Most Norwegians start their day off with breakfast with friends (no matter how early they were up the night before) and then head downtown for festivities. The big event of the day is the parade. There are over 100 schools that participate. (Once you see about 30 every kid kind of looks the same), but it was cute for the first hour or so. All the kids are dressed up. Some schools have bands and baton twirlers. The best part of National Day (in my opinion) is that everyone is dressed up. Norwegians tend to dress up in traditional clothes. I'll put up some pictures don't worry. The outfits are specific to each region in Norway, so you can tell where everyone is from by their dress. Women tend to wear long dresses/skirts with embroidery and buttons. Some men had suspenders, some with fancy vests. They all seemed to have the tall socks and pants that came to just over the knee, and both genders wore shoes that reminded me of what you might think of the Pilgrims wearing. If people weren't wearing traditional dress, they were dressed up in some other way. Lots of guys in suits. Why don't guys wear suits more often? They look so good dressed up. Most women were wearing dresses. The parade was really fun. Lots of Norwegians flags waving and so many cute kids running around. Gosh Norwegian children are adorable!
The weather was great today (except one minor setback). It wasn't too sunny and it started out with the temperature where you need a light jacket and warmed up to jackets-are-way-too-hot weather. There was about a 15 minute period where it downpoured right in the middle of the day. That sucked. Luckily I brought my umbrella, but everyone went for the T-bane station (Sarah and I included) and it ended up being a disaster. We stood there for probably 20 minutes with hardly anyone moving in any direction. They ended up not letting anymore people into the station because there were too many. I got pretty nervous at a point that we wouldn't be able to get out of the crowd. But we did, so never fear! I couldn't believe how many people were out and about though. It was ridiculous.
I ended up on my own for a while and decided to walk up near the Royal Palace. I've actually never walked up there so it was cool to see it up close. Earlier the King was out waving to people, but we were on our way there before the sudden downpour so we didn't get to see it. Directly behind the palace there is a really nice park. I'm not sure if I mentioned but everything is green now in Oslo. I don't know when it happened but two days ago and just looked around and it was like that. Anyway, I was tired so I laid down in the park and took a nice little nap. I walked around a little after that because it was so nice out, but I was really tired when I got home. I think my face got a bit sun burnt too. It's still pretty light out right now (going on 9 o clock). There's people outside my house playing volleyball. It's such a nice night, I'll have to go out and enjoy it some more :)
All of my pictures are on facebook, so check them out!
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