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For a while today I thought I might have travelled back in time. During a conversation with Marthe, who was revising British history earlier today, I enquired as to what century Norway believes we are in. Her response caused much controversy and dissension among the Norwegians, with one group claiming the official line is that we are in the twenty-first century while a rival faction asserting that the orthodox view is that here, in the present day, we live in the twentieth century. Now, it still isn't clear what the authoritative definition is and, try as I might, I just couldn't explain the logic of the system with enough beef to win the crowd. Tine left convinced that even though the system says we are in the twenty-first century, it is not a logical conclusion. To back this up she reminded us that you wouldn't say a baby was one year old if they had only been alive for six months. Yes, of course this makes no sense.

Sam, my younger brother, then made a good attempt to be king of the nonsense when he admitted that he calls oranges, mandarins, clementines and nectarines all by the name "orange". Who knows what he calls a pumpkin. It doesn't matter because Tine stole the show with the unexpected, bizarre utterance, "mandarins are dead". Is anyone able to either confirm or deny this?

Sam arrived today along with Lucie, who was more than a little bit excited that it was snowing. On the way to meet them it began to fall and I remarked that she would be wetting herself when she saw it. Apparently that is not a common metaphor in Norway so I did my best to clear up any possible confusion. Sam and Lucie will be here until Monday and despite their apparent exhaustion it looks like it could be a busy time.

This evening we were hosted by the wonderful Magny Livden and her husband John Øyvind. Magny runs her own business, producing home-made soap in their converted garage, and has kept me amply stocked since the first week of my arrival in Arna. Perhaps she took pity on my thoroughly un-Scandinavian complexion but, regardless, it truly is the finest smelling stuff this side of her freshly-baked bread. Do the right thing and order some from her website. Handmade soap is the perfect Christmas present, I hope.

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This post has been a long time coming, but it's been hard to find the time to blog lately. As well as all the usual activities, I've had more school work and revision to do. I also went on a weekend away with the Rovers, the oldest scouts, which involved such big fun as cooking hotdogs in the snow and being woken up at three in the morning for a wide game. The early wake-up was no bother at all because Øyvind and I won. Going on the trip meant that I sadly missed most of Simen's tenth birthday celebrations. I did, however, give him a football which he described (in Norwegian) as "the perfect present". I had no idea when I gave it to him, but one week earlier his last football met its end under a car. So that worked out well. Yes, times have been busy.

They'll be less busy in my final fortnight before a seasonal return to England as I am done with school. The four weeks of lessons the church bought for me are up, ending with a test of the first five chapters, which I thought was easy, although I will possibly never know my result. Church activities are also winding either up or down; the final Casa Feliz of the year was yesterday, the last normal scout meeting the day before that and KKU will finish for Christmas on Tuesday. And now the weather.

It hadn't rained for a little while but today's unceasing downpour made up for that. This is good news for cycling as the last bit of ice on the roads has been washed away but bad news for Sam and Lucie who had got their hopes up for snow when they visit next week. As I made it clear time and again, the weather will almost certainly be wet and cold - but not cold enough for snow.

My english visitors can look forward to Sunday's scout activities though, carrying blazing torches up a hill together with two hundred or so others. At the walk's end, we will gather around a stage the Rovers half-built today and will finish this week. I was both impressed and amused as I watched them construct the thing. I just couldn't imagine Sarah and Chelle from New Life happily nailing a wall together in the driving rain, in the middle of a wood. But then again, Silje and Sveinung probably wouldn't even know where to begin a happy-slap.