Winter doesn't stop the ice cream truck in Norway

“I dont know what it call’d on english , but on norsk we call it aircondision”
--Petter Solberg, a Norwegian rally driver


I really have no right to laugh at someone else's mistakes in a foreign language, since I'm sure I've murdered Norwegian plenty of times. But if I can laugh at myself, then I can laugh at him too. And maybe I have a weird sense of humor, but I thought this was hilarious. I just saw the quote written down, so don't know how accurate it is, but, well, who cares!
How about this one:
"It's not the fart that kills you, it's the smell"

...It needs a little explaining: "fart" in norwegian is speed, and "smell" is something along the lines of explosion or bang. Changes the meaning of the sentence a bit when you take that into consideration :D

"I drived and then it was a sving and a sving til så a stein and pang i drived rett in the juletre"

And I like this one because it sounds like me speaking Norwegian; throwing english words in whenever I feel like it, probably producing some comical sentences. The difference is that the average norwegian understands english, so I make some sense ( I hope); the situation doesn't work in reverse.

Since I can never write introductions, I'm letting this poor guy's mistakes do it for me. Not that I really introduced anything relevant with them anyways.

But speaking of funny things, I have to mention Hyperbole and a Half. Kim Wiest introduced me to it last year, and I've found it again and spent way too much time laughing stupidly at my computer screen. This was what I wrote in my journal a few nights ago:

"So I was sitting upstairs reading hyperbole and a half, and decided to come down to my room because I couldn’t laugh out loud at it. I guess I could, really, but it’s kind of awkward to laugh at a computer screen when you’re the only one who can see it. I’ve gotten pretty good at laughing silently, but at some point you read something that breaks this delicate equilibrium between silence and sound, and a really loud honk comes out. And that’s even harder to explain than quiet, but audible laughing."

I would (and could) quote the majority of her blog, but since I've already annoyed enough people on facebook and skype by chucking out random sentences completely out of context, I'll just go with this one: 

 “remember when I told you guys that I was feeling hyperactive and it was kind of like being tied to a chair and injected with speed and made to watch a documentary about sea snails?"

....and that's just what happened to be showing on the screen when I switched windows.

Anyways, now on to my less entertaining life in Norway ( feel free to stop reading now and go develop your abs by laughing at Hyperbole and a Half instead)

Last week I decided to try a practice with the cross country ski team in Bergen. They're still doing dryland training, and we spent an hour running up and down the streets and trails on the way up to Fløyen. It was a really neat place to run in the dark; winding streets on ths slope of the mountain, with a view of of all the city lights. There was a ton of other people running, and an outdoor ice rink up there too. Who knew?

I didn't have much of a chance to admire all this though; the training was crazy hard, if somewhat familiar feeling. 3 x 7 minute uphill running intervals, plus a 5 minute flat one, and a couple one or so minute brutal uphill sprints. Ouch! I'm not exactly used to this; it was all I could do not start walking. Except that I had the norwegian coach yelling at me to " come again!" ( in norwegian), which just made me laugh. 

And now for some random pictures that don't have much to do with what I've been writing about:

School from one side

...and from the other side

The view on my walk home from school


....school here is definitely a change from the courses I took back home; this is actually (somewhat) what I was supposed to be doing in art class :)

Friday night I hung out with the girls in my art class, which was really fun. That's where I heard "it's not the fart that kills you, it's the smell", although I didn't completely understand it at the time. 

Saturday I met up with Sofie, who was an exchange student to the US last year, and her twin sister Oda. They live on Stord, an island between Bergen and Stavanger. We spent the day Christmas shopping in the city, and visited the world's largest gingerbread town.

Pepperkakebyen; schools, families and organizations make gingerbread houses to display in the "town"


My cell phone doesn't have a flash, so my pictures didn't turn out; good thing there's google images!


This was my own picture though :)

Isn't it amazing?!

We ate dinner at Mcdonalds; the most reasonably priced meal I've eaten since I've been here. A cheeseburger for only ten kroner. That's what it costs to use the washrooms at the train station. Oh, and random, but it seems like people from other countries ( and by this I actually just mean Norway and the US), don't say washroom. Whenever I ask for the washroom, I get a response along the lines of "ummm....do you mean the bathroom/toilet?"

On the little lake in the middle of the city; apparently this is the first time in 20- something years the ice has been thick enough to walk on

It snowed on Saturday night; not a lot, but enough to make it white again after a month of brown and green. Sunday we went to Liv (my host family's niece)'s seventh birthday party. In the evening Helene and I went to a Christmas concert in a church in Arna. It was weird to hear songs like "Silent Night" with all the words changed. It was cold in the church, but I think I've finally found a purpose for the weight I've gained here; it keeps me warm! Not the best way to justify it, but why not look on the bright side? 

Random observation: when people clap for a performance back home, it's all scattered. Here it starts off like that, and morphs into a syncronized rythym, with everyone clapping together in unison. Doesn't sound all that unusual, but it's really unnerving!

Noellen ( another exchange student in Norway) mentioned this in her "you know you're in Norway when..." note on facebook, and I'm going to write down some of my favorites from hers, and another "you know you're an exchange student in Norway when..." page:

• Liver paste is your lunch for school today
• Mmmm becomes a filler in conversation ( I noticed this more when I was in the eastern part of Norway)
• You say koselig more times than necessary
• If someone can't understand you, they automatically switch to english. (I've noticed this a lot lately, pretty much everytime I try and use norwegian in a store, the cashier picks up on it and responds in english. At McDonalds, apparently the way I pronounced "cheeseburger" was enough for the cashier to reply with "that'll be 10 kr".
• You have agreed to things without having any idea what the questions were
• You start spelling english words with "tion" endings "sjon"
• Sometimes you're not sure what language you're listening to anymore
• When you pay 12 kr for chewing gum, and think it's cheap
• When you start speaking english with a norwegian accent

Sometime I'll make my own list; I love random observations! I also overuse the word random. I remember when I worked at Safeway I left a note for one of the other workers who was opening the next day, and she knew who it was from because I used "random" in it.

I think that brings me up to date here again. I'm sitting here eating toast with brown cheese and jam; a section of the third "Millenium" movie just finished playing on TV. Now I'm reading how a dishwasher works....seriously! We don't have one at home; the idea that you can put dishes in dirty, facing all different angles, and they come out sparkling seems magic. Not that that really has anything to do with Norway.

One last thought; you're probably wondering what the title of this post has to do with anything. Or maybe you've forgotten what it was by this point, but anyways, apparently winter is no hindrance to Norwegian ice cream trucks. I was out running with the track team this evening, and it drove by through the snow, music playing and all. Despite the fact that it neither looked nor felt remotely like summer. Can't see it getting much business, but who knows...

I'll leave you with one last picture from the pepperkakebyen: