It's Russ Season!

Russ are the graduating high school seniors in Norway. The tradition basically consists of wearing red overalls (or blue, depending on what field of study they were in), completing tasks to get knots for their hats and partying with their friends to celebrate graduation from high school. Partying starts around the end of April and continues until May 17th (the national holiday). In other words its 3-4 weeks of drunken nights and dares to recieve knick knacks to hang from the tassle on their hat. Groups of friends will get together and buy (or rent) a bus, which they paint and deck out with elaborate sound systems, couches, TVs, a bar, ect. and go around town partying and completing their tasks. I'm convinced that one of their tasks is to try to keep me awake at night, since the like to party at the lake down the road from me and keep their music very loud. Some nights I can hear the music until the sun begins to rise in the morning (which right now is about 4:20 AM). It seems to be a pretty fun tradition, although I will admit I'm not a fan of the drinking, sex and other "crazy tasks" (for lack a better word) that go on, but once all that is taken away it sounds like one of the best celebrations I've ever heard of. If you want to know more about the tradition Wikipedia has a great article and Aftenposten (largest Norwegain newspaper) recently wrote an article about the drunken russ celebrations.