Mikele Marie: When McDonalds is 15$... You must be in Norway

So I went on this super cool vacation to Norway and Sweden. It was also the most expensive four days of my entire life. Let's begin with the night before the adventure. In order to take this opportunity to come to Lithuania, I had to do plenty of sweet talking to my dear folks. They really wanted me to take the fast grad option up at BYUI. That is essentially just fancy talk for no breaks from school even in summer. Ergo, graduation would come a lot sooner. That would be great and all, but opportunities like this don't just come knocking very often. So, we decided to compromise. I promised to take 6 online credits from BYUI in exchange for their Mikele traveling to Lithuania blessing. Unfortunately, my classes started right before we were leaving for this vacation. This was a huge pile of stress for me. Since I am so busy in the week I had almost no time to do my work before hand. I also had to try and work ahead a few days in my classes to ensure I wouldn't miss something important. It was a late night in Mikele land friends. I ended up having to stay up til about 4 am doing my homework. (I can already tell my math class is the bane of my existence.) Then I got a quick nap in and woke up bright and early for our plane.
The Vilnius airport is probably the smallest airport I will ever see in my life. Us girls have taken to calling it "the hall" because there is only one hallway to really walk in. Our first flight was from Vilnius to Gardermoen, Norway. We got through airport security with record time. The funniest part of security was probably when Hannah brought her full tube of toothpaste. That is illegal in airplane land so she had to surrender her beloved Colgate to the airport police. Classic Hannah. When we were all through, we had a little bit of time to sit and wait for the plane to come. It came on time, (hallelujah), and we went out to the plane. To our surprise, we actually went outside and boarded the plane up the stairs. This was incredibly cool because I felt like an old time movie star boarding their private plane except for there were a bunch of strangers there and I wasn't wearing a classy dress but a girl can imagine, right?
We all pretty much slept on the plane. I was trying to recover from my homework night, and the other girls were sleepy because that is just what young adults are. When we got off the plane, we exited movie star style once again and went inside the airport. From here we had to find a bus to the heart of Oslo. Stupidly enough, it was about an hour away. We bought our expensive 20$ bus tickets and got on the bus. The bus was pretty full. There weren't any seats together, so each of us picked a stranger and sat next to them. I picked the right stranger. His name was Tadas.
Tadas was from Lithuania. He came to Norway to visit his brother who lived in Oslo. He spoke incredible English. I was glad because we talked the whole entire bus ride. He was one of the most interesting people I have ever met. He was a computer scientist who loves to travel the world. Every year, he puts aside the money to go on a grand trip somewhere in the world. He even goes solo. I really admire that in people. He told me all about his adventures, and I told him about mine. When the bus arrived in Oslo, he offered to walk us all the way to the tourist information center. Boy was I lucky to have met him. We were never going to find that place on our own. Tadas, you rock.
When we went into the tourist information center, we found out they had moved it. By this point we were starving, so our new plan was to find food and then worry about the tourist center. Everywhere we looked food was soooooooooooo much money. The only thing we could find for a couple of bucks was bread. I just decided to eat nothing while I accompanied Paige to McDonalds. While I was watching Paige munch down on her delicious Big Mac and fries I decided my hunger would consume me if I didn't eat something. I went inside to order my own. I mean this is McDonalds. How expensive could it be? The answer is 15$. I can't even believe I spent 15 American dollars on McDonalds. Inconceivable.
At the tourist information center, we decided to invest in an Oslo pass. It is the cities tourist pass that gets you in free to all of the museums and public transportation. It was also incredibly expensive (go figure). To get our money's worth we decided to hurry back to the hostel and get exploring every museum our pass would allow us to see. We said thank you to the peeps at tourist information and went on our way.
We checked in to our hostel and went back to explore the town. We walked around the royal palace, saw the "castle" and went to some cool museums. My favorite museum was surprisingly the Nobel Peace Prize Museum. It was beautiful. I admire so many of the recipients, an it was so interesting to learn more about them. The prize is actually given in Norway, so it was cool to take a minute and learn more. We also went to some not so fun museums. I am a girl who appreciates a cool museum or two, but when you try to see so many in such a short amount of time they become a little tedious. We learned our lesson. Pick one or two important things and leave the rest. Just cause you can get in for free doesn't mean you should they just end up wasting your precious time.

Here are some pics of our Oslo exploration: