If I was at all like my good friend Amy Vermeulen I would see that the date is November 1st, and I would think to myself, "Wow! It is almost December 2008, and it is almost winter.

Now if this seems a little obvious, or even ludicrous, or even frankly insane, then you haven't looked outside my window here in Norway. One day it was a cool beautiful Fall day, good weather for a light jacket. The next, there was snow all over the ground and the temperature was a a frigid -7 degrees Celsius.

I have to admit that I am loving it though and I have been enjoying my hikes through the woods even more now ... I sometimes feel as if I am in the movie Narnia. 

Last night, Halloween, we remembered it was Robyn Gayle's birthday, the birth night for all ghouls and goblins. Sort of fitting isn't it? At Strommen. the two Americans on the team hosted a Halloween party.

Norwegians, like most Europeans, don't really celebrate Halloween, and so we had to do quite a bit of explaining to do about the event and why it is held. Mind you, the kids here are quickly getting into the idea of the event - candy time.

It is hard to feel more foolish than I did when trying to explain to teammates why on Halloween we dress up like fools and are given candy. When they asked "Why?" I had to answer, "I have no idea."

When you arrive at someone's door, and say "Trick or treat?" what do you do if they say "trick?" Ehhhhh, then you giggle, push your open pillowcase a little further into their faces and hope they are joking. Isn't the night meant to be something to do with All Hallows Evening, the night before All Saints day, when the ghosts and evil things get to roam one laqst evening before the forces of good arrive? But what has that got to do with candy and dressing up and tricks or treats?

It was a fun night anyway and I think the whole team enjoyed their time. It is not hard hard when you are surrounded by friends and bucket loads of delicious candy. We ended up watching a scary movie, Strangers. I would tell you more about it, but unfortunately I only watched about 5 minutes in total, as I spent the rest of my time buried in the hood of my coat.

D went as the famous Norwegian Nordic ski jumper Bredesen, complete with skis and goggles. Very funny as you can see.

Meanwhile, I decided to as Nansen, the very hot and very dead Arctic explorer. Nansen traveled on his boat the Fram up to the Arctic and explored huge chunks of it ... look it up if you want to know more. He also won the Nobel Peace prize for the work he did freeing prisoners during the war.

Unfortunately, from my costume, no one really knew who I was, even after I started carrying round my boat. I think this may have been because I didn't have a rifle. I think a rifle would have really pulled the whole thing together.

The Americans came as a bag of jellybeans, so this made me feel a little better about my costume. They ended up getting pretty annoyed with Nansen popping their "jelly" balloons, and it took Bredesen to break the warring groups up.

We have a big match tomorrow against Arna Bjornar, even though we have clinched silver we want to end the season undefeated since the summer break .It will be a hard game as they are in fifth place in the table, but I know it is within reason for us to do this.

RhianWilkinsonSoccer.com is the Official Website of Rhian Wilkinson.
All rights reserved. All content copyrighted by their respective sources.