Godt Nyttår!!

Well I’ve been a slack blogger, haven’t written anything since last year! Ok, that joke is getting really old.

The past week, romjul, has blurred in my mind into a mix of sleeping, visiting and running. I don't remember exactly what I did each day, and I won't bore you with a play-by-play either. I trained several times with Ida, including some sprints with Tord on Monday, and painful stair running intervals on Wednesday. Both our legs were shaking when we tried to do planks/bridges after that! On Tuesday Tord and I went for a quick ski on a groomed track about a fifteen minute drive from here; it was gorgeous! Cold and sunny; there's a loop that's about 4 km long, which is lit at nights. I think I had a huge smile on my face the whole time; the first real ski of the year is always amazing. I managed to fall twice; slipping on some ice and sliding smack into a family; and tripping over my own skis and faceplanting into some powder. Clearly my downhill skills haven't improved any since last year.

On Thursday afternoon I got a package from home (thanks guyss!!), which took over a month to get here since Mom and Dad sent it on some random ship that came through the Northwest passage, or something like that. It was filled with an assortment of things wrapped in newspaper and old wrapping paper I recognized from our collection at home. 

New pyjamas....just in time, my old ones were full of holes :)

My stocking from Opa and Oma's house, filled with little gifts, including a chocolate orange!

Book from Shawn

Helene came in when I was opening this one, she was like "Oh, a candle." I started laughing when I realized what it was; pumpkin and evaporated milk to make pumpkin pie!!

The funniest gift was definitely Shawn's second, very generous one. Here is some "spending money" from him:

Yep, fake Norwegian money printed out; including some cut out coins :) The envelope was decorated with sound advice and motivational quotes; he seems to either have become suddenly good in Norwegian, or else gone a little google translate crazy; I'm leaning towards the latter. 

Wise words from Shawn:

(after google translating some of them back to find out what he actually meant...not that it really became any clearer :P )

-Remember to eat cheesecake

-Listen to the ear

-Don't accept potatoes from aliens.....ok? hahah

-Support water bottle producers..I'm guessing you meant reusable ones?

-Don't eat too much cheese.....hmmm, too late!

-"breathe"

-Never drink sasquatch milk, it can contain traces of bananas

Well, thanks..haha

I wish I'd thought to skype home while I opened these, cause I was laughing really hard by the time I finished reading that. 

New years was really fun. There were family and friends over for dinner; we had pinnekjøtt again, same as on Christmas eve. I think turkey is the traditional thing to eat on New years here; we had it for dinner on the first. Dessert was a marzipan fish with chocolate in the middle (typical Norway, even fish for dessert! ) and a really neat stacked cake called something like kransekaker? It looked amazing, and tasted really good too.

Marzipan and chocolate fish

Cake :)

 I skyped with Kim, Marlies, Tegan, Carli and Alli after dinner, who were all over at Kim's place. So nice to "see" them! They were treated to "frere jaques" ( in norwegian) on the piano by Liv. Then I went to a new years party with some friends. Midnight was crazy here; everyone went out in the street and started hugging eachother and wishing eachother a happy new year, and there were fireworks going off everywhere!

I just finished watching part of the tour de ski on TV;  I get way too excited when I see Canadians in the races, especially when we do well and the announcers actually mention us.

It’s interesting to see the world from another country’s perspective, and especially how Canada and the US are represented here. Just like at home, there’s a lot of American news in the papers and on TV; it’s a pretty similar amount to what I’m used to. Canada pops up here and there, mostly in reference to the Vancouver Olympics. When I use the word “mostly” there, that implies that there’s a lot of Canadian news here. Which there isn’t at all. I’ve seen a full page spread on the Alberta oil sands in the paper; I think that's the most I've seen. Not the best way for us to be represented. Otherwise, people here seem to see Canada as a country with nice scenery, with lots of bears to be hunted and fish to be caught. When asked what they think of Canada, the response is usually something like “umm….hockey, and skiing, yeah, winter sports I guess.” I just did a quick facebook survey; the first things that came to mind regarding Canada were:
-Ice
-Snow (x3)
-Justin Bieber
-Polar bears
-Me....hahaha
-Inuit in igloos
-Bear hunting
-Cold
-George St Pierre (had to google that one, he's some kind of martial arts artist)
-Hockey (x2)
-Our flag
-Jay from top model
-Curling
-Neil Young

 That was pretty entertaining :) I guess before I came to Norway, I knew it was one of the Scandinavian fingers, and that it was cold and had lots of good skiiers, but not much else!

I also notice that I really have no idea what’s going on in the world anymore. I try and “read” the paper most days, but I can’t just skim the stories and get the idea behind them. It takes much more effort to read an article than in English, so I usually only read it if the picture or title really catches my eye. Same goes for news on TV; if I really focus I can make out the idea of a story, but when it’s just playing in the background I don’t pick anything up.

Well, I think that sums things up. Back to school tommorow. I don't have too many pictures from the past week, but here's some pretty fireworks (not taken by me...I'm nowhere near that skilled, nor did the fireworks look like that on New Years)

Godt Nyttår alle sammen! Happy New Years everyone!