La vie quotidienne

My last few posts have described special trips and events I've done while here in Norway, but I haven't said much about day to day life. I thought that writing a post about everyday life here sounded more interesting than learning norwegian verb tenses, so here goes. I don't really have any relevant pictures, so I just walked around the house and took some randoms, including an attempted translation of the foods in our fridge, which I'll stick in to break up the wall of text.

It's starting to feel slightly like fall here; a few leaves are turning yellow, but it's mostly still green. Theres a lot of rain; every day on the weather page of the Bergen newspaper there's a section called "Sol i Bergen" which says how many hours it was sunny/clear the day before. It's usually between 1 and 2 hours, although I've seen it drop down to 8 minutes! The moments when the sun breaks through and the mist clears are always unexpected and that much more special.

View towards Osterøy right now, happened to catch a moment when it cleared a little bit

School is very similar to Canada, yet even more relaxed. I'm used to the idea of taking responsibility of my own learning, and that is taken to yet another level here. There is no phone call home if you miss school; and nothing seems to happen if you show up halfway through class either. You could realistically spend an entire class on facebook or watching a movie; having laptops in class opens up a whole new world of distractions. Despite all this freedom, kids still seem to learn. I guess it's more like the real world; if you want to do well in school, you have to prioritize. The relationship between students and teachers seems to be very respectful; I have yet to see a teacher get mad at a student, or vice versa. When asked to close their laptops, everyone does without complaint.

Random note: almost every classroom has a "Smart board" but I haven't seen it used yet; the teachers seem to prefer chalkboards and projectors.

I'm starting to understand a bit more in my classes, especially when the teacher writes notes on the board. Generally I'll understand some words and phrases, and occasionally the general idea of a topic. Other times, still more often, I'll get stuck on one word, get lost, and have no idea what's going on. The exception is french class, although I'm starting to get really confused between norwegian and french! When I have to translate something from english to french, I'll usually translate to norwegian without thinking.

It's been really interesting to learn french through a different language though, and hear the pronounciation that comes from learning it with a norwegian background rather than an english one. One of the hardest things in classes at home was the french "R", but since Norwegian has a similar sound on it's R's (at least in this part of Norway), people don't seem to have trouble with it. Right now we're watching "Entre les Murs" in french with norwegian subtitles. It's strange to look to norwegian subtitles when I don't understand the french speaking, but between the two languages I can mostly understand.

A sampling of umbrellas

We only have gym class once a week here, but when we do, it's more serious than back home. We've gone to the track here twice, and once we did 10 x 200 m sprints. I'd never gotten a real workout ( besides maybe the beep test....) in a gym class before . Yesterday we did orienteering, which meant climbing over fences, dodging cows, and trekking through the mud to find the orange ballooney things with clips to punch our papers with. We got confused with the map though, because there is two Garnes Videregående schools, and missed 4 of the points. You never would've gotten a gym class outside like that at home, especially not at the level where everyone has to take gym. Norwegians seem to be more intense about going outside though, no matter what the weather. I went for a run last week around 8 pm, and it was pouring rain and getting dark. I still saw about 7 other people running, a soccer game going on, and a bunch of people out walking in rain coats and pants. Whenever I go by the "Barnehage", which I think is the equivalent of kindergarden, the kids are outside in full rain gear biking on these funky little tricycles and playing in the forest.

Shoe dryers....these are in my runners almost constantly when I'm not using them. They don't blow air,  they more just cook them, but they do the trick!

On a typical day, I wake up to an extremely irritating beeping from my cellphone, that is more of a loud honk than a beep. I should really change the sound, but it's effective. I usually fumble with the touch screen and change the time on the alarm to give me an extra 20 minutes or so of sleep. By the time I go upstairs, Tord and Helene have both left for work; they're both gone by 7 am. I usually have yogurt and jam with whatever fruit and nuts I can find, and toast for breakfast. School starts at 8:05 am, so I can leave around 8 and get there on time. Classes are an hour and a half long, with 10 minute breaks between classes and a half hour lunch. We also get a five minute break in the middle of class, which usually seems to stretch to 10 or 15 minutes. I get out at 1:30 or 3 depending on the day, and either run or help make supper/go on the computer until 4, when we eat middag. I'm still amazed how much potatoes and fish we eat, but not in a bad way. Around 6:30 we have coffee, often with chocolates, nuts or cookies. I spend most of the evening watching TV, going on the computer, trying to learn norwegian, and sometimes playing scrabble with my host family.

Cookies :)  I use chopped up chocolate bars; my family didn't know what chocolate chips were.

The Fridge:

I was looking for things in the house to take pictures of and post, and decided that, for once and for all, I'm going to google translate the contents of the fridge, and find out just what all the mystery condiments are.

1. Rips syltetoy - currant jam

2. Pickles

3. Tomato puree

4. Blueberry jam - Best in yogurt, and second best ( after raspberry) with brown cheese

5. Pickled herring number 1

6. Pickled herring number 2

7. Pickled herring number 3 - I don't know what the differences are, I haven't tried them. 

8. Skinke Ost - ham flavoured cheese in a tube....haven't tried it

9. Bacon Ost - bacon flavoured cheese in a tube

10. Tytteberry jam I think, kinda like cranberry sauce but the berries are smaller, we eat it with meat

11. A blend of butter and margarine "du trenger bare bremykt"

12. Camembert cheese

13. BROWN CHEESE....aka brun ost...aka YUM

14. Jarlsberg cheese

15. Liver paste

16. Smoked salmon

17. Yogurt

18. Bacon postei? Not really sure what this is, but it obviously involves bacon.

19. Gonna guess this is soy sauce, based on the asian characters

20. Some kind of oil? Heart - go is the direct translation

21. Beet salad

22. The remains of lasagne which seemed to have some kind of meat fat/butter replacing the tomato sauce. It was...interesting

1. Mackerel in tomato sauce
2. Ekte remulade - google said this is "real remoulade" Helene said it's like mayonnaise with cucumber in it.
3. Caviar in a tube - finally tried this one, it's not all that bad. Sweeter than I expected.
4. Some kind of salsa
5. Ekte majones - real mayonnaise?
6. Fish pate of some sort
7. Some kind of medicine
8. Grainy type mustard
9. Some other kind of mustard - based on the colour anyways
10. "leaves from the forest that taste like garlic" says Helene
11. more mayonnaise
12. Some kind of plant vitaminey thing
13. Vanilla cream that we have with fruit...soo good :)
14. Garlic sauce

There. After getting up to check in the fridge about 7 times, and having to explain why I'm documenting their fridge, my host family must think I'm a little crazy. They definitely thought it was funny, if nothing else.

Well, my coffee's getting cold
snakkes :)