DAY 8

(May 1)

 

Yesterday was very interesting, as I suspected.  I have never had a press day before so it was an entirely new experience for me.  We all did little interviews with magazines, newspapers, and on-line magazines.  They all sort of asked the same questions; what does it mean for you to be in Norway?  What do you think of Norway so far? What suprises you most about Norway?  That sort of thing.

The hardest thing for me about yesterday was the individual filming they needed to do for the intro.  In the intro of the show there is an acorn that germinates into a tree and then off the branches of the tree are our pictures dangling, accompanied by a cute little musical tune.  My problem is that it is really hard for me to smile for no reason.  I can’t smile on cue, I have to have something to smile about…I can’t fake it.  They tried several techniques to make me smile, told a couple off color jokes, made some crazy gestures behind the camera, I tried very hard, but I couldn’t muster up a suitable smile.  Finally, the producer told me to just imaging seeing my grandchildren again…I smiled.

Last night we were done early and had a very nice meal on the ninth floor of the hotel that was our home base.  Dinner was followed by watching a soccer game (football for you Norwegians), a couple beers and some aquavit.  Then everybody wound up in room 231 drinking whiskey Dana had brought, and talking about our adventure so far.  It was a good time, Jonathan got a little tipsy, actually  several people did.  I didn’t though, there actually wasn’t enough there for me to get tipsy, probably for the better.

Today I drew Ingwaz, Freyr’s rune, he is close.