Ashley Long
Staff Writer
Christian Nielsen is a foreign exchange student from the capital of Norway, Oslo. Norway is located in northern Europe, in the Scandinavian Peninsula. The neighboring country is Sweden. There are about 1.3 million people in Oslo.
This year Webster Groves High School has two foreign exchange students, one from Norway and one from Spain according to Dan Sebben, who is in charge of the program.
“There are good and bad to living here.” said Nielsen. “The good is that the people are very nice, and the bad is that it is very difficult to find healthy food.”
In Webster Groves, Nielsen is a junior and plays for WGHS varsity football team. In Norway, the sports and school aren’t affiliated, so if one wants to play sports, they play outside of school.
“In Norway, there is a lot of snowboarding and skiing, but only in the winter,” Nielsen said. The top six sports in Norway are hockey, soccer, martial arts, cycling, skateboarding and winter sports. Football isn’t very popular in Norway.
In Norway, the government is a constitutional monarchy, meaning they have a king, who at this time is King Herald V, who has ruled since Jan. 19, 1991.
Schooling in Norway is completely different, they go from age six to age 19, which isn’t much different from the United States; We go from five or six to 17 or 18. It is the law in Norway to have at least 13 years of education. Going to a university in Norway is free, it’s called higher education. Nielsen stated,” The school here is much easier to do good, and it’s much easier to do bad. In Norway you could do nothing and get an average grade, but you have to work really hard to get a good grade.”
Nielson said overall he is enjoying his stay here.
