A Warm Welcome – American College of Norway Welcome Week 2018

After a hectic week of gathering prizes, making groups and planning activities, one of the best weeks of the year has passed; the American College of Norway’s annual Welcome Week! We were thrilled to welcome students from all over Norway, the United States and the world to ACN!

The first week at ACN was a whirlwind of icebreakers and opportunities for students to really get to know each other and connect with one another during welcome week activities.

For the 2018/2019 school year we have almost 50 students all from different backgrounds but with one common goal; to get their bachelor’s degree from the United States, this makes ACN such a unique place.

ACN works hard to provide a fun and dynamic Welcome Week experience to not only have the students get to know each other, but to also prepare Norwegians for life in America. Welcome Week in the U.S. is a huge part of the college experience and gets students excited and full of school pride, regardless of what school they go to.

Shane Cloutier, a West Chester University student doing a semester abroad at ACN, said “Welcome Week made it very easy to get comfortable with everyone at ACN and meet a lot of great people. It really got me excited for the rest of my time abroad at ACN.”

We kicked off Welcome Week with a scavenger hunt around Moss to get familiar with the area. Clues and tasks were scattered around Moss so that students would see some landmarks around their new town.

After running all around town, we ended  the day with a BBQ at ACN’s activities center, Stallen. 

The next day was busy on campus with more  more group sessions helping get everyone adjusted to college life. Everyone met up again in the activities center for a competitive evening of music bingo. Everyone let loose, listened to tunes from all different decades and genres and worked together to win a pizza night from Domino’s.

At ACN we try to incorporate both Norwegian and American traditions. We did this by introducing students to “pølse i vaffel” (hotdog in a waffle), a Moss tradition.

After pølse i vaffel, the ACNers were tested on their knowledge of American culture, history and geography during Nick’s American trivia night in Stallen.

We rounded up the week with an action packed day at Våler Kickoff-Senter where students played paintball, climbed ropes courses and rode a mechanical bull.

Throughout the week students were given tickets for participating in each activity and this year a record breaking 600 tickets were given out. At the end of the week we raffled off countless prizes that were generously donated to us by Domino’s Pizza, Mudo Moss, Kebab House Moss, REMA 1000 and NonStopFestivalen as well as college swag from ACN and our partner schools.

Welcome Week 2018 was a week to remember with new friendships made and new experiences had. We’re so excited to see what this new class has in store for their year at ACN. Welcome!

Click here to watch a recap of Welcome Week 2018.

Written by ACN’s Fall 2018 Intern, Monique Østbye

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