ConseCrate

The night on the mountain was so very long. I don’t think I really slept at all. I needed to go to the bathroom all night but I wasn’t about to leave the shelter of our tent to go out into the blowing snow. I was freezing as it was! Marshell kept getting up to put wood in our little stove that seemed to emanate very little heat. I was so thankful she did because I felt frozen in place and just longed for morning to come. Finally, daylight came and along with it came the cameras. Of course, they wanted to get us on film first thing in the morning. I was not in the mood but I plastered on my smile and got ready to greet the day. As they were filming us talking about how poorly we slept, our tent began to blow over. We hustled to get our stuff together and our snowsuits on and then they put all of us in another tent while they filmed for a couple more hours. It seemed interminable.

Finally, they put us on snowmobiles and sleds to go down the mountain. This was pretty cool – I kept thinking about how my nephews, who are snowmobile aficionodos, would have loved to be there in that moment. It was seriously beautiful zipping down the mountainside on the back of that snowmobile.

Before we knew it, we were at a small resort where apparently the camera crew had stayed overnight. There was a breakfast buffet and then they loaded us onto a bus to go somewhere else. After no sleep and no time to even brush my hair, I felt zero readiness to be on camera again, but I was finding out that my readiness had little to do with my circumstance when it came to reality television. I knew I just needed to smile and go with it.

They filmed us on the bus a bit and then we pulled into a town called Lom where we parked in a parking lot and did some more filming. Henriette taught us a Norwegian phrase or two and we were to try to repeat it. Then, it was lunch time and after that they divided us into small groups in which we were to go around Lom and talk to the locals. Brandon and I were paired together and I put on my extrovert face as we walked into a grocery store and tried to strike up conversations with patrons. Then, we went over to the Stave church in Lom. I asked if we could go over there when we were walking around the city with the director but I hadn’t realized they planned all along for us to go there. Brandon and I went into the Stave church and a woman gave us a tour. They filmed us there for quite a while and it was very moving to finally be in one of those old Stave churches. It was gorgeous.

Finally, the day was done and we could all go shower and get ready for supper. The next day we would be filming our first real challenge on Alt for Norge!