danced tons though, and it was a most successful afterparty. Around 7:30 in the morning Thomas(?) and I were the only two still awake and still dancing(!), but we woke everyone else up and thanked for a lovely night and we all walked to the bus station.

Quite crudely I rung my stepmums doorbell and gave her my russecard and we said hello and we had Thomas in a shopping cart. While waiting for the bus we tried to get the cars passing by to honk their horns, but they didn't :( Some waved though! I then arrived safely home and died. Thank you, and good night.

Tryvann

Woot! I am still alive!

I can't walk though, that's a problem. But the pink glowstick is partly to blame for that. Someone just gave it to me, and it was so supercool I couldn't stop jumping up and down for hours on end. Also I had the weirdest dream about pears, I don't think I'm going to drink anymore pear cider for a while!

Obviously I'm a little tired seeing I came home six o'clock this morning. But chin up! (dirty) russ-suit back on and straight back up to Tryvann to party some more tonight. I'm slaughter tomorrow morning.

Edit: Oh! And we fixed the music for our buss! Yay! We got hold of double speakers and a mixtable at least! :D Not as grand as the one stolen, but significantly louder than without any sound at all.

Drikkepress '08

So this is our bus! We put the foil with the logo on last night, so now it looks kind of cool. Don't know if I'm very supportive of the name, but too late now! Drikkepress means "drinking pressure", meaning "forcing you to drink". Kind of gay actually. But it looks sweet now. The bus is without those hot speakers, seeing someone had to go ahead and steal them away :(

Someone stole our music :(

Yeah, that's right. Someone's actually stolen our mixtable and speakers from our russebuss. Worth about 10.000,-




Soooo. Not only don't we have any music, but the bus was kind of hidden, very few knew of its whereabouts. The plot thickens.


Really, what a heartless thing to do! Steal the loudness from the russ! We're just poor students trying to set something up to have some fun!

And then just one day ahead of the grand opening at Tryvann :(

Seems we're doing the a cappella version.

Russe transportation

In the sixties (60s, haha, blind) the trend for driving around as a russ was introduced. In the beginning it was common to redo an old car, paint it red and write dirty things on it, while as now the trend has changed slightly.

While as russebiler (russ-cars) are still common in norway, russevans (russ-vans :p) and russebusser (russ-buses) have become more dominating, especially in the capital and surrounding area. The russ are now spending several thousand kroners on their russetid, anything from about 1.000,- to 30.000,- per person. People are going crazy and use millions to do a bus up to look like a top nightclub or to suit a concept.

For example this year there's a bus called The Homies who are being sponsored with 60.000,- to do a the Simpsons theme for their bus. There's the twin buses (one guy (Monstars) and one girl bus (Tunesquad)) that do a Space Jam concept. There's Das Uberknuller that do a german 80s music/eurovision concept, there's:

Tubbietown Tellytubby concept.
Rockering er. they dance, I think.
Encourage racing theme.
Trofé (Trophy) hunting/cabin concept.
Nostalgi Winter Olympics 1994.
Prestige Magic/illusion.
Scoop Ice cream!
The A-Team The TV series.
Attention Loudness.
Saligia the seven deadly sins.
Løslatt (set free) from jail/school.
Cherokee Indians!
Aviators.
Victoria Siempre the russian revolution.
TEE OFF golf theme.
Majestix - Asterix and Obelix theme.
Work it Handyman/carpenter concept.

Is it necessary to make a point out of this being cheesy? Either way, there's tons more as well! And you wont believe how much money they spend on these things. Crazy shit. I'm actually on a bus as well, but I'll tell you later. Whoop!

Russetiiid

In Norway we have the oddest tradition for our senior high school students. And actually, this tradition includes me this year!

Basically we dress up in red trousers(or blue/black/green depending on the subjects we're taking) and then drink and party for the better part of a month. This is called being a "russ", or having our "russetid" (russ-time). Usually our russetid lasts from May 1st to May 17th, though this year we start this friday (April 25th) and keep it going to the 17th. Yay!

So anyway. Like I said, this is tradition, which means a whole lot of strange things come with it. In addition to the trousers (which have our name and school-name on it (in addition to little drawings and jokes)) there's a hat that goes with it that has a very long string with a tassle at the end of it. Part of tradition is to do a lot of dares and if you do, you get to tie a knot or an item to the string. You have to have two other russ, three parents or a member of the russ-administrative board as a witness for it to be an approved knot. The dares varies from year to year, so I thought I'd show you some examples for this year:

§1 - KNOT
24 hours (86 400 seconds) without sleep
§5 - RULER
Sit underneath your desk an entire lesson
§8 - POPSICLE thingy (the stick that's left)
Go swimming outside before May 1st.
§43 - WINE CORK
Drink a bottle of wine in 20 minutes (warning, health hazard)
§60 - PARKING TICKET
Pay for an hour of parking downtown and occupy the lot with yourself and your three-wheeled bike
§76 - REFLECTIVE ITEM
Do a speed-limit control using a hair dryer and a reflective vest in a 30 km/h zone
§90 - PIECE OF ENVELOPE
Rent a Postman Pat-film and have a sip each time he changes gear and jolts
§95 - STICK/BRANCH
Sit in a tree an hour before school starts
§100 - KEEP YOUR RUSS-UNIFORM UNTIL NEXT YEAR
Fail your exams

If you happen to be Norwegian (or understand Norwegian) read them all here.

Anyway, there's loads more to it, but I'll just finish with a very famous russe - poem/song, that goes like this:

Chickelacke, chickelacke, show, show, show!
Bummelacke, bummelacke, bow, bow, bow!
Chickelacke, bummelacke, jazz bom bøh!
Julekake, julekake, hjembakt brød!