13 Days in Norway

The other day I was a the shopping centre here in Arna, and unconsciously started looking for boots to buy. It's August! At home I would still be in full summer mode. I've only gone out with bare legs once since I've been here, besides for running. It's been sunny and somewhat warm, but something about starting school in the middle of August has messed with my internal calender. 

I've almost finished my second week of school here, although last week doesn't count since I only had about 3 hours of classes all week. I'm taking Norwegian, History/filosofi, Gym, History, French, Math, Art/architecture and design, and art history. So there's a lot of history in there! The schedule is different than at home though; this week I only had math and gym once. 

French is really easy, it's only their second year taking the language. It's really helpful to be learning french in norwegian though; since the french is easy, the norwegian translations are as well. My first math class was easy as well; we're starting with exponents, which I'm not complaining about. It's really nice to understand what's happening in these classes. 

The other classes are harder to understand; to be honest, I don't really understand anything. Everyone speaks english, however, and some of the teachers are teaching part of their lessons in english for me. I can't tell if they want to practice their english or if they're just being nice, but it's helpful. I've only met one person who didn't speak english here; an older man in the Rotary club.

Today I had french and norwegian in the morning, then spent the entire afternoon designing monograms of my initials in art class. It's the kind of thing I usually do on the margins of pages when I'm bored, so it was really weird to have two classes to work on it. I'm still getting used to the idea of having art in school; it's a huge change from all the courses I took last year. 

I've made chocolate chip cookies twice already; the first time I was about to do some serious improvising; chocolate syrup for cocoa, cereal for oats, and no baking powder or soda, when my host grandma Evelyn came in and said she had all those ingredients at her place. I had to smash up a chocolate bar I brought from home instead of chocolate chips, and they were amazing :)

We eat supper here at 3 or 4 pm, and then usually have coffee and waffles, pancake- type things or fruit around 7:30.


I just realized there's really no structure to these posts, so I hope this makes sense. I tend to focus on random little details ( like making chocolate chip cookies) and not give any context to what I'm saying. Oh well, at least this post was more reasonable than the last one!