Crunchy Knekkebrød in a Silent Classroom

I'm sitting in philosophy class eating one of the loudest foods that exists: knekkebrød, while the rest of the class sits dead silent and writes a test. CRUNCH...try to chew really slowly....CRUNCH....fun. I finished my test about 45 minutes ago; there's only so much I can write about philosophy in norwegian. I feel sorry for my teacher reading it, whenever I don't know a word, I replace all C's with K's, and add in random J's and hope it becomes norwegian. If that still looks too far fetched, I just write the english word in quotations. I also tend to translate expressions word for word, I'm not sure if "to see the big picture" means the same thing literally written in Norwegian. My teacher speaks fluent english though, along with norwegian, french and icelandic, so I'm sure he'll figure it out somehow. I'm happy to be able to write that much norwegian, even if it really is, as my teacher remarked when I used "kalme" instead of the real word, "rolig", "laurwegian".

Can't you just hear the crunching? 

I'm writing this on my school computer, which is a norwegian computer, so it's putting angry red lines under nearly every word I write. Kind of annoying, along with the fact that I can't figure out how to change the screen brightness, because the control panel is, obviously, in norwegian. I feel slightly blinded when I look away from it for a second.

This post really has no purpose, other than to make me look like I'm doing something productive in this silent classroom. It's pouring rain outside, and any semblance of winter is long gone, it just looks...wet.

But anyways, back to the point (not that there really is one)

Learning norwegian is going up and down, but I do feel like I'm improving. I speak mostly norwegian at home, and can hold basic conversations. When sentences get longer I start sounding awkward, but I can manage with shorter ones. I'm also starting to understand more of what's going on around me; the other day in philosophy we had a debate about Aristotle and Plato's views (or, in norwegian, Aristoteles, and Platon, I don't really see why that's neccesary...) I wasn't able to contribute anything, but I understood nearly the entire discussion.

There's still a lot of awkward exchanges and times where "smile and nod" if you don't understand doesn't work. I haven't had any major misunderstandings yet, thanks to most people switching to english if I don't understand.

Looks like the class is done writing the test now, I think they all wrote closer to five or six pages altogether, rather than my one to three sentence answers, where the first sentence is just repeating the question! The two tests in this class are the only ones I've done so far, because I actually want to learn the subject matter. I'll give an overview of my classes, and what i do in them:

-Norwegian: I don't have a hope of understanding when the class studies old nynorsk sagas, so I don't really try. I go on facebook, try and learn norwegian, and generally don't accomplish a whole lot.

-Math: Same deal as Norwegian, although it's only once a week, so I haven't had very many classes. They started with exponents and percents, fairly basic stuff, then switched to learning systems of counting. I've never counted using letters before, and don't really feel the need either...

-Gym: I wish this was more than once a week, it's a nice change from the usual classes. We've ran on the track, done orienteering, played various gym games, and done a 3 km running race. It's harder than gym class back home, but I like it.

-Art History: Seems to consist of the teacher showing powerpoints of old sculptures and buildings, and I usually don't understand what she's saying about them. I haven't gotten too much out of this class yet.

-Design/Architecture: A really neat class to have, since I've never taken any art classes before. We just finished working on photoshop and illustrator to make patterns, and now we're working on composition.

-Visual Art: These three art classes alternate in some mysterious pattern so that I have one or another about 4 hours a week, sometimes more. I'm never entirely sure if it's Design and Architecture or this one, but we've been doing a lot of sketching of people's forms, and did some studies of drawing muscles and bones. Sometime I'll take some pictures of what I've been working on, but I don't have any at home.

(I never did mention that now it's 3 hours later, and school is over, so I'm back home on my english laptop)

-History/philosophy: This is a really small class, about 8 people. I guess art has 9, and french has about the same, so those are my smaller classes where I'm more involved. I've never taken philosophy before, so it's a challenge to take it in norwegian. The teacher teaches partly in english for me, and expects me to follow along, so I've learnt a fair bit here. We're going through the greek philosophers right now, and moving on to roman. After the test today we had a fun quiz contest between two different groups in the class, he put in a few Canadian questions for my benefit. Thankfully I knew the population of Canada, but wasn't sure whether we won more or less than 10 gold medals at the last olympics. It's always strange when people know more about your country than you do...

-French:  Again a really small class, where we don't use laptops much, so I usually follow what's going on. I find it really difficult to distinguish between norwegian and french sometimes, it seems my brain only has room for two languages at a time. Regardless, it's good to think in french a little bit.

-History: My description of the other classes gives the impression that I somewhat follow what's going on, but history is definitely an exception. It took the teacher a couple days to realize I was there, and since it's such a big class, I'm not really involved. I haven't actually bothered to go get the textbook yet....woops. When I occasionally look up from my laptop I tend to recognize what he's talking about though, it follows a similar path as history/philosophy, but without the philosophy part. Sometimes I spent the class trying to read parts of my history/philosophy textbook, with a lot of help from google translate.

This has been WAY too much writing without any pictures, and if anyone is still reading at this point, I'm seriously impressed. So, here is the very wet view out my bedroom window right now:

In case you can't tell, it's actually raining really hard...

I think I mentioned it before, but i have my personnummer now, and actually have a norwegian bank account, even if there's no money in it. The Rotary club agreed to pay for my bus pass, which is so nice of them; it'll let me take the train to Bergen and the bus as much as I want. It'll be really nice not to have a half hour walk whenever I want to go to the city or the shopping centre!

About a month ago I met a woman eating lunch with her son on a bench, while I was coming down from a hike. She said she’d seen me running often, and we started talking. She invited me to her place for dinner on Wednesday, along with another Canadian woman her husband met on the plane from Egypt to Oslo.  The Canadian woman is 26, and her husband is working with Statoil.  It’s always neat to talk about Norwegian and Norway with a mix of foreigners and locals, and that's what we did most of the time. Some random things we talked about:

-Norwegian dialects, and how the bergen dialect can sound like german to foreigners

-Different ways to learn languages; grammar based, versus conversation based. Sigrid ( I think was his name), Birgit's (the woman I met on the bench) husband, was saying that you should learn to say “I’m learning _____________, but I don’t speak it very well yet” then go out and practice that, and keep adding sentences to what you can say. They lived in...Azerbaijan? I think, for a few years, so learnt that language, as well as speaking some of the best English I've heard here yet, which is really saying something.

-How narrow norwegian roads are

-How norwegians like to talk about the weather

-Different ways of making rømmegrøt, apparently if you use semolina flour rather than regular, it isn't as thick

There was much more, and it's always really neat talking to people who are also learning norwegian, and comparing observations.

It's time for a picture again, although I really don't have any exciting ones. I'll put you in my shoes and take a picture of the two different directions I can see right now:

Out the living room window

A bad cell phone picture of the living room...note the napping Tord's feet :)

Thursday was "Operation Dagsverk" in Norway, and as far as I could tell, it involves students working or selling things to make 300 kr (about 50 dollars) each, which is donated to some kind of project in Brazil. I didn't understand what was going on when some students talked to my class about it, and only found out what it involved, through facebook, on Wednesday at midnight. By then it was too late to arrange something, so I didn't have school on Thursday. When I told my host family about it, they offered to donate the money, being the amazing people that they are. All I had to do was make dinner, vacuum the downstairs, and clean the downstairs bathroom. All things that I'm used to doing at home, although I still haven't actually cleaned the bathroom yet.

I was planning on making either stirfry, or some kind of indian butter chicken for dinner, but we didn't have the stuff to make sauce for either. So I put my collection of 1 kr (about 17 cent) coins in a bag, and walked to the little grocery store down the road. I literally spent half an hour wandering around trying to decide what to make; buying ginger, coconut milk and spices would have cost way more than my little piggy bank contained, especially since the coconut milk came in little boxes that were about one inch by two inches. There was no teriyaki sauce to be found either. After trying to read the instructions on nearly every package in the (very small) foreign foods aisle, I finally settled for a jar of tikka masala sauce, which turned out really good. I ate the leftovers for breakfast today, not exactly your traditional norwegian breakfast!

I just remembered that I do have more pictures to put up! Last Sunday Sonja and I hiked around in Gullfjellet, which i posted about a few weeks ago. It looked very different this time, and we saw lots of people skiing and sledding. 

Sonja, me and a Norwegian flag :)

Redningshytta!

My buried feet - note the fuzzy white socks, they're actually snow! 

Our trudging trail, next to a ski track. At this point we were wishing we had skis!

Sonja took the train to Arendal on Wednesday, so I got to see her for a little over a week. It was really fun to show her around, go hiking, win a norwegian scrabble game against my host family, bake two apple pies, and speak fast, crazy english and know that (sometimes :P) she would understand.

I think this is plenty long enough, seeing as I wrote my last post less than a week ago, and this one is mostly text. I can smell waffles cooking in the kitchen, it's a tradition I think I'll bring home with me!

Next weekend I'm going to Tromsø, WAYYY up north, for the weekend with my host family, to visit some of Tord's family, so I'm excited for that! 

Ha det :)

Train Trips and a Glimpse of Winter

I've been trying to write a coherent paragraph for the past 5 minutes, and decided I can't introduce everything I've done  since my last post and still make it understandable. So, no thesis statement here, I'm just going to jump right in.

The week before last was Høstferie, or fall break, so i had no school. I spent the week sleeping, eating, running and shopping, in that order. Pretty great way to spend a week! I don't have much exciting to say about it, but I'll post some pictures I took while wandering around on a sunny afternoon:

Random cute mailbox...they have a lot of original ones like this here

Gorgeous day.....before the snow came

The next Monday I took the train across Norway, to Hamar, which is about an hour and a half away from Oslo. It was really neat to get a perspective on the landscape between Bergen and Oslo, as I've only flown between the two before.

The only picture I managed to get of the fjords, as we darted in and out of tunnels on the bus

Up above the trees going through the mountains - so barren!

I met Abby, an exchange student from Wisconsin, and we took the bus to a small town called Løten. I stayed with her host family for the night, and we had moose stew with flatbread and tyttebær jam for dinner. We had some sort of chocolate jello with vanilla sauce for dessert, it brought back memories of language camp! The next day we biked to Løten Lys, a candle factory. It was a jumble of rooms and displays that I can only describe as completely random. A cave with a fake crocodile, polar bear scene, factory, massage chair that clamps your legs so you can't move, various dining tables covered in candles, christmas scenes, stuffed animals....
We spent the time in a really mature fashion; taking pictures with star candles for eyes, posing with the polar bears....you get the picture. Unfortunately all the pictures are on her camera, so you get these:

These are candles! Pretty sure I would never burn it if I bought it

Not really worth putting up, but I thought this was funny! Crazy massage chair that clamps your calves in, in a candle factory,,,

We biked back to her place, then walked back into town so I could catch the bus back to Hamar. We realized we were late, so started running, which isn't easy with a full backpack; I was getting pushed up and down more than going forward. Halfway down the street the bus passed us, and I must have looked so ridiculous bouncing along that the bus driver stopped in the middle of the street and let me get on.

I met Sonja in Hamar, and stayed at her relative's place until Friday. Some highlights, because again point form requires far less effort than trying to compose sentences:

-Running along Lake Mjøsa (the biggest lake in Norway) in the sun

-Buying a container of crunchy Nugatti (think nutella mixed with toffee and crunchiness with just the right amount of salt), sitting in a cafe in the mall and feasting

-Evening pasta, carrot and nugatti feasts, prompting Olav to say that we eat too much....possibly true :P

-Finding pink rollerskiis in a sports store 

-Eating Rømmegrøt (sour cream porridge) for the first and hopefully last time. A thick custard of sour cream, milk and flour, which would be fine as a small amount of sauce with something else, but an entire bowl of it was overwhelming! You sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on it, and if you're a true norwegian, a giant glob of butter (typical). It was like eating a bowl of cheese sauce/cheese cake filling/glue. Definitely a new experience! 

-Cheap jeans on sale!

We got a few strange looks...

On Friday we took the train back to Arna, and simultaneously traveled from fall into winter. There was increasingly more snow as we went up through the mountains, it was a huge change from five days before. There was four languages going on at once in our section of the train; I could listen to german and french passengers, speak english, and read and listen to norwegian.  I find it interesting taking the train as opposed to the greyhound bus in Canada. On the bus you stop for smoke breaks and washroom breaks, but the train just keeps on going. There's a tiny washroom on board, and you have no other choice if you have to go. The train stops briefly at each station, but if you're not standing there ready to get on, you'll miss it. I reached page 100 of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in Norwegian on the train ride, an accomplishment I'm proud of :) Now, for more pictures:

Looks like the arctic...

Along the way

The highest station the train goes through between Oslo and Bergen

There was still snow by the water when we came into Arna, and we decided to walk home from the train station rather than pay 25 kr for the bus. This morning we went up Arna Nipa, and climbed up into so much snow! We've had the shoe dryers in our runners all day and they still aren't dry. It was gorgeous up there, sunny with fluffy dry snow. And what happens when Sonja and Lauren go, well....anywhere? Jump shots of course!

Snøøøøøø

As if I don't have enough pictures of this view....here's another!

....of course

When we got back, Tord and Helene had just returned from a funeral in northern Norway, and we ate spaghetti at 2 pm. I'm not sure if this was meant to be lunch or dinner; the eating schedule here still confuses me.

I just finished another norwegian scrabble game with my host family, with me and Sonja working together as a team. She's picking up norwegian really fast, understanding and speaking way more than I did after 9 days in Norway, even if she doesn't think so :P

I think that sums up my past two weeks in Norway, during which I reached the two month mark! Lots of cooking, eating, exercising, shopping and adventuring; life is good! I also got my personnummer this week, so I can finally set up a bank account here, buy a bus card, and actually be a registered student at school. Speaking of school, I'll be starting again this week, after 2 weeks off. I can't believe it's October 24th already...2 months and a day until Christmas! Although apparently they open presents on Christmas Eve here, rather than the next morning. They already have Christmas stuff in the stores here, I keep hearing about different Christmas traditions, and can't wait to experience a norwegian Christmas.

....But now I'm getting way ahead of myself, and I'm also done with my ramblings for the night, although I guess it's morning now.

I'll leave you with a nice snowy picture that makes it seem much closer to Christmas:

Fall Colours and some Ydmyk Apple Pie

Random observations from looking in the dictionary: Apparently "ydmyk" is a word in norwegian, it means humble. Yndig means graceful, and ynkelig means lamentable. I don't even know how to go about pronouncing these...YINK-a-LIG? Probably not...

I'm sitting here eating a second helping of warm apple pie with ice cream, which I would say is second best after pumpkin pie when it comes to thanksgiving food. I was planning on making pumpkin pie for my host family, but it never occured to me that they don't eat pumpkin here. There was none to be found in either of the two grocery stores; plenty of canned fish and meatballs, but no canned pumpkin. The pie turned out amazing, the crust was a bit of a patchwork, but I still remembered how to make pie. Thanks Grandma!
It was the first time my host family had used their pie pan, and they'd never had apple pie before!

Yummm.....

Before I forget, I'm going to jump back in time a few weeks. Our art class took a trip to a fabric/clothing company here called Oleana. They make knitted women's clothing, and we got to tour the factory.  Apparently Michelle Obama has some of their clothing. We had a presentation, and I was surprised how much I could understand. I guess I was just having a good language day, but it seems if I keep myself from tuning out the language as background noise, it starts to make sense. 

I didn't take any pictures, but I'll post a few from the website. It's all really expensive, but I liked the patterns.

Last weekend Emma and Susanne came over, and brought some norwegian food they bought at the grocery store:

The chocolate cookies in the middle aren't norwegian, they're my recipe from home. The other stuff, going clockwise:

-Grandiosa pizza, norwegian frozen pizza. It tasted like, well, pizza, although it was made with Jarlsberg cheese. Some people put ketchup on it. It seems to be Norway's kraft dinner; cheap and easy to make.

-Bottom: Mormor's sjokoladeflarn, basically buttery cookies with chocolate in the middle. SO good dipped in coffee.

-Top: Lefse. Some kind of soft flat bread with a fake butter/cinnamon filling. I wasn't such a fan.

-Tom and Jerry's crackers, basically animal crackers. Yumm

-Norwegian chocolate milk. Way better than the slightly chocolate flavoured milk we get for our school breakfasts ( not that I'm complaining!) I don't think you can go wrong with chocolate milk.

-Candy :)

- A bag full of little cinnamon buns

On the topic of Norwegian food, I guess i better mention Fårikål. On Thursday we went to Helene's brother's house in Bergen for dinner, and that was the second time I've had the dish here. It's basically lamb boiled with cabbage and peppercorns, served with, guess what...potatoes. It's actually surprisingly good. It's pretty hit and miss trying to fish what you want out of the giant pot, without getting a giant hunk of bone or half a cabbage though.

This is what came up when I googled fårikål...poor lamb!

...but it actually looks like this, it does taste better than it looks!

On Friday our class went in to the city, visited 2 museums, and went to some of the famous historical sites. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and Bergen is amazing when the weather is nice. I didn't follow everything that went on; I was having a "zone out norwegian" type day, but it was fun, and neat to see some of the more famous places in the city. 

One of three churches in Bergen from the middle ages

Wandering through the streets

In between the old houses in Bryggen

Front of Bryggen

A history of rats...

TROLL!!

Dried fish hanging from the ceiling of a building in Bryggen, from what I understood they were used for oil.

Beautiful Bergen

Today I slept in, went for a run, then came home and ate another amazing weekend breakfast. I made the pie and put it in the fridge, then went "ut på tur" with my host family. We drove about 15 minutes towards Espeland, and then went up a narrow paved road, only wide enough for one car, through some farms. We came to a parking lot PACKED with cars, and there were cars parked all along the road as well. I never would've imagined seeing so many people out for a sunday hike! It was INSANE. I don't know why I found it that amazing, but I'm so used to trailheads with 5-10 cars parked there, and nearly empty trails, so this was a bit of a shock. We walked for about an hour, above the treeline, along a trail that was more like a road, to a cabin. I don't know how to describe it, but it felt different than hiking in Canada, and not just because of all the people. Everything just looked more...norwegian. More tights, pants tucked into socks, blonde hair, and Bergans ( a brand here) clothes.

They sold hot drinks at the cabin, nothing cold, because the water there had to be boiled. I had a cup of hot juice, not the most refreshing when you've just been hiking uphill, but it was good once it cooled off. They also sold what they call pancakes here. They're basically the same thing that I would call a crepe. The fall colours were beautiful, and I think it's time for more pictures:

You can't really tell in this picture...but all the glints way off in the background are parked cars

Host parents and I

Going down

Now that I look at these pictures, there's not really THAT many people. But it still felt like it! And now, subject change....

In the past couple weeks I've started really noticing how confusing it is to try and learn a dialect in norwegian. The written language is simple enough as far as bokmål goes, but it's really strange to write something so different from how you say it. For example, I learned this week that here they say "dere", a plural form of "you" as "dokarr"..or something like that. Do you see any connection? I don't. I keep finding out examples like that, where google translate is totally useless. Sometimes it varies from person to person too, some people will say "mye" ( much) as it's written, and some will say it the nynorsk way, "mykje". This makes it really confusing to try and imitate the way people say things, as there's no standard way. 

I find it fascinating though, how you can cross a bridge and have people speaking with a different accent. I can't imagine driving to Castlegar and having people speak differently, or barely being able to understand people from Vancouver, but that's how it seems to be here, because different areas used to be so isolated from eachother.

Well, that brings me up to the present, my bowl of apple pie and ice cream is long gone, and my coffee cup is empty now. I think this was one of my longer posts, although I don't think any could rival my first one about flying here...

I have the next week off school, for høstferie (fall break), and my laptop is getting really overheated and I'm way too warm now, so I think it's a good time to stop rambling.

Happy Thanksgiving Canadians! Eat some pumpkin pie for me!