Replying to Missing classes for personal trip

So I'm traveling to norway this fall over thanksgiving for personal reasons and most of my classes have policies about only being able to miss classes for school sponsored events and such. also most of them wont let me reschedule any tests or quizzes that i miss during this time. I was wondering if any of you have done something like this before in college and what did you do? I'm thinking about trying to talk to my dean about getting it school sponsored as a further learning kind of thing. anybody have any other ideas?