When you have no teacher in art class - why not paint on the walls?

When a teacher is away here, it's much less common to get a substitute teacher. It happens, but is nowhere near as likely as at home. Instead, the counselor or principal (rektor) will come in, tell us what to do, and leave. Last Tuesday our assignment in art class was to look through some old books about Bergen, and photocopy parts in preparation for our test on Friday. 

That didn't take long, and we were left with an hour or so to kill. What to do? The first suggestion was to paint the walls in the art classroom, but we decided that maybe that wasn't the best idea without permission. We found a big roll of paper instead, taped it to the wall, and just started painting with paintbrushes and hands, with no plan whatsoever in mind.

When I say "my art class" by the way, it means 9 students, five of which were there and painted. It's not like we had 30 kids flinging paint at the walls. My school here only has about 300 students, and I have several small classes. French has like 9 or 10, History/Philosophy has like 6 or 7 on a good day, and art has 9 when everyone shows up. The rest are normal sized classes.

So we dressed up in plastic bag tunics, bound together with masking tape to keep our clothes clean, and started painting, with no real purpose.

I started off with a circle, because I had to paint something, and it morphed into an eye. 

Not exactly a masterpiece, but that's what you get in 45 minutes. It was a really fun and spontaneous class.

For the next art class, on Thursday, we had no teacher again, but were told to go into the city and take pictures of various buildings from the middle ages. We knew we had a test on Friday that would have something to do with Bergen's history, but didn't know exactly what it would be.

This is probably a good time to tell a bit more about Bergen and Arna, and just where exactly I am in Norway.

There's the three "fingers" with Bergen on the west coast of Norway. It still surprises me to turn on the TV and see finnish TV channels, or hear of people driving to Sweden or taking a boat to Denmark. I tend to forget I'm actually in Europe.

To give a little perspective, Bergen is about as far north as Whitehorse is in Canada. Considering how far north Norway is, it's very warm. The climate here is much closer to a Vancouver than Whitehorse.

I'm living in Arna, which is a sort of suburb of Bergen. Bergen has around 250 000 people, and is the second biggest city in Norway. Arna has a population of 12 000 or so, but unlike Nelson, has no developed main street or stores. There's a little mall with grocery stores and a few clothing stores, but there's barely even any restaurants in Arna; everyone goes into Bergen.

Getting to Bergen takes 8 minutes by train through a mountain , but longer (20 minutes or so) to drive around the mountain.

Some facts about Bergen:

• Founded in 1070, and the capital of Norway for a period of time. I still find the idea of walking through that old of a city incredible. Nearly a thousand years old! 

•  an important trading city, with a lot of German influence. 

• Parts of the city have burned down many times. THIS link lets you see the area 34 fires burned since 1170, as well as where the ocean was at that point, and how far the city had developed. If nothing else, it's kind of fun to move the mouse really fast and see the orange blob jump around as the city grows

• In 1702, approximately 90 percent of the city burned down, in its worst fire.

• The Black Death came to Bergen in 1349, from an English ship.

• Bergen was Norway's biggest city until the 1830's, when Oslo overtook it

• Bergen comes from Bjørgvin, old norse meaning "the meadow among the mountains"

So, for art class on Thursday, we walked around to some of the landmarks and took pictures; being tourists in our own city. 

Art class in the city, missing Christopher and Emil, as well as Silvia who took the picture

On Friday, our "test" was to make a brochure presenting different landmarks from the middle ages in Bergen, using our own photos. Not too difficult when they didn't turn the internet off for it. I can't get the indesign file to upload here, but the top of my brochure looked like this, nothing exciting;

A couple of the places I talked about:

Domkirken (a church), built in 1150

Håkonshallen; built as a party hall for the king. It was used in the king Håkon's son's wedding to a Danish woman in in 1261

So that was a history lesson for today. I find history way more interesting when it's this close and real, rather than just a dry textbook. It's really neat to be able to walk along cobblestone streets past ancient churches just going from the shopping centre to the train station.

I'd like to do a section about differences between Canada and Norway here, but everything here seems so normal that I can't think of anything major I haven't written before. A couple posts about differences from earlier in my exchange are here (3.5 months in) and here (near the end of the post, 7 weeks in) and a really old one, just two or so weeks in here

I wanted to do another one of those posts after reading Karen's post today, who's in Brazil. She has a great blog, and this post was really interesting! 

So, here goes a short list of observations, after 7 months in Norway (WHAT?....yeah, seven month anniversary was yesterday)

• Wikipedia: As far as I remember, we were always taught that wikipedia doesn't count as a source in school. You couldn't just write "wikipedia" in your bibliography. Norwegians use it for everything though. We get wikipedia printouts in class, and the newspaper the other day even quoted it for some statistics. 

• Their use of commas and periods is backwards from us when it comes to numbers. So 10,9 means 10.9, while 1.345 is 1,345. This still confuses me.

• They call 10 km "en mil" which sounds like "a mile" with a norwegian accent. So for 50 km, especially for things like ski races, they'll say "5 mil." Didn't make any sense to me til I asked.

• Measurements for cooking are all metric too, which I find reallllly confusing! The measuring cups have different lines for rice, water, flour etc, based on weight I guess. You can't just use a simple cup measure for everything. I never really realized though, what a confused mixture of imperial and metric we use in Canada. "Yeah, well we measure distance in km, but height in feet, temperature in celsius unless it's an oven, or sometimes a fever, weigh ourselves in pounds, and milk in Litres....." It's a fun one to explain.

• There aren't really any "one stop shop" kind of stores, at least none that I've come across. No walmart here! You have to go to a different store for different things, can't just buy thread, glue, fill a prescription and buy groceries at the same place.

• This doesn't necessarily mean there's more variety in the average stores at shopping centres though. Every one I've been to (in Oslo, Hamar, Halden, Sandvika, Ski, Bergen...) they have almost no variety in clothing stores. Cubus, H&M, Vero Moda, Bik Bok etc are everywhere.

• Public transportation: It might just have something to to with living near the main road here, versus way above town at home, but it's never been so easy for me to get places. I may not always be the best at figuring out bus schedules and routes, and theres lots of people who would complain about the system here. But compared to what I'm used to, I love being able to just take a bus every half hour, that connects right to the train to the city. It's easy to catch busses from there too, although I haven't done that too much. The trains across the country are great too, at least from where I live. If you book at least a day in advance, you can get tickets to Oslo for like 35 dollars. Way cheaper than the Greyhound bus at home, nicer, and faster. No stopping for smoke breaks every stop at random sketchy bus stations; the train barely even stops.

• Bergen dialect: I've mentioned plenty of times how much variation there is in dialects here. How you can literally cross a bridge and people will be talking differently. The Bergen dialect apparently has a German influence. I think I got lucky with where I was placed, as far as dialect go, as confused as I was at first. We don't have to roll our R's here, just kind of choke them, and people talk with more of a similar rythym to english. In the east they speak really bouncy, for lack of a better word, and it seems hard to know when to go up and down. Also, we have the added bonus here of only having two grammatical genders! I didn't really pay attention to this until I was just in Oslo with the other exchange students, and someone asked why I said "klokken" instead of "klokka." For some reason we're pretty much the only city in Norway to have just neutral and masculine, no feminine gender. Makes life easier for me!

That's all that comes to mind for now.

It was feeling like Spring, until Winter decided to give us another visit over the past few days. A few last pictures from this morning:

Below the school

Lost in Translation

It's raining. Big surprise. I notice it more at this house since my room has a skylight, and even when it's just drizzling it sounds like it's raining hard. Looks like we're in for a bit more rain:

I didn't start a blog post just to tell you it's raining though. That's not exactly big news here. I just wanted to talk a bit about translations and english in Norway.

Since everyone here is so good at english, I haven't seen any hilarious examples like this:

or this:

or this:

More of those here.  :)

Even without menus advertising "rude and unreasonable chicken", there's still smaller translation quirks that can be funny.

Most tv here is in english with norwegian subtitles, but they often translate the title to norwegian in the guide. This just makes it confusing to browse through and know what's actually on, since I tend to assume it's a norwegian show if the title is in norwegian.

I came across My little Norway last year when I was looking for sites to learn norwegian, it's a great site about an Australian woman and her family living in Norway. It has a list of some funny movie title translations into Norwegian and back; here's a few funny ones:

-The Pacifier
-Norwegian: Operasjon barnevakt
-Back to english: Operation Babysitter

-Opportunity Knocks
-Norwegian: Hjelp, jeg er blitt sjef!
-Back to english: Help, I've Become a Manager!

-Airplane
-Norwegian: Hjelp, vi flyr!
-Back to english: Help, we're flying!

-The World's Fastest Indian
-Norwegian: En høyst uvanlig mann
-Back to english: A Highly Unusual Man

-Meet the Parents
-Norwegian: Slekten er verst
-Back to english: Family is the Worst

It isn't just movie titles that can get strange translations; the Harry Potter characters are another example. I don't know what these name changes accomplished:

Albus Dumbledore - Albus Humlesnurr

Dudley Dursley - Dudleif Dumling 

Vernon Dursley - Wiktor Dumling

Hagrid - Gygrid

Gilderoy Lockhart - Gyldeprinz Gulmedal

Neville Longbottom - Nilus Langballe

Professor McGonagall - Professor McSnurp

Tom Marvolo Riddle - Tom Dredolo Venster

Slytherin - Smygard

Severus Snape - Severus Slur

Dolores Jane Umbridge - Venke Dolorosa Uffert

You know who - Han de vet (he they know)

The translator must have been bored with their job or something, they definitely had fun with those! "He they know" doesn't sound quite as ominous as "you know who." The names didn't really become any more Norwegian though, no Olav or Ingeborg or Torbjørn to be seen.

Norwegians use a lot of english in everyday conversation, without seeming to notice it. If I tune out the norwegian and just listen for english, it's surprising how many words and expressions they use. Without understanding any norwegian it would be babble with completely out of context english statements thrown in. I don't actually remember noticing this too much when I understood less norwegian though; it's still nowhere near enough to understand the conversation.

I think I had more to write, but got distracted and forgot I was writing this. So that's all for now.

In art class we have to illustrate a small text, so here's my rough first drawing of Frøken Bisk Glefs:

Happy Groundhog day

Checkout challenges, lots of nerdy language rambles, and a new house

It’s definitely a unique experience to be an English speaking exchange student in a country so proficient in English. It can seem almost impossible to gain a level of Norwegian high enough to override people’s tendencies to switch to English, especially when shopping and talking with strangers. In small exchanges, like waiting in line for the washroom at the shopping centre or the minibank, I can usually keep my cover. I just come across as slow and hard of hearing, as I’m always getting people to repeat themselves. 

My most impressive experience posing as a Norwegian came about two months ago, while I was out running. I ran by an old lady struggling to haul a backpack and several shopping bags up a set of stairs, and she asked if I could help. I took her backpack, and we walked together for about seven minutes to her house. She spewed Norwegian at me the entire time, full speed, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had no idea what she was saying, especially since she was of the older generation who likely wouldn’t speak much English.  I understood bits and pieces; the conversation seemed to switch from an account of all her medicines, to seasickness, to her grandchildren. I just followed her cues; laughed when she laughed, and gave sympathetic mhmm’s here and there, and prayed she wouldn’t stop talking. In that kind of situation you dig yourself into a hole with every minute that goes by to the point where you can’t admit you don’t understand without looking like an idiot. Thankfully we reached her house, she said thanks, I said you’re welcome, and I ran off.

When it comes to talking to salespeople in stores or the teller at the bank, however, this style of bluffing doesn’t work; nor would it be very effective. You can’t just sit down across the desk from the bank teller and let them talk; obviously you have to say why you’re there. While I’m at the point where I can generally get my point across in Norwegian; all it takes is my pronounciation for them to switch to English. 

The tipping point where it’s easier for both parties to converse in a foreign rather than native language is off balance when you’re an English speaker. It doesn’t matter if you know how to say what you want and could do it with only a couple mistakes; there’s no second chance once they realize you’re foreign. I can see their confusion when I say the wrong gender for a word, or pronounce something wrong; they can’t quite place me. I keep thinking about when I worked at Safeway, how if a customer came in with an accent it was irrelevant as long as I knew what they were saying. Not that my French is all that good, but I would never consider switching to French automatically if a customer was struggling with English.

It makes every trip into a store a linguistic adventure, which certainly keeps life interesting! An awkward touch-and-go territory is treaded into whenever a discussion with a salesperson goes further than the routine:

150 kr

Okei

Pose? (bag)

Nei, takk

Kvittering? (receipt)

Nei, takk

Hadet

Hadet

You could probably figure out that sequence without any translations, it’s pretty obvious.

Now that I can read most Norwegian, and understand a good amount, I tend to wonder what it used to look and sound like to me. I often look at paragraphs and wonder how much the average English speaker would pick out, just because of similar words.

“Plussgrader og regn gjør at isen på Haukelandsvatnet i Arna ikke lenger regnes som farbar, opplyser Bergen kommune tirsdag. Haukelandsvatnet er det eneste vannet i Arna kommunen sjekker isen på.”

Take this section from the local newspaper; so many words resemble English. I had to look up "farbar" (passable). Plussgrader: plus degrees. Regn: rain. Isen: Ice. Ikke lenger: no longer, etc. I'm not going to translate the whole thing; I've already gone way past my norwegian quota on this page for today. It's pretty clear what they're saying just from those few words, however. It  takes time to learn the vocabulary to understand the entire thing, and spoken norwegian is another story, but english speakers definitely have a head start here!

....I don't know where I'm actually going with this. One more nerd moment before I move on to other things. Remember the training exercise called "fartlek"? Where you alternate sprinting and easy running; the one whose name we all used to laugh at?

(The majority of people probably have no idea what I'm talking about....I'm setting new records for rambling in this post!)

Anyways, it literally translates to fart (speed) plus lek (play). I think it might be swedish, but close enough. I got way too excited when I noticed that. Not so much the translation, which is simple, but the fact that I could suddenly understand a word that used to be so foreign. These kind of epiphany's are rarely interesting to other people, so I apologize. Just thought I'd share anyways =)

Time for some observations, 5 months in:

-If you go to the bank, bus station, police, etc, and want to talk to someone who works there, you go to a little machine which spits out a number, then you wait until your number flashes up. It’s much more organized than just standing in line; but it would be confusing if you didn’t know about the machine. Since their place in line is irrelevant, people tend to just mill around the desks rather than forming any kind of pattern.

-Several times in school when the teacher is away, another teacher or the rector has come, told us what to work on, then left us alone for the rest of the class without checking up again. A bit of a jump in trust from school back home.

-That situation in history/philosophy class today led to me and Emma looking up random places on google street view. I showed her Nelson, and she commented that the cars looked different. I never really consciously noticed it, but I guess it’s true, there’s much less range of vehicles here. I rarely see pickup trucks, or hippie vans, or old beaters. There are less vans too. The majority of people seem to have expensive looking medium sized cars ( I say expensive looking because I know next to nothing about cars). The range of colour is less as well; the majority are dark.

-It seems to be more common not to have a dryer, and to let clothes air dry.

-You can get your driver's licence when you're 18, and there's no passenger restrictions like with the "N" in BC. It seems to be a lot more expensive, as you're required to take a certain amount of courses before the test.

That's all I can think of right now.

I switched host family's yesterday, and everything is going well. I'll finish this post with some pictures of my new house. 

My life, in a suitcase, three backpacks, a laptop bag and two extra shopping bags. And you can't even see the ski bag. I've acquired a fair bit of stuff since I came here!

 Off the deck of Jon and Inger's house

 Cosy new bedroom

 Out my bedroom window

 Kitchen

Living room

Congratulations on making it to the end of this one! (Or just skimming for pictures and not finding very many). 

5 months in Norway tommorow! Crazy how fast time is going

natta =)

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!

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:

Observations after 3 and a half months of living in Norway

So I lied about my previous post being my last as a 17 year old. Apparently I just like writing and rambling too much! Ouch my arms are sore. We did pushups in gym class today, and it’s been way too long since I’ve used my arm muscles for anything besides carrying bags while shopping!

I’ve started reading blogs of Norwegian exchange students in the US in my free time here, which I have plenty of, especially in school. There’s a lot of blogs to sift through, I started off on bloglovin, and followed links around. I find it fascinating to read perspectives of students who have switched experiences with me, and the differences they notice between Norway and the US. They’re all written in Norwegian, but I find them surprisingly easy to read; they use everyday language, and throw in lots of English expressions. The comparisons and differences they note are often familiar to me, but I never actually realized how different Canada and the US can be! Sometimes it seems like Nelson matches up more with Norway than with some of the student’s experiences in the US.  Fast food all the time, police and metal detectors at school, hall passes to leave class, cheerleaders and football, warning bells and late bells, gangs; I think it would be a culture shock for me to exchange to some parts of the US as well! I remember talking to some of the Rotarians at one of the district conferences back in September, and them asking us how we perceived Norwegian school. I was surprised by some of the American exchange student’s answers; saying it was WAYY less strict in Norway, students had way more freedom, and it was in general a huge change from home. I was confused; I found Canadian and Norwegian schools to be different, but not to that extent. I always thought that Canadian and American school was basically the same. Based on some of the exchange student’s experiences there, the rules in high school can make it sound more like elementary or middle school!

Being from Canada, I tend to get lumped together with Americans in many people’s minds, and have a hard time explaining what differentiates Canada from the states. I get a lot of: “so where in the US are you from?”, and a couple times, when I said I was actually from Canada, got a response along the lines of “close enough.” So that just makes it more interesting to find out more about what life in the US is like; so I can explain that Nelson BC really IS different from Texas!

One thing the Norwegians in the US all note; are the funny questions they get about Norway. Norwegians, on the other hand, seem to know a lot about the rest of the world, or at least North America. Everyone of course knows where Canada is; no one thinks it’s the capital of Brazil or anything! I usually have to explain which province BC is; one of the main questions I get is if I come from the French speaking part of the country. I actually think it’s pretty impressive that so many people know we have two official languages. I generally use: “halfway between Vancouver and Calgary and close to the American border” to describe where Nelson is. Having two Olympic cities as reference points makes it pretty easy to explain. It’s pretty common for people to know more about Canada than me; mentioning Canadian bands or athletes that I’ve never heard of! Vancouver seems to be a popular city for people to visit; I hear a fair bit of “I’ve been there for work, my brother lives there, my second cousin’s nephew’s godson’s great grandfather was born there”….you get the picture!

Now I’m just going to write some observations after living in Norway for three and a half months:

School: I’m starting to realize how here, school is just a building where you go for your classes, then leave. There’s no announcements at lunch, or after school; no “keep the beat meeting in room 205 today at lunch, and congratulations to the soccer teams in Kelowna over the weekend” or whatever. Sports aren’t affiliated with the school, so there’s really no sense of school spirit. Halloween came and went; I don’t remember what day it was, but it was uneventful. I definitely missed seeing all the teachers dress up, especially mrs McGregor! There’s nothing for volunteer groups through the school either, aside from the “Operation Dagsverk” that happened last month. The only time the whole school (of about 300 students) has gotten together was on the first day, to assign classes. While my school in Canada wasn’t that intense when it comes to sports and school spirit compared to some American ones, it’s still different! That was definitely something that came up in all the Norwegian exchange student’s blogs; how North American schools have such a huge range of activities to choose from. About a month ago three girls from the first grade (like 10^th at home) English class interviewed me about Canadian school for a project, but I didn’t have much of a perspective then; the fact that we use laptops in school overshadowed everything else. I feel like I could have answered their questions much better now, but I think I did ok then, besides having never heard of some of the statistics they told me about Canadian schools!

They use a system in school here called “It’s Learning” to keep track of assignments and classes. “It’s Learning” is probably one of the English phrases I’ve heard most here, it almost sounds Norwegian to me now, since I always hear it in the middle of a Norwegian sentence! I haven’t completely figured it out yet, but it has all your classes in it, and the home page has a list of your specific homework assignments in order of when they’re due. Must make it easier to remember what the homework was! I don’t do enough assignments for it to matter, but this kind of system would have been useful last year. You can also email assignments to teachers, and get feedback and marks online.

They use a system of numbers for marks here, from 0 to 6. It might actually start at one, I’m not sure, but 6 is the highest.

TV/Media: There is a lot of American and British TV, which is in English with Norwegian subtitles. There’s also several Norwegian channels, with news and shows like X Factor ( a singing competition). We also get one French channel, as well as several Swedish ones. Swedish shows are pretty common on the Norwegian channels too, with Norwegian subtitles. Norwegian advertisements can be REALLY random; I usually have no idea what they’re advertising until the end, and even then it will make no sense! One of the ads for a DNBnor ( a bank) is a bunch of young people displaying tattoos, then an old man with “ young, free and single” tattooed on his chest; this goes on for a fairly long time, with the final message being ( in Norwegian) that it’s wise when you’re young, to think that someday you’ll grow old. It’s advertising retirement savings plans….never would’ve guessed that the first time I saw it! I think that one's pretty smart actually, but there are definitely some strange ones.

There’s way less censoring on TV and in the papers here; as I was writing this, a show was playing on TV with a bunch of naked people jumping into freezing water on Baffin Island. I haven’t seen any “this program contains adult subject matter” type announcements on TV either, like there would be back home before some of the shows and movies. I’ve seen nudity on the front page of the newspaper, and English swearing in our Norwegian textbook, and in the newspaper as well. Norway seems to have a more liberal attitude towards these types of things than Canada, at least from what I’ve seen.

There is cross country skiing on TV and in the papers all the time here! I know I’ve mentioned this before, several times….but it still surprises me. The sports part of the news seems to be most concerned with soccer and skiing. As I've been sitting here writing, at least four stories about cross country skiing have gone by on TV.

I think it’s neat how Norwegian talk show hosts will interview Swedish people, with both speaking their native languages, and understand each other. Sometimes I wonder why they have subtitles under the Norwegian on TV, then realize that person is actually speaking Swedish. It also surprises me when a TV host will interview someone in near perfect English, then turn to the camera and switch to Norwegian, without missing a beat. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are very similar. In general it seems like Norwegians can understand spoken Swedish, but have more trouble reading it, and can read Danish, but have more trouble understanding it spoken. It’s neat how by learning Norwegian, it’s possible to understand two more languages!

Reflective vests at night: Kind of a random observation, but after it gets dark, pretty much everyone who’s out at night wears a yellow reflective vest; and there’s a lot of people! Out running around 8 pm, you run into a crazy amount of people running, walking and biking in the dark. It feels like some kind of silent clan of exercising people, I like it! It’s nice to see other people out training in the evenings.

The word “koselig”: I love this word; it’s used to describe pretty much everything good. Google translate says “nice” but that no where near does it justice! It’s some kind of mix of cosy and happy and fun, and it’s really common to say “kos deg,” basically meaning have a good time.

Smoking: My perspective on this, for better or for worse, has definitely changed. I have no interest in smoking myself, but it no longer phases me to find out that someone smokes; it’s so common here. It’s also a really common social thing to do at parties. (Don’t worry Mom and Dad, I don’t!!!)

Christmas Stuff: I’m sure I’ll be posting lots about Christmas later on, but as of now, a month before, it’s presence is definitely noticeable. They have Christmas EVERYTHING here! Christmas beer, Christmas soda (julebrus); there’s Christmas LIVER PASTE in the fridge right now….not even kidding! Who knew? (it tastes the same to me, I don’t even know how you would make liver taste like Christmas…

Oh, and random, but when I clicked on spell check’s suggestion for “julebrus”, it gave me “uterus”. Made me laugh. A little while ago we were eating homemade bread, and Evelyn mentioned it tasted like Christmas. Maybe there’s some kind of secret Christmas flavour only Norwegians can taste? I don’t know…

Food: I know I've mentioned norwegian food before...many times! But here goes again. One of the main comments of norwegian exchange students in North America was the unhealthy food, with more fat and salt. I actually eat more fat and salt here; I'm not used to having food with so much butter and cream. It's normal to pour bacon with it's fat onto fish and potatoes, something I'm not such a fan of; I'm used to trying to pat the fat off the bacon before eating it! We don't eat salads the way we did at home; it's more often cooked carrots, cauliflower and brocolli. I've gained about 12 pounds here, despite running lots, which is annoying, but I'm glad I'm still in good shape. The food is all really good though, i just think the amount of calories in dinners is more than I'm used to. 

At our school we get free breakfast, which isn't standard for all Norwegian schools, we're just lucky! It's slices of whole wheat bread with butter and either ham, Jarlsberg cheese or brown cheese. With this comes apples, and milk, either chocolate or white. The chocolate milk is more like slightly flavoured normal milk though, than real chocolate milk. It's really nice to have free apples to eat during school.

Well, I think that's all I have to write. Sorry I have no pictures; I used them all up in my last post, and then felt like writing again! 

I'd love it if anyone who reads this (if there is anyone who made it this far!) would comment and let me know who you are, and what you think! What you agree/disagree with, questions, anything you want to hear more or less of (most likely less, haha, I tend to write a lot!), whatever! 

My ACTUAL last post being 17..I can't imagine coming up with more to write about in the next two days! Although you never know....

It`s the same big dipper in Canada and Norway...

Just a random picture of the welcoming committee when you enter Tord and Helene's house. I figured some kind of picture was necessary before the writing begins :D

Well, its 12:35 on a Friday morning, and i should really go to sleep. But I’m in a writing mood, and it’s this time of day when I write best. Either that, or I’m just too tired to recognize when my writing more resembles a bunch of letters and words drawn out of a hat than coherent sentences and paragraphs. Regardless, I’m going to keep writing. That way I can almost guarantee I’ll be late for school tomorrow, despite only having a three minute walk. My cell phone has one alarm set for 6:35, and one for 6:47. As a result, I wake up to the first, and turn it off. Wake up what feels like three seconds later to the next, and here is the mistake: turn this one off as well. My reasoning is usually something along the lines of “well, it’s not even seven yet, and I don’t have to leave til eight. Therefore I can sleep for a couple more minutes”. You probably know where this is going; “a couple more minutes” doesn't exist. I don’t think it’s possible to fall asleep at 6:48 am, and wake up at 6:50. Or 7:00. Or even 7:15. Especially when it’s dark outside, and the house is quiet. So I wake up, thinking nooo not AGAIN, this morning it was around 8:15. Makes getting to school on time a bit difficult, seeing as school starts at 8:05. Until they invent time machines, I’m out of luck.

Today I woke up, went upstairs, and made knekkebrød with liver paste and jarlsberg cheese for lunch. All the cheeseknives were in the dishwasher, so I was left with potato peelers to use. Didn’t work so well; the cheese just curls up into the slicer and the slicer steers itself off the block of cheese. Leaving awkward tracks that look like someone tried to slice cheese with their fingernails, not to mention I’m left with scrawny little bits of cheese on my sandwiches for lunch. This process didn’t help me get to school any earlier. Oh, and did I mention I put liver paste on them? Voluntarily? My food tastes have definitely broadened since I left home.

Random little thought, but I tried to write liver paste as one word, and spell check wasn’t impressed. In Norwegian, though, it would be leverpostei. In English, we tend to use the space bar on the keyboard regularly. Not so with Norwegian; the language is full of ridiculously long words that are hard to pronounce. By the time you reach the end of the word, you’ve forgotten the beginning! This makes for some awkward pronounciations. Try: “menneskerettighetsorganisasjonene” – the human rights organizations. No space bar required; you never have to lift your pen from the paper!

I love how it’s always the little details that surprise me the most, and are so fascinating. I was running with Tonje this evening, and it was clear and cold out. We both noticed the constellation in front of us, and I pointed and mentioned it was the big dipper. In my English-centric view of the world, I never imagined it could be called anything else. It shouldn’t shock me; of course they wouldn’t name the constellations the same. But it’s the same big dipper as in Canada, so it never occurred to me that it could have another name! I learned that in Norwegian, it’s “karlsvognen”. 

With some miming and discussion about shopping carts and trailers, she decided the best English translation would be Karl’s wagon. Google translate says Karl’s cart. This probably isn't a very exciting observation for most people, but I like any excuse to draw bad pictures in paint, so here are my interpretations :)

Well, those were my ramblings from a few days ago. Now I'm going to be even more confusing, and jump back in time again. 

Last week I started volunteering with the after school program here for elementary school kids. I basically spent an hour playing tag, soccer, and piggy in the middle with 6 and 7 year olds, who were really cute. It was good for my norwegian, to try and talk with people who can't say more than "my name is" in english, or at least don't let on that they can. It also made it hard to communicate; one girl asked me about 6 times who I wanted on my team for soccer, but I didn't know the word for team (lag). It sounded to me like she was asking who I wanted to be on my log...I thought maybe she wanted to pretend to be frogs? Needless to say I didn't understand. Another little girl was quizzing me by pointing to things in the gym, and getting me to say the english word, and she pointed to the climbing bars over to the side. I answered that we don't really have a specific word, but I would call them climbing bars or something like that. She looked at me and said "I thought you spoke english, but you don't because you don't know the word!" She finally concluded that I don't actually speak any language at all. Sometimes I feel like I agree with her. 

Last Sunday Jens, Margaret and Liv came for dinner, and we had Komle, what seems to be a traditional norwegian dish. It's the second time I've had it here. I think it's amazing how many unique meals norwegians have, for such a small country! When I think of Canada, I think poutine, which I rarely get the chance to eat, and maple syrup, which isn't exactly a meal. Maybe because Canada is more a mix of different immigrant and native groups, rather than a more homogeneous country like Norway? Anyways, back to dinner...

I like the mix of facial expressions here

My attempted description of this picture:

1. Kohlrabi stuff...at least thats what they called it, I'm going to have to google kohlrabi to find out what it actually is. The first time we had it I thought it was cauliflower
2. Komle - boiled thick potato balls, with bacon in the middle
3. Lamb? I don't actually know what kind of meat this is
4. Pølse (sausage)
5. A drink that tastes like buttermilk, but is thicker.
6. Bacon: tastes different from bacon at home though, less, well....baconey. Not exactly the best description....

Overall it's a pretty different meal than what I'm used to; the komle are really rich and filling. I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing I've tried here; I think it's more something you grow up with; Liv can down five komle when I'm full after one. Regardless, it's neat to try new things, and still a good meal!

So now it's a week from last Sunday; yesterday I did some shopping and went to a party. Today I slept in, and have spent the day watching cross country skiing on TV (cause it's ALWAYS on, it's crazy!), playing the piano, and being lazy. I've been trying to teach myself to play the piano again, after 3 years without taking lessons. I can play some of the songs in my Coldplay book again, and printed off some more to learn. 

I got the birthday and Christmas cards Grandma! Thank you soo much! I haven't opened yours yet Mom and Dad, but Grandma's didn't say anything about waiting! :D

New boots: early birthday present from my host family! Tusen takk :D I`m so lucky

Well, I think that`s all I have to write for now. Life is good on this side of the ocean, hope everything`s well back home! Last blog post as a 17 year old, and a month and four days til Christmas.

Hadet bra fra Norge <3