Horse races, chocolate and a tour of the school

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

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

Now for Language Lesson time:  =)

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

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

For example:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Peanut butter 

-Pumpkin

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

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

-Pancakes/waffles/french toast for breakfast

-Pie

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

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

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

 Like smarties, but better says Emma :)

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

Seigemenn; little gummy people

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

Smash: to copy Devin's description:

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

Sur Sild (Sour herring)

and 

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

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

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

Second floor hallway

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

Dungeon stairs

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

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

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

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

Bryggen from across the water

And that's another week gone by in Norway

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

Reflections and part two of The Fridge

Looks like blog updating has become a Sunday evening thing, something to do when I feel like being slightly productive, but not enough to actually work on an essay or do my "homework".

I'm trying to decide on a date to go home, and hoping to fly back with Abby and Devin, who I flew here with. Thinking about this gives my exchange an endpoint rather than seeming to stretch on til "whenever in the summer", and makes the idea of going home more concrete. Before Christmas it felt like my year had just begun,   but now, a day away from February, summer feels just around the corner. Devin and I were reminiscing about the flight here on skype the other day; it feels so long ago. I was most excited about the idea of hearing Norwegian on the announcements; that was honestly what I looked forward to the most at the beginning of the flight. Flying into Oslo and trying to wrap my head around the idea that this was Europe, not Canada, and that I would be spending 10 months here. Getting way too excited about absolutely everything, from Norwegian looking people to the airplane wing, to the fire hose signs and the cute little trucks. I'm going to repeat what I wrote in my journal at first:

"August 13th

First impressions of Oslo Airport

-The bathrooms are cute! They're like little ships cabins

-Trucks are smaller and cuter too

-Way quieter than American airports - no one talks! And if they do, it's quiet

-Everyone dresses nicer

-People who work here push scooters!

-Some of the guys have really awesome sweatsuits!

-Everyone looks - European"

Reading what I wrote there still makes me laugh.

In the information packet we got before we left, they say that after the holidays is when you really adjust to the new country. Until now I thought that was crazy; five months to get used to it? I thought life here felt normal two weeks in! I'm starting to realize how right they are though; how "normal" in September is different than "normal" in January. It's hard to describe what I mean, but all the magnified and unexpected ups and downs have leveled off drastically in the past month and a half. Everything was great before as well, but friends, school and everyday life here now feel much more stable, without anything actually changing.

I'm going to quote a section of Devin's blog, which I thought was great:

"I have also started to appreciate the smaller things in life. Things are totally different here. I don't have that cushion of comfort that I do at home, that gives me a sense of security and tends to make everything a little bit better. So it's kind of a hit or miss each day if it's going to be a good one or not. But even on the worst days, some little thing tends to happen that makes everything 10 times better. There was one instance where I was extremely homesick and was seconds away from going back to my house and just sleeping the day away, but then just a simple conversation with a friend, about nothing significantly meaningful, made my entire day better. (if you are Norwegian and are reading this and thinking "hey, I wonder if that's me"... it probably is :) ) It makes me think a lot about how much I could make everyone's day a little bit better if I just smiled at them, or started up a simple conversation with them."


It's this "hit or miss" that has changed so much as life becomes more stable here, those little moments are less likely to make or break a day now. 


On the topic of homesickness, I can say I've been very lucky. I have so much to miss at home, but I was definitely ready for a change, and that made things so much easier. In the first month or two, seeing pictures from home was strange and I would've loved to dive into the photos in the coffee table book I brought about Nelson. Now when I look at the same book, it's like "oh, that's a pretty town," but my life there seems on pause, and fuzzy. 


When people ask if I've been homesick, I usually answer with "ehhh...no, not really," which sounds like lying, but is actually true. Sure, there's things I've missed, but there's been so much new and exciting, and I've always known that I'd be back home before I knew it. I've had a few dreams where I'm back home and wishing I could have just one more day back in Norway. These kind of dreams make me really appreciate having another five months here, and even more determined to enjoy it as much as possible. I know I'm going to really miss Norway when I'm back home, but knowing I'd soon be back in Canada has made it hard to miss it too much.


I was looking through the books I used to learn Norwegian, and I still can't believe that those foreign sounds and words have become so commonplace to me now.

Ohh Language camp....this "conversation" I filled in says "I love brown cheese." "You're welcome"

Back when this was a complicated sentence

I still haven't gotten adjectives figured out

Where I wrote down new words at the beginning

Packaging on products here can be a really confusing mix of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish. Not only do you have to read the Norwegian, you have to figure out which part is actually Norwegian. Here's some examples:

On this bottle of facewash they've mixed Norwegian, Swedish and Danish into one. Pronouns seem to be danish, verbs are shown in Danish and Swedish, and there actually isn't much Norwegian. For example, "vand/vatten" for water, not "vann", which is Norwegian, although I think "vatten" is also Nynorsk. "uger/veckor" for weeks, not "uker". You have to learn to ignore little letter differences when you read this kind of thing, and jump to conclusions yourself. I find it harder to read this mixture than just straight Danish, Swedish or Norwegian. Finnish is entirely different; I recognize almost none of it, besides maybe "minuuttia". All their words seem really stretched out with tons of vowels. 

Sorry you can't read the text I added here very well. It says that some things they don't bother translating (like "Soft tacos"). You can recognize swedish by the dots on top of the A's, and they use more C's. 

Now for some mirror pictures....

They have mirrors on some corners on roads

I tried to trim my own hair, pretty dangerous considering how impulsive I can be with this kind of thing. It turned out alright, considering I was using mirror photos with my cell phone to check the back. Not exactly precise. I only took off about a centimeter of the deadest hair, so I don't think I did too much damage.

In art class we're designing bus stops and making models of them: ours is going to have glass walls, tile, and swings. Maybe not so practical, but definitely fun!

Printing off our "Materials"

"roofing"

Now that I've exhausted my stash of pictures collected over the past week while trying unsuccesfully to tie them together, it's time for another fridge translation. (Part one of this exciting series can be found here)

1) Sour cream

2)Vanilla Yogurt 

3) Some kind of cheese

4) Vanilla sauce, usually eaten on chocolate pudding

5) A jar of herring

6) Jordbær syltetøy - strawberry jam

7) Brunost number 1 : Geitost

8) Hvitost (white cheese) I don't know if it has a more specific name than this. They keep it simple I guess

9) Liver paste number one

10) Liver paste nuimber 2

11) Liver paste number 3 - Yeah, that's three different kinds of liver paste!

12) Brunost number two - the creamy mild kind

13) Butter

14) Margarine I think

15)Brunost number three - another kind of geitost

16 - Various processed meats

1) barbeque sauce I think

2) Soy Oil

3) Thousand Islands dressing

4)Olive oil

5)Gløgg mix: a spiced holiday drink with wine and nuts. I haven't actually tried it

6)Some other kind of ketchupy barbeque sauce thing 

7)Hamburger dressing; I don't know what's in this exactly, but its use is pretty obvious

8)Olive oil

9)Caramel sauce

10)Light milk - it's a random percent like 0.7 here I think

11) Whole milk (3.9 percent)

12) Applesin (orange) juice

The bottle in the left bottom corner I forgot to number : it says svinekraft, so, uh...pig juice? Some kind of broth I guess. 

This past week I started swimming at the pool which is about a two minute walk from my house. I figured I might as well take advantage of it, and I should start doing something other than just running. They only have an hour and a half of public swimming a week, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, so I went both days. It was a bit crowded, especially on Thursday. There didn't seem to be any swimming pattern which made it confusing; people would reach the end and turn back in the same path they came. This made it a bit of a game of dodging people, especially since I was one of the faster swimmers and had to find ways to pass people. It kept it from getting boring in any case, and I think I'll keep up the swimming. 

Last night I was at a surprise birthday party, which was really fun. It's always entertaining meeting new people, especially when I say my name, which doesn't sound Norwegian, repeat it again, and then explain that I'm from Canada. 

I've noticed I've started saying some things in English with Norwegian phrasing. For example, I caught myself saying "it's the same for me" instead of "it doesn't matter", since the first is a direct translation of how you say it in Norwegian. I also "think over" things instead of thinking "about" them, another direct translation. 

So that's another week gone in Norway, time is flying by. It's starting to get a bit lighter which is really nice. It's still dark when I go to school (assuming I'm on time....) but it's light by first break now. 

Here's a picture from back in August

Hadet :)

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 =)

Four months in Norway!

If my exchange in Norway was a cake, I’d have eaten a serious chunk of it. Probably enough to be sick and not eat cake again for a few years. Actually, that’s not true. Especially if it was a brownie cake.  But Norway isn’t cake, and I’m definitely not sick of it. It’s hard to believe I’ve been here four months today. Four months since I flew across the ocean for the first time, four months since we touched down in the fog and rain into Oslo.

I’m sitting in Norwegian class, and we’re supposed to be answering questions about a movie we watched last class. I only saw the second half, and had no idea what was happening, especially since it was in Danish. The internet is blocked so I can’t look anything up, and I don’t really have to do it anyways. So I’m reading a section of the Norwegian textbook, and writing this blog post. With the balance seriously skewed towards writing the blog post.

I think it’s amazing how many more languages people are exposed to on a daily basis here. As I mentioned, we watched a movie in Danish last week. The next day, in history and philosophy, we watched a movie set in Iceland, with the text in gammelnorsk (old Norwegian) which I think is closer to Icelandic. The subtitles were in Swedish. I was partially able to follow along with the text, but understood only a few of the spoken words. We also have a French channel on TV here now; I watch it sometimes to try and retain a little bit of French. I was watching it the other night, and trying to decide if I understand the news better in Norwegian or French; I’m not really sure anymore. I think I still lean towards French, but the gap is shrinking. That being said, I don’t really feel like my Norwegian has improved much in the past couple months. I guess once you learn the basics it has to plateau, and I haven’t been doing much to actively learn the language anymore. Listening and reading seems to slowly and steadily improve, just from being surrounded by Norwegian. Speaking is harder though, and I still use a lot of English expressions and words, sometimes even when I know how to say it in Norwegian, but I’m not completely sure.

It’s a big leap to go from hearing a word or expression in conversation, and being confident enough to use it yourself. My speaking is definitely delayed in relation to comprehension, but I think this is fairly normal when learning a foreign language. I also tend to use English conversation fillers; I say things like “yeah” and “right”, even when speaking Norwegian. I guess that’s just a habit. 


Yayy for bear hugs and polar bears! (both real, of course...)

Sorry those were kinda out of context; they're Abby's pictures from Løten Lys back in October.  The part above I wrote in class, as you probably gathered. Then I took the bus in to the shopping centre to buy some pens and a glue stick. These took about five minutes to pick out and buy, leaving me with half an hour to kill before the next bus. So, I went into the grocery store and took stealthy pictures of random foods, mostly christmas themed, while trying to look like I was texting with my phone at a funny angle. Hence the bad quality pictures:

Christmas liver paste, and Christmas beet salad. I don't think they're actually any different than the normal products.

Nothing to do with Christmas...but lots of knekkebrød! :)

Julebrus: Pop that tastes like a mixture of cream soda and fruit punch. Yummm

Grandiosa pizza.....Christmasized

Christmas yogurt....they really go all out here

...and right beside the Christmas yogurt, random bins of bulk shrimp. 

Christmas sausage and Christmas beer...it's a little ridiculous

Brun ost <3

And the last one; packages of rømme grøt. I'm not really sure how this works, seeing as it seemed to consist mostly of sour cream when I had it. Maybe it's a thickening mixture? As i was taking this picture, a man came up from behind and took a package. My stealth camera skills clearly didn't work, because he asked jokingly if I buy food, or just take pictures of it. That was when I decided to stop wandering around aimlessly and leave to catch the bus home.

Hmm...what else do I have to say? I made buttertarts yesterday, and finished making the rest today. I think it's funny how I manage to break all the rules about pastry making: you're not supposed to work the dough too much; I ended up kneading it to make it stick together. You're supposed to use cold ingredients; I used hot water to smush up all the butter, which you're also not supposed to do. Not my proudest pie making experience, but I honestly don't taste a difference. So who cares! When I was looking for a recipe online, I found out they're actually Canadian, I didn't even know. So that makes it all the better to freeze them and have a little bit of Canada with a Norwegian Christmas. 

Today, December 13th, is Luciadagen; I'm not entirely sure what that means. It's some kind of religious holiday, and involved little kids going door to door  dressed as angels and singing. Some people also make Lussekatter, yellow pastries. Agathe at track practice gave me one of hers, it was really good! I took a picture, but a) don't feel like going and getting the cord to upload one picture, and b) it doesn't look all that appetizing sitting half eaten on a bench in the change room. So, here's a more professional picture:

Yummm :D

We had a few days of snow, before the rain washed it away again. But here's a couple pictures to finish this post, back when it looked like winter, and not October:

I think I set a new record for percentage of a blog post devoted to food.

Natta   =)

Edit: I forgot I had a couple pictures on my camera:

Julekalender...isn't it cute? Since I'm the youngest in the house right now I get the little gifts each day, either lottery tickets or little chocolate snowmen. So far I've won 30 kr! :D

Advent candles

And to finish off this blog post in a really anticlimatic fashion: a Christmas themed milk carton.

Natta for real! Although I guess it's morning now   =)