My name is Lisa and I am a foreign exchange student from Norway. This is my fifth week here in the States and so far, it’s going well. I see a lot of new, exciting and different things that I would like to share.

    This weekend’s Friday night football game was an away game, so I took a break from football. I can’t say that I understand a lot of the game, but it was quite the experience when I went to my first football game ever, right here in Plain City.

    Instead of going to the Friday night game, I went to the Shekinah Festival to watch the hot air balloons and to eat baked goods.

I got to see the air balloons lift off, standing close. It was amazing. Three balloons went up, and people could pay and get a hot air balloon ride. I have never seen anything like that before, and I am glad I got to see it. My host family, the Matessas, and I sat on a small hill (man-made, since I have not seen any actual hills here), but quickly got up when my host dad sat in a fire ants’ nest.

    They also sold homemade ice cream at the Shekinah Festival, which was an opportunity I did not let pass either.

    On Saturday, I willingly got up at 6:30 to go see the air balloons again, and I finally got to eat some baked goods. They also sold breakfast, and dinner later. At 9:00 am there was a small auction–an actual auction! I really enjoyed that because it is something I have only ever seen on TV, and I would say that an American auction is unique. The auctioneer used his auctioneer voice, which kind of sounds like yodeling. In Norway, we don’t really have a lot of live auctions, and if there is, they try to make it look like an American auction.

All the money they brought in at the festival would go to the Shekinah Christian private school. It is a huge project for such a small school.

All in all, it was a fun weekend.