A lesson on brunost and lovely Bergen weather

I'm sitting on the couch having an inner war with myself whether or not to go for a run. The rain is whipping by in horizontal sheets outside, and I think most of our snow is melted again. Last night all the side roads were solid ice with a thin layer of water on top, and I'm a little hesitant to go out and check how they are today. Mostly just because I'm lazy and would rather tell you guys about brunost than go out and get soaked. I'd rather be here: (excuse the angry face):

Than out there :

So, I'm going to start this post off with a lesson on brunost, or brown cheese.

I’d heard a bit about brunost before I came to Norway, but really didn’t understand what it was. Cheese is cheese, right? Soft, hard, whatever; you still eat it on pasta, with crackers, and on your ham sandwiches. You would never eat normal cheese with strawberry jam, or on waffles. But brunost is no ordinary cheese. Actually, it's not really cheese at all; it's made from the whey instead of the curds. (I don't actually know anything about cheese making; the only thing I know about curds and whey has to do with little miss muffet and a spider)

 

At my first breakfast here in Norway I was encouraged to try it, and thought it was just normal (although brown) cheese. So I tried it with tomatoes; first and last time I've done that. It's more common to eat it with sweeter things, like jam. Ever since I tried it with raspberry jam and toast it's become one of the staples in my diet here, for better or for worse. There was definitely one day where I ate this combination for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

So if it isn't cheese, and you don't eat it in a normal cheese-like way ( if such a generalization even exists), what is it? A mixture of milk, cream and whey boiled until the lactose caramelizes, turning it brown. I don't want to do too much internet research on it, because I know I'll come across its nutritional information somewhere, and I really don't want to know that! I would describe it as tasting like caramel and peanut butter, but it doesn't really taste like that at all.

Fløtemysost was most often in the fridge at Tord and Helene's, it's mild and has lots of cream. It's made from cow's milk.

Gudbrandsdalsost is stronger, and made from a mixture of goats' and cow's milk. My best translation of the package is: The brown cheeses from TINE (brand) are some of what makes norwegians norwegians. These særnorske? cheeses have traditions back to Anne Hov's original recipe from 1863. I can't figure out what "særnorske" means; google translate gives me "weird norwegian", "relatively high" and "relatively sharp" depending on how I type it in. None of which really make sense. 

 

The last major category of brunost from TINE is Ekte Geitost ( real goats cheese). It's made from, well, obviously goat's milk, and is the strongest tasting. 

At first I only really liked the milder fløtemysost, but I've grown to love the other two with jam as well. Bread isn't even neccesary!

I think I'm going to go out and give running a try now. I told Devin (exchange student near Oslo) on skype that if I hadn't seen lightning or falling trees by 3:00, I would run. It's 2:56 and doesn't look like either of those is going to happen. Although there was thunder and lightning a few weeks ago while it was snowing; I didn't even know that was possible!

Hopefully I'll come back alive to finish this, preferably intact. If not, well, my last written words were about Brunost, so not a bad way to go. 

Well, I survived. It was pretty anticlimatic actually; the roads were bare now and it was only drizzling. It was my longest run in a while, an hour and twenty minutes or so. 

On Friday I helped with the SFO (after school program) again; I think I mentioned it before. The kids, who are around 6-8 I think, have gym time after school for an hour as long as there's enough kids to run it. On Friday there was only five, but instead of sending me home until next week, the leader said I could just take them on my own. I was a little nervous; it's one thing to play with them when there's another leader in charge, and quite another to give orders on my own. With kids I can't just say things in english and know they'll understand; I have to figure out how to phrase things in Norwegian, or mime it. Luckily I got an easy group; four girls and one guy who were thrilled that I was willing to drag them around the floor using a hockey stick. Exhausting, but pretty easy entertainment. Alternating that with jumping randomly off benches onto mats and playing disorganized floor hockey easily took up the hour. When we had a few minutes left and had cleaned up the equipment, I tried to suggest we play tag, but didn't know what it was called in Norwegian. I asked one of the girls what it was called by pretending to tag her, and she said something in Norwegian that I didn't catch. They all seemed excited to play, and one girl told me they needed a ring to play with. One ran off and found a screw, and they sat me down with them in a circle on the floor and started singing. Not exactly the game of tag I'd expected; I was pretty confused. It ended up being a "duck duck goose" type game where one runs around the circle and puts the screw (or ring) in anothers hand, and then they open their eyes and guess who has it. 

I still have no idea what "tag" is called in Norwegian. 

Regardless, I was happy to make it through the hour without any major miscommunications. The next communication challenge came on Saturday, when I took the train to the city to go shopping.

I have a bus pass which Rotary pays for, which you buy every month on the bus or at the station. I bought mine for this month on the bus, and the bus driver gave me a receipt without a "valid until" date on it. I asked him about it, and he said nahh, it's fine, see here, a green light comes up when I scan it, so it's valid! I was a little skeptical of how it would work on the train, but long discussions in Norwegian aren't really my strong point so I let it go.

I forgot about it until I was on the train yesterday, and the conductor was coming around checking tickets. I tried to explain that you could see the date I bought it on the reciept and that the bus driver said that was all I needed. She told me I hadn't activated it yet, and went into a long winded explanation about bus cards being like bank cards, which didn't make much sense. She said if it wasn't valid, I'd have to pay 1000 kr. I said I didn't have any money with me, and definitely not 1000 kr, so she took the card and said to come to the station when the train had stopped. So I went in, annoyed at the bus driver I'd bought it from, trying to figure out how to explain myself in Norwegian, and thinking about all the things I could buy with 170 dollars besides a little slip of paper. They checked the card, found out it was activated and valid, and gave me a new receipt. The end, nothing dramatic. I figure if they had tried to make me pay, I could have switched to english and played the clueless exchange student card, but as it was I'm pretty proud they never noticed I wasn't norwegian. 

So that was the beginning of an eventful Saturday which also involved running on the ice, in the dark, in the pouring rain ten minutes to the shopping centre and ending up soaking wet. I didn't plan very well and assumed I had lots of time to get ready, then realized we were meeting earlier and there was no bus for half an hour. Then our  ride wasn't even there yet because of road closures. Gotta love Norwegian weather! I met Tonje from my class at the shopping centre where we waited to be driven to Eirin's. We got kicked out of the centre into the rain just as our ride arrived. The rest of last night more than made up for the day though; a relaxed fun "jentekveld" (girls night) with the girls in my art class. 

That brings me up to date again. 

Oh, and my host family has a walk in fridge. Reminds me of all the hours I spent working in the freezer at Safeway, although warmer and way less crowded.

I'll finish off with some more brunost to make you hungry   =)

I've also updated the norwegian page up top, so feel free to comment and correct it! Jeg lærer mye når folk korrigerer meg, og jeg vet at det jeg skriver er ikke helt riktig. Så ikke være redd for å skrive en commentaire! 

takk!

=)

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 :)

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