''Don't think you can - know you can.''
- Morpheus to Neo, in ''The Matrix''

Even our departure from Å turned into an adventure. I was cleaning out the giant pot that we'd used to cook our ''left-overs'' dinner the previous evening when Abelone came into the kitchen, startled to find me there. Apparantly, the rest of the trainees had just left with Espen on their five-kilometer hike to the boat docks to catch the ferry. She and Liz-Iren were piling all the luggage into a van that would carry them to meet the trainees at the docks.

My brain mustn't have been fully functional at that point. Just a few minutes earlier, I had suggested to Espen that he might want to start moving the troops out. I reminded him that it took me just under an hour to run a Norwegian mil, or ten kilometers. We glanced at our watches to find that we had just under an hour to walk half that distance, hung over and on a few hours of sleep. Espen rallied up the troops and got them out the door as fast as he could, but somehow the thought that didn't occur to me as I stood there cleaning the pots was that I'd probably like to get to the ferry on time as well.

So I finished cleaning the pots, and Liz-Iren, Abelone and I piled into the front seat of the van. The kind driver from the resort whisked us away, and when we arrived at the ferry, the IAESTE gang was nowhere in sight along the coast. With our line of sight, we could see they had at least a kilometer left to go, and less than fifteen minutes left until the boat was due to leave.

''We'll have to take the next ferry. I don't think we can make it,'' commented Abelone.

Then, the idea came: it was time to put all that Offensive Foreigner training to work!

''Don't think we can,'' I quoted Morpheus to the two of them, ''know we can.''

I outlined the plan: the three of us bring luggage on to the boat, one piece at a time, in a desperate attempt to stall the boat for as long as possible. If the boat folks got frustrated and decided they'd take off without us, they would at least have to unload all our luggage first, stalling the boat for even longer! If necessary, Liz and Abelone could pretend they couldn't speak Norwegian, and I could do the talking.

Long story short, we hardly even had to be offensive! By the time the rest of the trainees had arrived, we were just finishing piling our luggage into the boat in the same room as a bunch of French tourists who were looking on in confusion. And so, all 42 of us were on board as the ferry left Å behind.

Eilidh, Amy, Nadia and I scrounged through the remaining supplies and found a container of this chocolate goop. The four of us devoured almost half the can as we watched Å fall out of view.

Here's a fantastic shot of some of the gang hanging out at the stern of the boat during the trip.

Not everyone was quite as awake, though. I guess after kicking so much butt at the drinking contest, Steve needed some rest. He slept just like this, without moving an inch, for the better part of an hour.

Donna and Amy posed as the bustling metropolis of Bodø came into view.

Here are Eilidh and Amy smiling as we approached the docks of Bodø. Espen described the look of Bodø well: it appears to be a half-finished city. There was quite a bit of construction going on, and the train station there was the first I'd seen in Norway. The folks in Tromsø don't have one yet, although from what I understand, they often wish they did.

After a week in the Lofoten Islands, the pizza dinner we had at the local Radisson Hotel was absolute luxury. The folks at the Radisson were kind enough to look after our luggage in the foyer so that Espen didn't have to eat his dinner outside. At the end of dinner, he stood up to formally bring Arctic Week to a close, thanking the trainees and wishing us all the best in the future. I couldn't help but feel that it should have been us trainees offering thanks for such a fantastic week.

We piled into mini-busses and drove to a campsite on the water about ten kilometers outside of town. Around the campground were a whole bunch of Norwegian buildings with grass - and even entire gardens - growing on the rooftops. On this, our last evening of Arctic Week, we had a chance to walk around, enjoy the scenery, and speak with our newfound friends. One sentiment that many of us seemed to share was that it seemed we'd known eachother for so much longer than a week.

There had been a wee bit of a mixup, and the end result was that there were no tents for us to sleep in. In the end, the entire IAESTE gang piled into the cabin's lounge and converted it into a giant bedroom.

Despite the efforts of many of us to stay up all night, we all ended up fast asleep after our action-packed week.

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