A Journey to my hometown!

Well, right now I am sitting in a hostel in Bergen, Norway, on our group trip, debating what I want to do in this blog post.  Should I keep in chronological, or should I write about the really exciting stuff, my European Easter travels, while they are fresh in my mind?  It will probably bug me if things aren't in order here, so I think I'll tell you a bit about our trip to Oslo waaay back in the middle of March.  Or at least the parts of the trip that haven't been crowded out of my memory by new travels....

It all began with a VERY early taxi to the train station on Saturday morning (5 am-ish, I think).  The train ride was beautiful, for the part of it that I was awake.  This semester I've found that it's a lot easier for me to sleep on a train than in the car or on a plane--I'm almost like a baby, take me on a train ride and I'll fall asleep :)  Here's a picture of the sunrise over Lake Mjosa, the largest lake in Norway that we basically follow the whole time on the train to Oslo.  

When we got to Oslo, we headed to our hotel to drop off our belongings, and then walked around down with the ultimate destination of a restaurant called KoloniHaugen.  It is a restaurant that tries to use local, fairly produced food.  Here we listened to a speaker from the global Slow Food movement who is a member of the group in Olso.  He told us a little about what Slow Food is overall, and also about some of the Norwegian foods that Slow Food has tried to put an emphasis on.  They were mostly fish and cheese, since there isn't a lot of farming in Norway (only 3% of their land is arable).  We were able to try Norwegian herring on Norwegian flat bread topped with Norwegian sour cream-it was pretty good for fish!  We then ate a lunch there, I got a traditional open-faced sandwich that had olive oil, lettuce, spinach, tomato, and boiled egg on top.  It was delicious, but also very expensive.  It cost 80 kroner, or about $15!  That was one thing that we had read about Slow Food beforehand, and heard about from the speaker.  Becuase Slow Food emphasizes giving growers fair prices and since Slow Food is typically rasied organically, it tends to be pretty expensive.  This was kind of hard for a lot of us students--we've been learning in our food class about how the food that we tend to eat isn't the healthiest for us in the long term, as well as some of the effects that it has on the environment.  I think most of us realize that it would be good for us and the earth to eat local, organic food, but we can't afford it in the US, and certainly can't afford it in Norway.  It's hard for this Slow Food movement to catch on when it takes the equivalent of working two hours at my campus job just to get a small sandwich!  Ah well, the food was good, and we were given some extra spending money to compensate for the higher expenses!

After our group meal, we were free to do some sightseeing on our own.  Laura and I decided to head to Akershus Fortress, down by the Oslo harbor, which was part of the original Oslo, known back in that day as Christania.  There we checked out the Norwegian Resistance Museum, took pictures of the parts of the fortress that remains, and toured the old castle residence of Norwegian royalty.  My favorite by far was the Resistance Museum.  It was really strange to go through and realize how hard life would have been in Norway at that time--no Norwegians were allowed to have radios, since people would listen to BBC, so we saw some pretty ingenious radios.  They were hidden in books, chair legs, and all sorts of other things. There were also resistance documents that were printed very small on little screens and hidden so that they could be transported undetected.  One thing that I thought was really cool to see was that the pastors and teachers of Norway stood up to the Nazis, even thought it meant losing their jobs and being jailed in some cases.  When they were told to preach/teach the Nazi policies, they refused.  Good for them!  Overall, this museum was really cool, and also really made me wish I knew Norwegian, since there were a lot of newspaper clippings and such that were in Norwegain, and I would have liked to be able to see what they said!

The Resistance Museum

Laura and I by the harbor

That evening I joined some friends of my parents from when we lived here when I was little, Tor and Asbjorg Weatherstone.  It was great to see them in Norway again after staying with them on my last trip to Norway four years ago!  I was really proud of myself because even though Tor came to show the way to their home, I remembered all of it, including the number of subway to get on, and the name of the stop!  I also got to eat a nice home-cooked meal, which was great!  The downside was that this was in the middle of our food diary assignment, so I had to write down everything I ate, and see how many calories was in it.  UGH.  Ah well, Norwegian waffles are worth it!  Then I headed back to our hostel, and went to bed.  I was sharing a room with Laura for the first time, and was kind of excited becuase she has a reputation for sleep-talking and I was curious to see what she would ahve to stay.  Either she slept really well or I slept really well, however, because I made it through the night without hearing anything.  Disappointing for me, but probably good for Laura ;). 

Sunday was another day of sightseeing, we headed out to an island called Bygdoy, which has quite a few museums.  Taking the bus there was VERY busy--I was lucky enough to grab a seat, but I had people almost sitting in my lap, and I don't think another single person could have fit.  It was very close, and I opted to get out a stop early and walk that part, I didn't really appreciate the constant bursting of my personal bubble!  When we were there I saw the Viking Ship Musuem, which has preserved three ships that were used as caskets of a sort for different Vikings in Norway.  It was cool to see the ships we've learned about (they were ground-breaking because they could go forwards and backwards!) and seen in so many typical Viking paintings--they did look pretty similar to the stereotype, I thought.  Then I went to the Norwegian Folk Museum, an outdoor collection of typical buildings of all areas and times of Norway.  We were there on a special day, so we were able to try traditional foods (some good-lefse, and some bad-dried fish), and hear a traditional Norwegian storyteller (in Norwegian).  I had a lot of fun wandering around seeing different buildings and taking pictures.  Then I came back into town on my own and wandered around a bit.  Overall, I was impressed with my ability to get around and read the maps for public transportation.  It was good to spend some time alone going around and fulfilling some of my sense of adventure, and get to know the town I was born in! 

Stave Kirke (Church) in Folk Museum

The main part of Vigeland Park, a statue garden-type thing

Viking Ship, Obviously.

More of Vigeland

 

 

 

 

Then it was time to catch another train and head home, but not before I stopped by McDonald's, since I was a bit hungry, but didn't want to pay for a real restaurant meal.  I decided to get a McFlurry, and saw that there were Smarties listed.  There aren't Smarties McFlurries in the US, but I figured it would be good so I got it.  Just so you know, Smarties in Europe are NOT the same as Smarties in the US. THey're more like M&Ms.  So, it was a good McFlurry, just not really what I expected. 

So, that was my trip to Oslo, it was very fast, but also very fun!  It was the beginning of spending a lot of time traveling, a few days after we got back from this trip most of our group went to London, then two weeks later we left for our Germany/Luther trip, and then we were on spring break for 10 days.  When we returned from spring break, we were back for four days, and now we are on our trip to Bergen and Copenhagen.  Then we will be back for a weekend, and then head to a traditional Norwegian farm for a week.  After the farm, we will be home for most of Saturday through Wednesday until we train and fly to Minnesota again!  The time has gone so fast, and I am kind of sick of living out of a suitcase, but Norway is amazing in the spring.  But more about that later-it's time to go to bed ( though the sun doesn't seem to think it is-still light at 9:45!).

Oh! Also, I recently uploaded pictures on facebook, if you would like to look through the album, here is the link: 
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.592226990730.2084957.52904562&l=7e85fd8fe0

A trip to Sverige (Sweden)

This post is WAAY late, sorry, and there are more to come eventually, I hope.  There's just so many things to do, and too many TV shows to watch illegally online, and even more recently, too much homework to do--I am writing this from Germany (so if there is ever a z where a y should be, I am sorry-their keyboards are different than ours!).  In the two and a half weeks before we left on April 13th for Germany and a tour of several key Martin Luther sites, we had a visiting professor come and do an intensive two week class with us on Islam, one of the three parts of the religion class I am taking here, and having a long reading everyday added A LOT to the work load we have been used to!  Anyway, back in February, seven of the other ScanBaltic trippers and I went to Stockholm together on a long weekend.  Overall it was very fun and interesting-unfortunately, I didn't have a camera so I can't show you pictures of all the awesome sights there were to see.

We left on for Stockholm on Thursday night, taking a train to Oslo and then an overnight bus to Stockholm.  We were all settled in our train seats on Thursday night only to discover when the train started moving that all of the seats were facing backwards, since the train was turning around but didn't actually turn around.  Some of our group weren't fans of riding backwards, but we made it work.  When we got to Oslo we followed the arrows to walk from the train station to the bus station, and then started the 1.5 hour wait for our bus.  We had been (unnecessarily) nervous about finding the bus station, so we came early.  We waited by a little mini-market that had magazines and newspapers, so I stood there and casually read TIME, trying to make it look like I was just skimming it.  I don't know if I pulled off the look very well, but no one came to tell me to pay for it, so I guess it was alright.  Then it was time for the night bus, which was interesting.  Theoretically, we were going to sleep on the bus and be bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and super excited for touring Stockholm once we got there at 6 am.  That was not the case.  First, the guy sitting behind me was very tall and big, so there wasn't room behind me to recline my seat, so I tried to sleep leaning forward, which didn't work.  Then I switched seats with Kelly, my seatmate, and the guy behind me then was shaking the seat, and the hook for the curtain was right by where I was trying to lean my head to sleep.  Overall, it wasn't a very restful journey.  I don't think overnight buses are something I will do a lot in the future.

When we got to Stockholm, we switched some money and went to find our hostel.  Then we went out and saw the sights, and stopped by the National Art Museum, which was interesting, then walked around a bit.  The museum was pretty cool, I have learned to appreciate art museums more now, although I sometimes don't really understand what I'm supposed to be looking at for mintues upon minutes.  One of the girls that was with us, Courtney, is an art major, so she really enjoyed this museum.  After the museum we wandered more for a bit, then found the shuttle bus to IKEA and decided to check out IKEA in its home environment.  The shuttle was kind of long, but once we got there we were greeted by warm, gooey, delicious smell of cinammon buns.  I'm not sure if the Stockholm IKEA is the original store, but it was HUGE!  We walked through the 4 story building from top to bottom--some of the girls found things they wanted, so we set out to find the checkout, and realized we had no clue where it was.  After wandering around, consulting the map, going back up and down a few times looking for it, we finally found a little corner we hadn't followed before.  It led to the stockrooms, which eventually led to the checkout, but in all our find the check-out adventure took about 20 minutes, and it was almost time for the shuttle bus back to town.  Some of the others found this confusing experience very frightful, and have declared that they no longer like IKEA, but I think it was fun.  I've enjoyed pointing out every other IKEA we pass on our travels and seeing what kind of reaction I get too--its pretty amusing. 

The next day we went to the Vassa museum, a museum that displays the preserved ship Vassa, which sunk in the harbor of Stockholm six hundred-some years ago, because no one bothered to check if they had made it too top-heavy or not.  It was a very fancy ship, meant to sail the world and show off the amazing-ness of Sweden, but that didn't quite happen.  It was a very interesting, very large museum--I could have spent hours more than we did there.  They had preserved the skeletons of the bodies they found on the ship, and presented a bit of what they had found out about them.  It was really nice to learn not just about the ship itself, but also about the people that were on it. 

We then returned to town and did a bit of souvenir shopping in Gamla Stan, the old town of Stockholm.  The streets there are very narrow and the buildings are old.  It really gave the feel of being somewhere else!  I stopped in a store and saw a beautiful handknit sweater, which is the one souvenir that I really wanted to bring back from this trip.  So, after passing it by once, bugging everyone else by talking about it and deliberating for a day, and figuring out how I would pay for a $220 sweater, I went back the next day and got it!  YAY!  I don't have my computer here, so I can't post a picture, but I will try to get one on here eventually.  It's very beautiful, the majority of it is cream-colored, with gray and raspberry colored decorations.  I wore it our first day back, I was so excited about it!  The only thing that isn't wonderful about it is something that the shopkeeper I got it from was very proud of--its a traditional Swedish design, its not based on Norwegian patterns like "all those other sweaters you find in Stockholm."  I was a little disappointed by that, but I still love my sweater, so all in all the trip was a sucess--we all also managed to dodge the snow that would occassionally fall off of roofs into the street!

NORGE:a mishmash of religion, birthday, hockey, and adjectives

WOW, it has been a busy past three weeks!  Since I last updated I have started my religion class, turned 22, gone to my first professional hockey game, gone to Stockholm, and learned a bit more Norwegian (like how to conjugate nouns and adjectives but not verbs.  It's weird.  I'm not really a fan).

The day before my birthday our group was invited to the home of two pastors (a married couple) who teach a portion of the religion course I am taking.  Anne, the wife, is the campus chaplain at the college we go to, and Oddgeir, the husband, is the pastor at a local church.  They made dinner for us, and we sat and discussed a bit of the religious and cultural history of Norway--they tried to teach us the Norwegian birthday song, but it went a little to fast for me to follow along. We also got to meet their children, who were adorable and very polite.  Their parents allowed them to participate in everything we did, including the more "academic" things, which I thought was very cool, and it allowed us to get another perspective on some of the things we discussed.  The youngest son also showed us some of the magic tricks he had just learned--he made a penny disappear!  In addition to the things we learned from the family about our religion class, it was also really fun to see how a Norwegian family lives.  This family probably isn't a "typical" Norwegian family, as they have lived in the UK and Switzerland being international pastors, but we still got a peek into their lives.  They were obviously very intentional about family time together, knowing each other and having fun together.  We talked to their two daughters about any restaurant suggestions they had for us for my birthday, and they said that their family didn't really go to restaurants, they tended to pick up to go food and bring it back if they weren't cooking at home.  They had also just gotten a TV earlier in the week, and the parents commented on how much they missed the time they had spent together in the evenings and were still trying to preserve that feeling even if they did have a TV. 

A few days later, we also went to Oddgeir's church to talk a little about the symbolism in the church and some things about how it was designed.  It was fascinating to hear about everything that the designers worked to put in the church--it seemed like everything was intentional and served some sort of importance.  My favorites were the path that was down the church, which as supposed to represent a faith journey.  Outside of the entrance, in what we would call the narthex (but they call the Norwegian word for "weapon room" since in the olden days people would have to leave their weapons there before going into church), is a wooden structure in the shape of alpha.  From that there is a straight line that leads right down the middle of the sanctuary to the front of the church, where there is a window behind the altar.  The window is shaped like omega, and right below it is a small picture of Jesus' ascension to heaven, which is actually the last painting in a series they have around the outside of the sanctuary that is really similar to the Stations of the Cross in Catholic churches. To me it just seemed to have a lot more meaning and interesting thought behind it than the typical huge cross or painting of a Bible scene that are in a lot of churches.  The colors of the walls in the sanctuary also had a meaning--it transitioned from blue on one side to green on the other, while the lectern was red.  It took a lot of hinting, but Oddgeir helped us realize that these colors stand for something--green for hope, blue for faith, and red for love.  Faith, Hope and Love. YAY!  I could go on, but then you would be sitting here reading for an hour or so (seriously), so those were just the highlights for me. 

Moving on, I had a wonderful birthday here in Norway!  It was fun to celebrate my birthday in the country where I was born.  I didn't magically learn Norwegian overnight though, like I was kind of hoping I would.  Darn.  This birthday was probably one of the best I have had in awhile--the past few at Concordia have been during the week we have mid-terms, so I've been staying up late while not celebrating.  When I turned 21 I had a paper to write and a 3-6 am desk shift the next morning, and when I turned 20, I had a math presentation to put together overnight because I had procrastinated.  It was nice to have my birthday on a Friday, with no responsibilities and with so many wonderful people who worked hard to make it an enjoyable day!  My birthday started with our two classes of the day, which was reduced to one when our Norwegian professor forgot about our class so we left early.  While we were waiting, we played hangman with Norwegian words, which was kind of hard because we had to remember how to say the letters using the Norwegian alphabet.  Then began the time that was the hardest and the funnest for me, the part where everyone else made me decide EVERYTHING.  Where we were going to go eat, when we were going to go eat, what bus we were going to take, what we should do after that.  For those of you who try to make me make decisions, I bet you can guess that this was hard for me.  It was.  It including a lot of me saying "I really don't care" under my breath, being very annoyed, and just wishing everyone would help me by at least telling me if there was somewhere they DIDN'T want to go.  Eventually we (whoops, I mean I) decided to go to a Chinese restaurant in town.  McDonald's was another of the options, but I decided against it.  While I was deciding, I walked over to the other flat, and as soon as I opened the door, I heard "Bente! AAH! Go away!"  So I left, wondering what was going on in there...more on that later.  The Chinese restaurant was very nice, when we walked in it wasn't very busy and it was very quiet.  I was worried that the 10 of us would be too loud, but the big tables were in a separate room in the back, so it worked out all right.  After we found our seats, we got to try to interpret the Norwegian menu.  That was kind of interesting, and I ended up just getting something that I could tell what it was by the name in Norwegian, the Oriental Miks Pot.  It was just a small pot (it was actually served in a pot) with meat, vegetables, and soy sauce.  It was very similar to what you would get at a Mongolian grill, minus the noodles. Then when we got home, I was very kindly invited over to the other flat, and was surprised with a Happy Birthday sign on the wall, balloons, and cupcakes!  It was a wonderful surprise, and definitely worth getting yelled at earlier. 

The week after my birthday we found out that Lillehammer's professional hockey team was having a game in town, so we decided to go.  I was a bit nervous that I wouldn't like it, as I've only watched hockey on TV before and didn't enjoy it.  A part of me was wondering why I was paying 90 kr to go watch a sport I didn't really like, but in the end it was worth it.  The website for the team said that tickets would probably sell out quickly, so we sent two of the guys ahead to reserve tickets for us and the other international students that were coming with us.  Turns out, the ended up getting us great seats, right behind one of the goals.  I enjoyed hockey a lot more in person, partially because I could actually see the puck most of the time, and also because the atmosphere of the crowd kind of forced you to be excited too.  There were a lot of people with sticks to bang together, and little boys screaming as loud as they could!  The two teams were fairly well-matched, and they were tied 1-1 at the end of the game, so we got to watch overtime as well, and Lillehammer scored again just a few minutes in.  It was really exciting, and it made me realize how quickly I've come to call Lillehammer home and cheer for them to win--it was a great experience to reinforce what I had already started to recognize.  Lillehammer, Norway, is a pretty cool (if slightly small and boring) place!

The next week, 8 of us from the group journeyed to Oslo and then Stockholm, Sweden together.  I will post more about that, either in a few hours or tomorrow, we'll see.  I'm going to wrap this post up with a few sentences I've written in my Norwegian class.  This was my assignment for yesterday: write the longest sentence with as many adjectives as you can.  Google Translate it if you want, it's a pretty advanced stuff (not).  Enjoy!

Jeg vil kjøpe mange store, lange, brune pølser; et grønn kålhode; runde, røde tomater; og ei grønn pære i KIWI.  

Hyttetur and More..

Well, here I am, still in Norway, still having a blast!  I've encountered a few difficulties in the past week, I lost my camera and bus pass, and the charger to my laptop stopped working (I've been sharing), but it's hard to be too disappointed when I have a beautiful view out the window and new experiences to look forward to!  Yesterday some of the members of our group decided to figure out what to do with our long weekends for February and March.   We found pretty reasonable transportation and lodging, so I'll be going to Stockholm in a week and a half, and probably London at the end of March! 

Last Wednesday all of the international students were invited to the home of one of the Norwegian buddies who show us internationals around.  The point of the gathering was to get to know each other a bit better, see a traditional Norwegian home (her home was hundreds of years old and has a grass roof!), and try some traditional Norwegian food/drink--vafler and gløgg.  Vafler is waffles, and gløgg is a traditional Christmas-y drink, it's warm spiced wine.  I thought the vafler were delicious--especially with a very small slice of the goat chesse (brunost) that was there too.  We also had jam (syltetøy) and yogurt (yoghurt) to put on top.  No syrup, which was okay by me!  We did see some in the grocery store once, but a small bottle that was probably about half the size of the typical syrup bottle was really expensive.  I like vafler, but gløgg is another story.  The first sip was okay, but after that it was just too sweet and was super thick and sticky-like.  I really liked Kelly's description, she said that it tasted like what she imagined warm jam would be.  It was interesting to have the Norwegians there to present their traditions to us, and explain a little bit about what they were.  Martin, another of the buddies, claimed that ALL Norwegians like brunost, but I'm not so sure.  I haven't noticed it on a lot of sandwiches in the cafeteria where we eat, although it is available in single serving packages like the other cheeses.  

Thursday was a pretty uneventful day, and then Friday we left for the Hyttetur (cabin trip) with the rest of the international students.  There were about 50 of us altogether, as the group from Lillehammer was joined by the international students and buddies from the college in Gjøvik, since their group is pretty small and doesn't do a lot of the big activities on their own.  At about 16 we got on a tour bus and headed to Fagerhøi leirskole, a lodge and school (I think, although we didn't really see any evidence of a school) up in the mountains.  To get there we drove through lots of twisty roads with beautiful views, we passed a ski area that was used in the 94 Olympics, and saw where they had cut down trees in one area on a mountain to make the shape of their Olympic logo.  We didn't get to the lodge until it was dark, partly because we came upon a large truck that had gone off the road and we had to wait for about an hour while the emergency workers worked to move it.  I was a little impatient waiting while knowing there was a fun trip and dinner waiting for me! 

The first evening there was fairly uneventful, except I saw the Nothern Lights very faintly!  I had been looking forward to the opporutnity to see them sometime on my trip, but we had been told there probably wouldn't be any where we were.  They were beautiful even though they were really faint.  I had gone outside with a few people to look at the stars, and everyone but Emma and I went inside while we decided to walk up the road a little bit and see what we could see.  As we passed one of the buildings, they came into sight, and we watched them for awhile.  We went inside to find the others and get hats, but when we got outside they were gone :(. 

It was really amazing to wake up Saturday and finally really see the view from where we were.  It was amazing!  Everything was snow-covered, it was flat around where we were, but we could see tall mountains in the distance.  We spent a lot of Saturday outside doing different activities including grilling our lunch.  We had hotdogs, but they were a bit different than American hot dogs because they were wrapped in lefse-type bread instead of buns.  It was pretty good.  I talked to one of the buddies, Jeanette, who has studied in the US before (she was actually only a few miles away from some of us, over at NDSU), about the differences in food, particularly hot dogs between the US and Norway.  She said she had tried our hot dogs, the cheap Oscar Meyer type, and couldn't believe that we would even give our kids that kind of food--I agree, but they like it and it's easy, so there yah go.  I eat about 50 a summer at camp, probably. 

On our cabin trip, we talked a bit about the culture of Norway from the buddies' perspective, and about missing home and talking about the things we would change, either about home or about Norway.  It was interesting to think about  what I miss from home, and what I would bring from Norway to home.  There haven't really been a lot of things I miss from home, except my big fluffy pillow and towel, since the ones we were provided here at the flat are lacking a bit of stuffing.  Also, I'm not really a big fan of the teaching/class style here in Norway.  Especially in our Norwegian class, I think I could learn a lot better with a different style.  BUT, I think I am going to do a nerdy, education-major type post about our classes, the things that we are learning, and such sometime soon.  In addition to those things, I would also love to have my family and friends here with me, of course :).  As far as things that I really like about Norway, there are lots!  I love having real bread, not large, square, sliced loaves.  While I miss some of the typical fried, junky foods from home, I haven't missed them as much as I thought I would.  Those types of food just aren't as popular here, and I think that's very good health-wise, although I probably make up for not eating fatty foods by eating soo much bread.  I also really appreciate the public transportation system here in Lillehammer, I can get where I need to go pretty quickly and without having to walk a lot, which is nice now in the winter. Also, I would import the lack of importance of Valentine's Day to Amerika as well.  Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and the only way that I knew it was the status posts from my amerikansk friends on facebook and the heart-shaped cuts of meat on the sandwiches in the cafeteria.  There weren't all kinds of valentines in the grocery stores or anything.  It was a bit refreshing. 

On our cabin trip, I stayed in a 5 person room with three girls from Holland and a girl from the Basque country of Spain.  They were really interesting and it was fun to live with people I wasn't so familiar with, even though I had met them before.  We got to talking about friends, and I was talking about how several of the people I know at Concordia and other people my age are engaged or married, and how weird it felt to me that I am old enought that that is something I could potentially do.  The other girls said that there are very few people their age who are engaged or in a relationship where they would have kids and settle down, since it isn't really common or socially required in Holland to get married young or before you have kids.  They asked me why I think that the US is that way, and I struggled to answer them.  I said that maybe it was just because that was the way we see women, that even as women are working more, that we still feel pressure to be the typical woman with kids and family, but I don't really know how much of that is true, of the girls I know who are engaged, it doesn't really seem that they feel getting married is an obligation, or something they feel society thinks they have to do, they just feel that it is something they and their fiancee want to do and is a natural step.  The Dutch girls didn't understand this, and I don't either.  I think life is much more fun without kids to take care of and worry about.  At least for now anyway ;).  This struggle to define myself and my country or way of life is something that I've encountered more and more while being here.  I had to explain my Cobber class ring to one of the guys from France the other day, and as I hear myself explaining it, it just sounded really stupid, even though I am glad that I have it and I think that the tradition of a Cobber ring is pretty cool.  I hope that as I spend more time here, learn more about Norway, and learn more about myself, I become better at explaining myself, or at owning up to when something I/the US have or do is a bit ridiculous.

I just asked the others what I should blog about, and they said I should tell you all that the Luther students on the trip are amazing, and they are, so there you go!! Also, today we discovered that our program owns cross two sparks, which are kind a mini version of dogsledding tobaggans that you have to push yourself, and cross country skis.  I'm excited to soon have a chance to return to my skiing days, and see if I remember anything!  Also, readers, please cross your fingers/pray/hope, etc. that I find my camera!  I miss it, and you won't get to see any more of fabulous Norge if it doesn't turn up!!  

One Week in Norway

Well, I have officially survived one week in Norway, with no major mishaps!  I'm really liking being here and getting to know the culture here as well as some of the other international students and a bit more about their culture.  There aren't too many things about the US that I miss yet, besides being able to understand the people around me and my family and friends of course.  I've found myself thinking in Spanish a lot, and wanting to say the phrases in Spanish for things I don't know in Norwegian.  For instance, there isn't really a good way to respond in Norwegian to someone saying "takk," or "thank you,"  when you do something for them, so I've found myself saying "de nada" (Spanish for you're welcome) instead.  My brain is just getting a bit boggled by hearing and (attempting) to read another language all the time and can't deal so it reverts to Spanish.  I have noticed though, that when we go out in a group, we're loud and the people around us tend to then talk to us in English.  When we were getting off the bus today, I picked up a lady's mitten that she dropped, and instead of saying "takk" she said "thank you."   

Last Wednesday we only had one class session early in the morning, so we all took the day as an opportunity to relax a bit, and took the bus into the main part of town to do a bit of exploring.  I had to stop by the bank to try to set up some bank account things, which was interesting.  I first googled the bank to make sure it actually existed and to have some idea of where it was.  I had a pretty good idea of where it was and how to get there, but I managed to walk right by it without even noticing--I was too busy people watching and such, I guess.  But I had a fun adventure walking way too far down the street the bank was on and finding Lillehammer kirke (church) and taking some pictures of it and the cemetery all covered with snow. 

When I finally found the bank it took me a bit to gather up the courage to go in--it was my first time meeting with a Norwegian that hadn't arranged to meet with me and I was a little intimidated.  BUT, I wanted money, so I did it!  Then I realized the part I was most nervous about, finding a person to sit down and meet with, not just a teller that wasn't really like a person with the authority to start bank accounts and such, wasn't a big deal, because at this bank you walk in, take a number, and then sit down to talk to a person about what you need to do, because all of the "bank teller" type of transactions are done by a "mini-bank" machine that's right outside the door.  You can make deposits, switch money, and everything there.  Anyway, when my number was called, I sat down and said "Hey" to the bank worker.  Then I asked him "Snakker du Engelsk?"  which means "Do you speak English?" (at least that's what I tried to say).  He looked at me with a look that was like "yeah, duh, you tourist."  But I just went with it an explained my stuff.  And it was all good then.  And his name is Tom, so I can actually say it without feeling like I'm butchering some traditional Norwegian name or something. 

The rest of the week was pretty traditional and filled with classes and a bit of homework, although we haven't had too much work yet so far, which was good.  We learned about Norway's oil and economic policies, which was a tad boring and hard to follow, because I don't know a lot about economy anyway, let alone Norwegian economy.  Although we did learn that Norway focuses a lot on exporting raw materials, not manufactured goods, which I thought was interesting.  So, if you buy Norwegian fish, chances are that the whole fish was sold from Norway to somewhere else, processed, and then sent to the US.  Also, Norway is very rich because of oil, but they don't invest a lot of the money they make within the country, for fear of influencing the markets too much, they use it for international investments and things.  I'm not exactly sure what those international investments are, but it sounds like a good idea to me I guess. 

On Friday we went bowling with the other international students and our Norwegian buddies.  That was pretty fun, and I even managed to get on a team with people even worse than me.  I got 83, and that was the 2nd best score on my team of 5.  I was pretty proud of myself, since I usually can't get a score above 50 without bumpers or playing on Wii.  I also learned a new bowling technique from the one girl who had a higher score than I did.  She bowls with her thumb down, rather than up, which is the way I was taught and the only way I've ever seen anyone do it.  She claimed it gave her more control of the ball's speed.  I tried it a few times, and I ended up with gutter balls, so I'm not sure if she was just trying to trick me or not. ;)

Saturday I went to the mall with some of the other people from our group.  It was a pretty typical mall, even though the store names were different they had about the same things.  There were a few shoe stores, some clothing stores, a food court, although the food court was different since it didn't really have fast food like our food courts do.  It had sandwiches, some cakes and doughnuts, ice cream, and beverages.  Outside the mall we saw our first McDonald's since the airport in Chicago, which was interesting.  We didn't go in, but we saw from the ads that they have a few different burgers than the ones that we have in the US.  There was one, I don't remember the name, that I thought looked kind of spicy.  That was interesting to me because one thing we've talked about in our food culture class and that I've just noticed in general is that the food here is more bland and has less spices.  I almost never add salt or pepper to my food, but I've found myself doing that here more and more often.  Some of us were also mentioning today that we've missed having garlic, too.  We had pizza in the cafeteria one day, and the pizza sauce was definitely a bit different than US pizza sauce.

Shopping at the mall was fun, it was interesting to see what kinds of clothes and other products were in the stores, but the people watching was even more interesting.  I've been trying to decide from watching people what exactly it is that makes a person look "European."  There's definitely a look they have, but it’s been hard to decide what it is.  I decided the cashier we saw at H&M looked very Norwegian to me, she had blonde hair and blue eyes, and her hair was in a braid.  She was very nice and smiley, and she was wearing a sheer floral top over a white tank top.  From watching her and other people, I've decided European-ness is more than just clothes, because a lot of the clothes people wear here wouldn’t look that out of place in the US, at least the women's clothes.   Even though college-age girls only wear skinny jeans, leggings, or tights, those are worn in the US, just not as often as more flared jeans.  And their tops mostly look like things Americans would wear too, but again just something that wouldn't be an everyday thing, since they look nice everyday.  I haven't seen many people at all wearing sweatshirts.  At the mall I also saw a mom walk into a shoe store and see that her daughter, who looked like she was maybe 3 or 4, wasn't following right behind her.  The little girl was kind of just wandering in the main aisle of the mall.  The mom called her name one time, but when her daughter didn't respond, she just kept walking around in the store.  She looked at a couple pairs of shoes, walked down another aisle, and then walked out toward another store.  Her daughter was still kind of wandering around, and eventually just kind of fell into step behind her mom, but the mom never really seemed to look back and see if she was there to me.  Maybe I just have a paranoid mom and have seen more of them around in the US or something, but it definitely seemed to me that she, and maybe a few other Norwegians, didn't worry as much about that kind of thing. 

Sunday was the Super Bowl, and we discovered in class on Friday that there was a Norwegian channel airing it, so we decided to have a mini Super Bowl party at our flat.  The only bad thing was that coverage didn't start until 23:15 (11:15pm) here, and the game itself didn't start until about midnight.  We invited the other international students, and a few of them showed up, which I appreciated and was impressed by, since they had to walk back to their housing because the buses stop running after about 23.  We tried to explain a bit about how football works to them, and I think some of the boys were shocked to think about some of the rules from the perspective of someone that has no background in American football.  Especially explaining some of the penalties, the other students would ask what the reasons behind the rules were and there wasn't always a good answer.  I also was shocked to watch the game from the perspective of a non-American and realize that the Super Bowl is really patriotic, and very cheezily so (that was kind of a Packers pun, ha ha).  It was kind of awkward, and yet really cool, watching the video montage of JFK and MLK and a few other people at the beginning, and talking about where we are now.  I hope that the other international students didn't think that we were forcing American patriotism on them, because that wasn't our intention (or at least mine) but I guess they probably figured they would get a little bit of that coming to watch a sport that is pretty much only played in the US.  The other students got bored kind of quickly, and decided to leave since they had early class.  Within about 5 minutes of them leaving, the first two touchdowns were scored, so unfortunately they missed out on the most interesting parts, but one of the guys said that he looked online this morning for a recap to see how it turned out, so at least one person didn't think it was totally horrible!  This year was the first time I watched the Super Bowl in a long time, so it was fun to see it again, even though I don't really love to watch football. I was SUPER sad though, that we didn't get to watch the American commercials.  This morning I found the place on You Tube to watch them though, so I got to see them and procrastinate my homework even more, how wonderful!

Today in our Norwegian Language and Culture class we finally started learning some Norwegian, which was exciting.  I now know the Norwegian alphabet, although I get stuck because I can't roll my R's and the extra vowels (å, ø, and æ) confuse me a bit.  Especially because å doesn't sound like any sound I would ever associate with an a.  It sounds a lot like our o.  CONFUSING!!!  This is another area where knowing Spanish has partially been bad.  There aren't really a lot of words that I've encountered that are similar between Norwegian and Spanish, and I keep reverting to pronouncing words as if they were Spanish instead of Norwegian, since the foreign alphabet my brain thinks of automatically is the Spanish one. But, I learned to say my name and a few other things.  I learned how to log on to the site that we use to reserve a time to do laundry, even though it was all in Norwegian, and today I also ordered my supper in Norwegian.  I said "Jeg vil ha fiskekaker."  That's fish cakes.  They were gross, but at least I was brave and tried them, it was the first time I've had fish here in Norway.  They were a lot like salmon patties except that I couldn't really tell what kind of fish they were, and they were really salty.  I mushed them up and mixed them into my potatoes, and added a lot of pepper, which made them not too bad.  Besides that one meal, the food we've had here has been really good, and a lot healthier, I think, than the food I usually eat at home.  We have very little preserved stuff, and the bread is all not white.  There's no yellow cheese of any type, which has been weird not to have.  I tried to make macaroni and cheese with the white shredded cheese we got at the grocery store, and it was pretty different, although still pretty good.  I've discovered that fruit is really expensive here, so we eat it when we can with our lunches in the cafeteria, but we haven't bought it from the grocery store.

I have more things I could talk about--like trying to figure out the bus schedule, (knowing Norwegian and remembering that it saying 11:25 doesn't mean it will be coming late at night would help) realizing that things like groceries aren't always available, (especially on the weekends) and those kinds of things, but this post is getting pretty long, so I will save that for later.  I feel like my life is getting kind of routine around here, we have class and go around the city a bit, so I will see how much I can find to update about, but so far I've enjoyed having this blog, and I think its a fun way to connect.  This weekend the international students and our Norwegian buddies will be heading to the mountains to stay in some cabins and spend some time together, so perhaps that will lead to some interesting stories to share.  I've  heard there will be a sauna there....

Norway: the First 36 Hours

On the morning of January 31, our group left the guesthouse at 5 am and flew to Norway.  I was between to random men again, which was okay, because I just finished the movie I had started watching on the flight to Iceland and read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants I was able to pick up all four of the books in that series before I left MN, so I'm looking forward to re-reading them while I'm here, and I might just leave them. 

When we got to the Oslo airport, we had about 40 minutes to get something for lunch if we wanted before we got on the train to Lillehammer.  Thankfully all of our luggage, even the skis that got lost in Iceland, made it to Norway with us. I went to change some of my leftover Icelandic currency to Norwegian kroner.  Unfortunately, they didn't take money from Iceland there, and the lady said that it would be hard for me to find somewhere to take them.  I have about $17 sitting in my suitcase now :(. 

When we boarded the train, we couldn't find room for all of our luggage, so we put some of it between the seats. I'd seen the view before, but it was even more beautiful, if possible, in winter than in the spring.  WOW! 

When we got to Lillehammer, we met a taxi and found our lodgings.  We dumped our stuff and went to the school cafeteria to eat.  Our flats are right across from the campus, which is nice so we don't have to figure bus-riding time into our schedule.  Then we had a tour of the campus and some time to move in.  Our flats are very simple and kind of small, but they are nice.  Three girls are in one room that is right inside the door, then comes the kitchen with a small living area immediately across from it, and the room for the two boys on the other end of the hallway.  There is very little hanging space and no dressers, so we will have to adjust to simply placing our clothes on shelves.  It's a small trade for being able to live in Norway for four months, though! 

Besides moving in, the main event of the night was going grocery shopping.  We took the bus a short distance towards town (the school is on the edge of town, almost out of town) to the KIWI grocery store.  It was an adventure, trying to find food in another language and stay within our budget of 250 kr for breakfasts and weekends.  Food here is EXPENSIVE.  I paid 30 kr (1 kr=$5.8) for a regular old loaf of bread! 

Today, 1 Februar, we had orientation and our first classes.  We met some of the Norwegian buddies who have been assigned to show us around, plan activities, and help us with whatever we need.  From the short conversations and time we have spent with them, them seem very considerate and willing to help us, which is good.  We had to take pictures to get our college IDs, mine turned out okay.  It's better than my Cobber ID at least.  While we were in the cafeteria eating right before we went to take pictures I realized that I didn't have my wallet or any type of ID with me, and I was worried that I couldn't get that ID without another ID, so I went back to get mine.  We found out we did need an ID, so I was very glad that I had gone back :)

We had a bit of free time, and then we had our first class, our culture and society class.  That class is made up of the 10 American students, 2 German students, 5 French students, 1 Hungarian student, and 1 Norwegian student who is taking the class to prepare for studying abroad next semester and being able to talk more about what it means to be Norwegian.  I think it will be interesting to have him there to be able to see if he adds another opinion besides the professor's of what it is to be Norwegian.  Today we had a short introduction to the format of the class, and then another professor came in to give us Norweigan history in a nutshell.  The prof kept talking to us American students, and relating a lot of things to American history.  I kind of felt weird about that, because even though it was nice to have something to connect to, it kind of seemed more like he wanted to teach us and not the other students, or didn't make as much of an effort for us.  There were two French boys in the class that definitely don't like Americans, and thought we were stupid.  I tried to get over it, but it was hard.  They were talking a lot between themselves and eventually the prof called them out and told them to listen, so I don't think he appreciated them very much either, but for different reasons. 

Finally today we had our class that will focus on Norwegian language and Americans in Norwegian society.  Birger, the gentleman who teaches the class, is quite a character--very sarcastic and joking.  It will be fun to have class with him.  He gave us a strange quiz on what it means to be Norwegian, it partially seemed to be for fun, but also to address the misconceptions of a Norwegian we may have.  I won the quiz, and get a prize on Thursday.  I'm excited and also very nervous to see what his idea of a prize is...

Right now we are still figuring out our schedule and how exactly classes and meals and things will work.  Now, at 20:15, we still don't know when/where our class that is supposed to meet tomorrow will be.  Even though I'm usually a go with the flow, see what happens kind of person, it's frustrating to have NO IDEA what we will be doing.  Hopefully that will get better once it's not our first week anymore. 

Tomorrow I will be meeting with Tor, a friend of my parents.  He will be bringing me a Norwegian phone.  Our group is also hoping to go into town, walk around a bit, and find some stores to see what Norway has to offer as far as taking our money.  Speaking of, I also hope to figure out bank stuff tomorrow, as the $60 I converted when we got here is running low after buying one lunch and paying the commission.  Uff-Da, my homeland is expensive. I will update later, when there is more to talk about, have an excellent life in the meantime!

The Rest of Iceland

Saturday morning we met an Icelandic man named Oli (pronounced like Ole in Ole and Lena) he is a historian, and he gave us a tour of the downtown area of Reykjavik.  It was an interesting tour, in addition to seeing a lot of historical buildings we heard a lot of interesting stories and backgrounds of things in addition to just dates. It was raining that day, and so although the tour was fun, it was a bit dreary since we were all pretty wet.  A few people (including me, thanks Mom!) had waterproof coats but our feet, purses, etc. still got all wet. 

On the tour, we saw the parliament building of Iceland, which had NO security that we could see...there was a garden in the back, and we just walked into the back of it and stood around.  Oli said that there's no need for security, since there are so many people that want to be politicians. Also, there is only one murder every two years in Iceland, on average.  Unless you're a hardcore criminal, there is also a waiting list to go to jail since the government hasn't made building the new jail a priority.  The house that serves as the prime minister's office is the same way, with very little security.  At first I was thinking it was strange, and it still is a bit, but I doubt that the government of Iceland is a big target--all of their banks collapsed and went bankrupt a few years and I never even heard about it.

After our tour, we were free for the rest of the day.  We were all wet and a bit tired of trudging around in the rain, so we got lunch and went back to the guesthouse.  We weren't super excited to go out in the rain, so we sat in the kitchen of our lodging for a bit.  It felt like a bit of a waste to sit inside when we were in Iceland, but we had a chance to get to know each other better.  After a bit we went to the two free museums in town.  One was a modern art museum, and one was a photography museum.  The modern art museum was a lot cooler than I thought it would be--I was a bit skeptical.  There was one exhibit that was a room set up with a circus tent in the ceiling, ominous music, and silent movies of this character wearing a big head-mask type thing with a smiling face on it.  It made me think about how much the music could affect how we felt, since none of the individual things were really very creepy, but with the ominous music we were expecting something creepy.  The photography museum was a little disappointing, there were only about 40 photos of decaying homes and buildings.  They were interesting, but it wasn't something I would think of as being advertised as a "museum." 

After we walked through the museums, we went to a fish and chips restaurant.  We ordered a group meal, and each got two pieces of fish, potatoes (chips), salad, and a bunch of sauces for the fish.  It was really good--I hope the rest of the fish we eat while gone is that good.

The next day we went to a museum/exhibition called 871 +/-2.  It is a museum that talks about the original inhabitants of Iceland, and is around the remains of an ancient longhouse, thought to be dated to the year 871 +/-2.  Oli told us that the anniversary of Iceland being settled is traditionally on 874, so it seems to be a little inconvenient that the house is dated to as early at 869.  It didn't seem to bother him that much, so maybe its not that big of a deal to most Icelanders.   I have inserted a few pictures of things I thought were cool around town, there aren't a lot since it was hard to take pictures while it was raining. I love the colors used in the buildings, both in Norway and Iceland.  I wish the Americans would follow along, someday I hope to live in a colorful house--I really like the dark navy ones we've seen so far! 

After that museum we again had the rest of the day free.  As we were walking back to the guesthouse, the girls stopped at a coffee shop called Babalu.  It was in the upstairs, and decorated with lots of eclectic, random stuff.  There was a wall with postcards from all over--I am hoping to remember to send them one sometime!  I ordered a half cappuccino, half hot chocolate, and the girl that was working there thought I was really strange and asked me if I really thought that would be drinkable.  I thought it was good, she seemed a bit skeptical when I told her it was delicious.

Here is the outside of Babalu

We ordered mini pizzas together, and then had an early-ish night since we had to get up early for a 5 am taxi to the airport to get on our plane to NORWAY!  Make sure you look back at the previous post because I've added some pictures that were more relevant to that post.

4 Airports later...

After four different airports (Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, and Reykjavik) in less than 24 hours, I am now settled in a guesthouse in Iceland (desperately missing the 6 hours of sleep I gave up)!  It was a long trip, but we all made it safely, and I only set off security alarms once.  I got to spend some time sitting between two strangers on the plane to Boston, which was fun.  My American seat buddy didn't believe me when I told him that he was using half of my seatbelt, but we got that all figured out, and then bonded over how boring Iowa is (he had been visiting there).  The other seat buddy just sat there the whole time reading Freakonomics in some symbol language (Chinese?).

When we got to Iceland today, we bought our tickets to The Blue Lagoon, and thermal hot springs spa.  We arrived in Iceland really early in the morning, so we had a bit of a wait until the bus took us there, and watched the weather outside, it looked kind of windy, which reminded me a little too much of Moorhead.

When we got to the Blue Lagoon, we gave them our tickets (and paid about $20 to rent a towel and robe), and got our admission bracelets, which also had a computer chip built into them to charge food on to and to use to lock our lockers.  It was pretty impressive I thought.  We then all showered together (which brought back waay too many memories of 6th grade gym class), braved the cold with in our swim suits and bare feet, and finally entered the actual lagoon.  It was not quite what I expected, you couldn't see into the water further than a few inches, and they warned us not to put our hair underwater or it would get really dried out.

This is the main part of the lagoon, where we were.












Here's me, next to the lagoon.









After we left the lagoon, we found the place where we will be staying for the rest of the weekend, got settled, and made supper.  Our guesthouse is close to Hallgrímskirkja, a church that is the 6th tallest building in Iceland.  In addition to be super tall, it has bells which chime ever 15 minutes, just like the belltower at Concordia!  We went on a walk to see what we could find, one of the highlights for me was the crosswalk sign.  The don't walk signal is a red light with a sad face on it :(, and the walk signal is green with a smiley face :).  I think the US should get some too! 

Here is Hallgrimskirkja, the Lutheran church that was close to where we were staying.

I tried to put the camera on the ground and tried to take a picture with the church, but it was REALLY windy and my camera started blowing away. 

Here is the smiley face walking light.

Here is the red don't walk light.











Tomorrow we will go on a walking tour of the city, and do a bit of independent sightseeing.  Once I find a cord to connect my camera to the computer and figure out how to put pictures on here, I will share some visuals of what I have done so far.

**NEW on 1 Februar 2011: picture of what I mentioned in this blog. YAY!**

Ready or Not, Here I Go!

     Hi! As most of you probably know, this is Bente's blog.  I have started it since tomorrow (techinically today, I guess), I am boarding a plane and heading to the country I was born in, Norway.  I will be living in Lillehammer and visiting other places in the next four months through a program called Scandinavia and the Baltic.  This is a really great opportunity for me, and I am really grateful to be able to go, since it kind of fell into my lap at the last moment, right at the end of the 09-10 school year.  It's a great program because it will meet the Concordia requriements I still have while allowoing me to study abroad for a semester, something that's fairly rare for an elementary education major.  I also didn't have to know any Norwegian to be able to go, so that's good, but I am excited to learn some, and share some with you, my readers :)  If I'm really brave, maybe I will eventually attempt a whole post in Norwegian.

     I am really excited to leave tomorrow, although I don't think it's really sunk in yet.  Maybe that's because I have procrastinated, as usual, and am not completely packed yet.  I don't have any nervous butterflies or anything...like I told a few friends I've been chatting with as I finish up packing, I feel normal, which isn't normal. 
 
     I'm not really a person that likes to share--I don't see the point of Twitter and I rarely update my facebook status, so this blog thing feels a little weird to me.  We'll see how it goes. As I've been going through my room in the last month, I have found a few diaries that I started as a child, and none of them had more than 3 or 4 entries.  My goal is to keep you all a bit more in the loop and use this as a place to talk about what is happening in my world.  Let's see how I do with beating my childhood record of journal keeping! 

Just a fun note: the picture on the background of this blog right now is a picture I took in Lillehammer when I visited there with my family in 2007.