Horse races, chocolate and a tour of the school

It's a dark picture, but last week I went with Tine from my english class to a sort of horse race, where people ride in little chariot type carts around the track. I actually had no idea this kind of racing existed since ancient Greece. There were a couple races with bigger horses (I'm sure more specific terms exist than "big horse", but I'm pretty clueless about horses) like this:

And then there were pony races as well (top picture) which were much slower and cuter. They all started on different parts of the track based on how strong they were; the little one up top started out first, and ended last. Despite it being wet and cold, it was really neat to see!

Now for Language Lesson time:  =)

(Picture taken from Andrea's facebook, who is in Denmark. The link is to her blog, which is great!)

I've had it mentioned to me several times that the English language has a huge range of words compared to Norwegian, and I tried looking that up on the internet. The english language apparently just reached the one million word mark, and I couldn't find anything concrete about Norwegian. The idea makes sense to me though; Norwegian tends to compound words together to make bigger words, making it easy to guess what they mean. 

For example:

-tannlege (tann = tooth) (lege = doctor), whereas we have our own seperate word, dentist.

-sykehus (syk = sick) (hus = house), so hospital

English has these kind of words as well, but I notice it a lot in Norwegian. It makes it much easier to figure out words when you can break them apart like that.

I've mentioned norwegian compound words before, how they seem to continually pile words together without ever using the space bar. "A midsummer night's dream" becomes "en midtsommernattsdrøm." Wikipedia has an interesting list of these words where adding in a space can completely change the meaning:

• Terrasse dør ("Terrace dies") instead of Terrassedør ("Terrace door")
• 
  
• Tunfisk biter ("Tuna bites", verb) instead of Tunfiskbiter ("Tuna bits", noun)
• 
  
• Smult ringer ("Lard is calling", verb) instead of Smultringer ("Doughnuts")
• 
  
• Tyveri sikret ("Theft guaranteed") instead of Tyverisikret ("Theft proof")
• 
  
• Stekt kylling lever ("Fried chicken lives", verb) instead of Stekt kyllinglever ("Fried chicken liver", noun)
• 
  
• Smør brød ("Butter bread", verb) instead of Smørbrød ("Sandwich")
• 
  
• Altfor Norge ("Too much Norway") instead of Alt for Norge ("All for Norway", the royal motto of Norway)

There's also a lot of norwegian words that look strange written, but are pronounced in a familiar way. For example, "sjåfør" is just a norwegian spelling of "chauffeur". Many words ending in "tion" gain a "J", and become norwegian as well. Motivasjon, inspirasjon, applikasjon etc. 

I think my norwegian is now close to the point my french was before I came here, although I'm stronger and weaker in different areas because of how I've used the languages. My french grammar was likely better, but I was less confident speaking it. I think it's amazing that six years of french immersion classes in school can give a similar result to six months of living in a country! With french I could write essays before ever talking with a native speaker outside of class, whereas here it's been the opposite. I never thought I was interested in languages with french either; it was just another class to me. Now I realize how fascinating it is to compare languages, and I've become more interested in French as well.

Speaking of France, and so therefore speaking of cheese (a lame attempt at transitioning between ideas)...

I haven't seen cheddar cheese here at all. Tonje and I were discussing this as we were running, and she was really surprised that we would have orange cheese. Some other foods I've (almost) forgotten about (not that you can't get them here, just that I never come across them):

-Peanut butter 

-Pumpkin

-Breakfast cereal (corn flakes, Special K, Froot loops etc)

-Hamburgers eaten on buns (we eat hamburgers, and buns, but I've never eaten the two together at home)

-Pancakes/waffles/french toast for breakfast

-Pie

-Milk at dinner (it's more often water)

-Grilled cheese sandwiches (I remember them every once and a while and have to make one)

Now I'll switch back, and introduce some norwegian chocolate and candy. They definitely have their fair share for such a small country!

 Like smarties, but better says Emma :)

Basically Kit Kat; they have really patriotic commercials for these with people sking and hiking in the mountains

Seigemenn; little gummy people

Troika; layers of jelly, chocolate and marzipan. I find it an odd kombination

Smash: to copy Devin's description:

Sweet black licorice; I never liked black licorice before i came here

Sur Sild (Sour herring)

and 

Salt herring (they have a lot more black licorice and salty candies here)

I could go on and on and make this post ridiculously long, those are just the first that came to mind. My Little Norway has an interesting post comparing Norwegian chocolate bars.

I have a free period in the middle of Mondays since I switched out of Math, and today I decided to wander around and take a few pictures of the school. There wasn't much to take pictures of, and I didn't go in any classrooms, but here's a little snapshot:

Second floor hallway

Little cafeteria (they don't actually sell food here, besides a coffee machine)

Dungeon stairs

Recycling/garbage/compost bins (they don't have these in classrooms though, so a lot of this stuff still ends up in the garbage here.)

Vending machine which sells orange juice, chocolate milk, iced coffee, and yogurt/granola.

If you look closely at the paper on the machine, you can tell that the paper here has four holes. Exciting, I know. Students also call teachers here by their first names.

On Saturday I went shopping in Bergen and went a bit past the sentrum, to some areas I'd never been before. It was neat to just explore around!

Bryggen from across the water

And that's another week gone by in Norway