Cows on top of a (sort of) mountain

Today was amazing weather, one of the only times I've seen the sky completely blue. I decided in Norwegian class that as long as it wasn't dumping rain by the time I got out (which wouldn't be unusual at all) I would do the same hike/run as yesterday and take some pictures. It had clouded over by the time I got to the top, but I still got some pictures of the views. Considering they're taken with my cell phone, I don't think they're too bad

Bridge to Osterøy

Panorama

I live somewhere in that area (this is zoomed out, it's not as far as it looks)

Running

This is my first summer that I haven't been officially training for cross country skiing, so it's been interesting to plan workouts around life, instead of planning my life around workouts.

Last fall I dreamed of coming home from school and not having to go rollerskiing, running or to the gym, but after  "quitting" ski racing, I've found that I can't live without exercise. At home I walked about an hour every day to get to and from school, as well as training most days. Here I have about a three minute walk, so that's a big difference. 

I find that even if I have no real reason to, I still like to run to relax and keep up my old habits. I'll come home from school, having decided I don't need to run, hang around for half an hour feeling jittery, then give in, change and go.

My standards have changed; I used to consider an hour "short" and while I'm still in good enough shape to run for longer, I've learned to accept that any length of run is good, and have no problem going for just half an hour. It would be a better use of my time to do intervals and long runs and mix it up, but for now I'm happy plodding along at a steady (slow) pace. 

At first I didn't know where to run here; everywhere I went seemed to be a busy road with no shoulder, or a frustrating maze of dead end streets. I found out about some roads that run parallel to the busy main road, and discovered a network of trails that wind up the mountain. 

This morning I took a trail up behind the handball gymnasium, and ended up at the beginning of some trails I'd come to before, but from a different direction. I kept going up, mostly walking because the trail was a slippery muddy river in some parts. I seem to have found where people hike around here; I got lots of hei hei's as I met people on the trail. I kept thinking I should turn back, but knew I was getting near the top of something, although I didn't know what. After about 40 minutes since leaving the house, I popped out above the trees to an insane view. I could see to Bergen in one direction, the Osterøy bridge the other way, and rolling hills meeting the ocean. 

It was like being above the treeline in Canada, but it had only taken 40 minutes from town to get there. It was greener as well, it felt like I'd hiked from Norway into Scotland or Ireland, with the rolling green hilltops. I heard some clanging, and there were sheep wandering around up there!

I regret not bringing a camera, jacket and water, because I felt like I'd just gotten to the good part. I'll go up and take pictures another time, because it's gorgeous! More rolling than around Nelson, and the hills aren't as high, but it's really amazing to get above the trees so quickly. I had to go back for breakfast; the whole thing took about an hour and a half.

There is nothing better than a cold shower after a weekend run, drinking water from the shower head while shaving my legs, then going upstairs to a feast. 

At orientation they showed a sine graph and said that on exchange there would be amplified ups and downs. So far the graph of my exchange has been absolute valued (if you can even use that as a verb) and has hardly dropped into the negative axis at all. (Sorry for the nerd moment, apparently I haven't forgotten all of math 12) On Friday night I hung out with Emma from my HiFi class and some of her friends, then yesterday I went shopping with Vilde in the city then went to a party later on with the girls I hung out with the night before. Alt var kjempe gøy (everything was very fun, at least I think thats what I wrote :P )

Life is good.

Differences

I have an hour of time to kill before going shopping in the city, so I'm gonna write down my observations of differences between Canada and Norway. I don't mean to generalize though, some of the differences could be found between areas of families in Canada, so these are my observations between Nelson and Arna/Bergen.

- They get laptops to use in school here! I haven't got one yet, but it's strange to see kids talking on msn in class when their sitting right next to each other.

- The houses are painted brighter colours; the area I'm living in would look a lot more like Nelson if the houses weren't all white/red/yellow/blue

- Rain.

- More rain.

- Although the rain isn't actually that bad, the mist makes it kind of pretty. And this is specific to my area, not all of Norway. Now I see why my host family has a bucket full of umbrellas near the front door, and the local shoe store has an entire wall for gumboots/rainboots/whatever you want to call them

- More people smoke, at least I've noticed that at school.

- Roundabouts everywhere

- Handball! I went to a practice with a girl from one of my classes last night; she's injured so we did exercises on the side and watched. It's intense! They put klister ( like ski wax) on the game balls after the players are over 16, so the floor has random bits of klister all over it

- Cross country skiing is more noticeable, even in the summer. There was a rollerski race on tv; they had helicopter coverage, the streets were lined with people, commentators, everything. I've seen Marit Bjørgen on TV several times, and the brown cheese package (yumm) has a picture of a biathlete on it.

- We ate dinner fairly early in Canada, but they eat it even earlier here. Around 3 or 4, and then dessert and coffee are around 6:30 or 7. I like this schedule; after school is when I'm the hungriest anyways.

- Weekend breakfasts in my host family are around 10:30/11:00. On the first Sunday here I woke up early, because I wasn't used to the time difference, and went for a run at 6 am. I was pretty much bored out of my mind for the next four hours, and learned to sleep in later on weekends :). My host dad usually plays golf in the morning on weekends, and my host mom stays in bed and reads. It seems like weekends are really relaxed.

- Fish and potatoes, it's true! Although some people have said that's not actually that common, and other exchangers have said they don't eat them as much as I do. It's a lot more fish and potatoes than I eat at home, however; I've only had pasta here once. My host grandma is really good at cooking fish though, so I don't mind :)

- At the shopping centre in Bergen and the train station there, they make you PAY to use the washrooms! You have to put in a 5 or 10 kr coin, which is ( very roughly) paying 90 cents to 1.70 !

I can't think of any more right now, but I've only been here 2 weeks, so I'm sure I'll come across many bigger differences later.

Ha det :)

Some pictures

I guess if I'm going to do this properly I better put up some pictures, so here we go:

View to the left of my host family's deck

Bryggen in Bergen; really old crooked houses on the harbour

The train up to mt. Floyen above Bergen

Weekend breakfast :)

My new school

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!

The beginning, aka a TON of rambling about flying to Norway

I have nothing interesting to say about getting to the airport. I drew whales and mountains and a canadian flag on my suitcase in highlighter, it didn't exactly show up. The motel in Spokane had free double chocolate chip cookies ( other kinds too, but I didn't pay attention to them). I got a thai noodle salad for supper, it wasn't super memorable as a last meal in North America. I've never seen so much lettuce in one place; I didn't even make a dent. The chicken was good though. 

I bought two sports bras and a wallet at Target in Spokane, and new runners in the mall. I felt like I had to stock up on everything, that there would be no stores whatsoever in Norway, or else that a bottle of shampoo would cost 30 dollars or something ridiculous like that. I was partially right, pizza for three people cost 300 kr the other day in Bergen, which is about 50 dollars Canadian. Still though,the four pounds of toiletries I packed could probably have stayed home; they DO shower here, and believe it or not, they even have conditioner! ( See what I mean about rambling? I wasn't exaggerating!. It's a really good skill for essays on exams, especially when you know nothing about the subject, but it's probably a little irritating here. Oh well, the exit button is thataway --->, except tilted up. I'm sure you can find it.

Meghan and I wore our Rotary jackets on the plane (I'm on a rotary exchange, by the way, I never really said that), and neither of us really had any pins. I ripped the flag part off a canadian flag I took from Canada Day, and pinned that on my jacket.We must have been recognizable enough though, cause we were approached by a girl who went to mexico a few years ago.

I sat with a woman on the plane who’d been a teacher in an army camp in Germany for several years, she described the architecture of the Denver airport, and convinced me that Norwegians were really nice, and that I had to buy either a troll or a sweater.

The Denver airport looked, as far as I could tell, like a bunch of tents put together. It’s strange to go to a city for only four hours, and be only in the airport. It doesn’t really feel like you’ve gone anywhere at all. Meghan and I talked to an elderly lady about knitting, and I went looking for a cart so we could wander around and haul our stuff with us. No luck. I brought way too much as a carryon, definitely didn’t need ten granola bars, two packages of apple chips, a box of crackers, Canadian flags, and whatever other junk managed to fill a laptop bag and a backpack.  

In Philli, which I still picture as being made of cream cheese, we went straight for the food court. I bought a bowl of spaghetti which I think was cooked in oil rather than water. It was delicious. We met up with some other exchange students, all either going to Oslo or Frankfurt. 

I was pretty hyper by the beginning of the overnight flight, and probably made an interesting first impression on some people (Abby and Devin, I'm talking about you, haha). I got really excited about the airplane wing several times, thinking at first it was a plane flying parallel to us, then the sun, then a plane coming straight at us. I was really excited about the Norwegian looking people on the plane, and decided anyone blonde was a Norwegian. The family in front of me fit this criteria (what, spell check wants me to change that to “this criterion”, no way, that sounds like a spaceship)  so I tried to lurk on their conversation, only catching the word aldri, which means never.  I tried to sleep, and got really confused by the airplane washrooms, convinced that locking a door made it easier to get out, plugging the toilet (if you can call it that) with paper towel because I didn’t see the toilet paper in front of my face, and trying to put the paper towel into the machinery area which clearly had a line through the universal symbol for trash.

I learned that trying to sleep with your feet vertical up the back of the seat feels good for about seven seconds, and then gets really awkward, especially when you realize all the flight attendant sees are feet popping up where a head should be. I don’t think I slept at all, although I got really excited when I accidentally hit the stopwatch part of my watch, looked at seven minutes later, and thought it was 7 am. It was only four, and a check of my ipod confirmed that I hadn’t skipped any songs.

We got little plastic meals, which actually weren’t bad. I decided that the carrot cake was carrot-zucchini cake, so I wouldn’t worry about the bright green bits. The thin strip of light grew as we went, and soon I could see…clouds. Not very exciting, although it was fun to imagine what was underneath. We started to descend into Norway, and it was super anticlimactic. We couldn’t see anything until we’d practically hit the ground, and it was pouring rain.

 The first thing I noticed about the Oslo airport was the tiny cute bathrooms, and the silence. Oh, and the fact that their fire hose signs look like cute snails. Customs was easy, easier than Denver, which makes no sense. We went down to collect our luggage, and I decided it was smarter to carry a ski bag, suitcase, backpack and laptop case without a cart, never mind that I had trouble with my carryon alone. By the time I made it across the floor, which is really small by the way, I was sweating and had dropped everything several times. I tried to change some money, but gave up when I couldn’t read the error message the machine gave me. I made it to the baggage area without taking any heads off with my skis, which was a serious accomplishment.  I got some funny looks hauling them around, I guess that’s strange in august even for Norway, or else they were looking at my amazing baggage carrying skills, and not the skis themselves.

I went through security once, and they told me I had to go back, because I had liquids in my bag. I had assumed Norway wasn’t as paranoid as the states, and had forgotten. I dug out the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer from the bottom of my backpack, spreading my stuff everywhere, and probably breaking every rule about keeping your belongings safe. I went through again, the security wand lady gave me a funny look, as though I wanted to be felt up again. The security clerk gave me an exasperated look, and said in slow English, “please take the liquid out of your bag, go back.”  I told him I had, and gave him the hand sanitizer. He looked at me like I was retarded, and pulled my water bottle out of my bag. Whoops. I hauled all my stuff against traffic again, and asked the man if I could keep my laptop in my bag. He said sure. So I went through again, and the other man working there was like ooh that’s a laptop, can you take it out? I glared at the first guy, and went back to the end of the line. I finally made it through after getting a serious “wtf” look from the security wand lady.

I sat with a guy going to Ålesund for a bit, cause my flight was so far away I didn’t even get a gate number. When he left, I sat down and read an article in a tourist magazine bragging about the speed of the Oslo airport’s security check through. I bet I seriously messed up their statistics.

My body finally decided to realize that I’d been up since 3 am the day before, but I didn’t feel like leaving my stuff abandoned while I slept, so I forced my eyes to stay open. Oh, and random fact, the workers at the oslo airport get around on scooters. Scooters! Like the kind little kids ride around that you push with one leg. That basically made up for my experience going through security.

I forced myself to get excited when I woke up, and it worked and brought me back to a semi-conscious level.  Meeting the rotary people was fairly uneventful. John Akselberg was taller than I expected, and that was about it. They were really nice, and I realized I wasn’t capable of speaking any Norwegian. I was fairly awake by the time Tord and I left to drive home, and decided it looked like Vancouver Island with a lot of roundabouts.

We had chicken, rice and vegetables when we got in, a nice normal meal. The only thing I was unsure about was a plum and onion salad in mayonnaise, one bite was enough of that.  I decided I had to get organized right away, which makes no sense as that’s usually last on my priority list, especially after 30 hours without sleep.  I fell asleep around 7 pm and woke up at 11 am the next morning, when Helene woke me up for breakfast. I had woken up earlier, but the clock in my room had stopped during the night, so I was convinced it was only 6 am, and thought that they ate very early breakfasts in Norway.

Breakfast was insane; bread and crackers, with pretty much everything that can be put on them, plus more, like caviar in a toothpaste tube. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the brown cheese, and tried it with tomatoes, which got some strange looks from my host family; they said they’d never seen that combination. I’ve basically lived off toast, jam and brown cheese since.  I haven’t got the guts to try jars of fish, which look like something from biology, or the caviar, but I’m getting there. I started with liver paste yesterday, that’s a start.

We went to the Arna-Bjornar vs Staebeck soccer game after, and holly I’ve written way too much about nothing and I don’t feel like writing anymore. Too bad I couldn’t be this prolific in English class, or writing scholarship essays. Oh, University is FREE here! That seems like it would take out a lot of motivation in high school, my reason for getting good grades the past three years was to get money for university.  Speaking of money, I was talking to a girl in school today, she works at McDonalds and, as far as I understood, makes $14 an hour on weekdays and $17 on weekends! Whattt! That’s how much I’ll make if I ever become a lifeguard, after spending $1000 on courses. And she makes that here at Mcdonalds!

Anyways, that was a digression worthy of Mr Demontigney, if that’s even how you spell his name. I don’t think I’ve ever written it, it was always Mr D. 

More rambling later, you can stop scanning for interesting parts of this and give up cause you won’t find any, but now you’re lucky cause I’m stopping now (for now).

Ha det

Don't feel obliged to read this....

Hi
I'm not completely sure why I'm making a blog, but I'm in a writing mood and have nothing else to do, so there you go. I also don't know what I'm going to write about, but seeing as I'm in Norway right now, that will be the main subject. So, if you care about me eating brown cheese and jam (usually on bread) and trying to learn norwegian, keep reading. If not, and I don't blame you, theres plenty of more interesting sites to look at.

This may be something I get really excited about for a week, then give up on, so don't expect regular updates (or any updates for that matter) once I get over the initial ohmigodihavetomakeablog moment. Yes, spellcheck, I know you don't like that one.

So, that's my introduction. I'm Lauren by the way, but I can't really see people coming across this by accident, so you probably already knew that. If not, well, hi.