A lesson on brunost and lovely Bergen weather

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

Than out there :

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That brings me up to date again. 

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

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

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

takk!

=)

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:

A Trip WAYY up North, and a Giant Santa Claus

Morning in Lyngseidet, near Tromsø. Keep reading  (or at least scanning) to see a map of how crazy far north this is!

Somehow it's November already, not entirely sure how that happened. It feels like it's been 3 weeks, rather than nearly 3 months. The bruises on my knees are proof that it's no longer summer; our driveway is slick with ice and frozen snow. It's 4:15 pm now, and the sun is down, although it's still light out. The clock fell back an hour a couple weeks ago, so now it's light when I walk to school again. The past couple days I've left the house just at sunrise, and the entire sky was glowing pink and orange on my (very short) walk to school. It's colder than usual for here right now, and snowed over the weekend, so we've switched from soggy wet swamp to winter again.

...And that's the weather report, not a very exciting way to begin a blog post!

Two weekends ago Emma, Karoline, Tonje and I were going to go skating at a rink in the city, but when we got there (after sprinting after and missing the bus, and getting off at the wrong bybanen stop), it turned out there was hockey practice going on. So we went back to the sentrum, and went shopping instead, which was just as fun. I have two pictures to show from this adventure:

Florida bybanen stop, in Norway.  "Next stop, Florida"

I want this shirt! The ostehøvel, or cheese slicer, is apparently a Norwegian invention,as several people have proudly pointed out to me.

I tried out training with the track team here for the past two Mondays, which was a really good workout. It was confusing though, as the gym we were in looked just like central school, and everything felt like ski training a few years ago, besides the fact that it was in a different language, and I didn't really know anyone. I found it interesting that the people there only really spoke Norwegian to me, with very little English. I think if I was forced to use Norwegian like this more often, I would learn it quicker. I haven't decided if I'll continue with it or not; I'm not interested in competing, it's just nice to have an organized practice. Soccer is on the same days though, and right now I'm leaning towards that, but we'll see!

Back home I never appreciated how nice it is to understand what's going on around you. It's going to be a shock to come home and have the buzz of background noise become intelligible again, to hear English in the grocery store, to answer the phone without fearing the rush of Norwegian and awkward explanations that follow. It's frustrating to be in a group, understanding bits of the conversation, but not enough to join in. It's like a constant stream of sound that runs by, the challenge is to snag enough words to piece together an idea of what's going on. Answering is another story. As a result, I do a lot of listening.

I also find it frustrating how quick people can be to switch to English when I don't understand what they say the first time. Usually when I don't understand, it's because:

-It was too fast; people don't say "space" after each word, of course, and a simple sentence sounds complicated when it's said like a jumbled detveitikkjeeg, written (det vet ikke jeg, I don't know). I was trying to think of an example to use there, when Helene walked by and said that, so there you go, a real life example.

-I don't know one or a few of the words in the sentence; if someone says, say, "do your toes hurt", and you don't know the word for toes, there's no hope of understanding, unless they point to your feet at the same time. Even then, there's a lot of room for misinterpretation. I can't think of any situation where someone would ask you if your toes hurt, but still...

-Sometimes people will say something where I completely understand the language used in the sentence, but don't know what they mean by it, or what they're actually talking about. This can easily happen in English too; it isn't restricted to a foreign language.

In all these cases, an English translation of the entire sentence doesn't teach me anything, and often all it takes is a slower repetition in Norwegian, or a rephrasing, to understand. This is something I need to remember to ask people to do, as I'm getting to the point where I'll understand the Norwegian, and maybe just need a few words translated, rather than the entire thing. I realize that when someone switches to English, they're just trying to help, so it's my responsibility to explain this. 

Everything is going well, although my mood tends to go up and down more dramatically and unexpectedly than at home. It can be hard starting off new in a different country, and there have definitely been times where I wondered what I got myself into. I have a great host family and rotary club though, and everyone at school is really nice, so I've been very lucky. There are times when I miss understanding and get frustrated, and times when I realize where I am, and that I'm learning a new language, and get ridiculously happy. The latter is way more common, and life is pretty much great! I manage to work through small problems by talking to other exchange students on facebook and skype, who can relate to everything, whether it's buying a scarf without speaking English, or comparing embarrassing moments and misunderstandings. 

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to Tromsø with my host family, and that's what I did this past weekend. We actually went to Lyngseidet, a little town about a 2 hour drive from Tromsø, near the Swedish and Finnish borders. Oh, and above the arctic circle! Being so close to Finland, and so far north, was really exciting, we were about as far north as Inuvik is in Canada! I think it's time for a map, so people from home can get a perspective on what Norway looks like, and where I've been. So, I made this:

Bergen is where I'm living, and WAYYY up there, is Tromsø. Sweden doesn't even go that high up!

We flew from Bergen to Oslo, then Oslo to Tromsø, where we met up with Torbjørn, my host parent's son, and his girlfriend, Camilla, who go to University in Trondheim. Tord's brother in law picked us up, and we drove about 2 hours to Lyngseidet. 

The weekend consisted of a lot of visiting, which for me meant listening to a ton of norwegian and trying to understand it. When there's three different conversations going on at once, and I don't know the people and events they're talking about anyways, it's pretty hard to follow. A couple hours of trying to understand can be pretty tiring! We also ate a lot of food, and drank a lot of coffee. I didn't know it was possible to eat pretty much 5 meals a day, plus snacks! 

All that food inspired me to go running, so I went for two gorgeous runs along the road at sunrise (which wasn't all that early, about 9:30 am). Picture time!

A snack in the grocery store, tørrefisk, crunchy dried fish

Food, accomodation, and.....roosters?

Apparently the world's largest and ugliest santa...I find the largest part a bit hard to believe, but who knows? My cell phone battery died before I could get a picture of the front

Morning run :)

Ferry on the way back to the Tromsø airport

On Saturday I played, guess what...scrabble of course! with Tord's brother in law and his 12 year old grand daughter. This time, for once, it was in English! It was also surprisingly harder than I thought; I would see Norwegian words before English ones. I managed to win, but not by much, the 12 year old girl was really good at english. It was really entertaining; trying to explain that "caked" really IS a word in english, that I didn't make it up, and that it isn't a verb for baking a cake. Tord's brother in law was really skeptical, so we had to look it up in the dictionary. It was set up for Norwegian though, so the proportions of letters and points was pretty weird. It's hard to find an english word when you're stuck with three K's and a J, whereas in norwegian there's plenty of possibilities, like "kjekk." That's one of the great things about learning a new language though, is that you learn about your own as well. I never realized how little we use the letter K compared to C, which there's only one of in Norwegian scrabble.

When I get home, the first things I'm going to buy are a waffle iron, and scrabble!

It was a very koselig weekend, and so neat to be SO far north. We saw a bit of northern lights one of the nights, a light green glow behind the mountains. We flew home on Sunday, and got home at 1 am Monday morning.

That brings me up to the present, and speaking of presents, I got the birthday package from you guys, mom and dad! I'll try and wait to the 25th to open it.

Happy November 9th from Norway! :)

I added a column on the side as a list of new things I've done here, some of which may be mundane, but as Robert Brault (whoever that is) says:


 "Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."

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: