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:

Stavanger / Preikestolen hike

On Friday afternoon I flew to Stavanger for the district 2250 rotary conference with our club president Ingeborg (also my counsellor) and next year's club president. Stavanger is on the west coast about a 4 hour drive south of Bergen. There were 3 exchange students who came to the district in August, and two rebounds who had been to the US. On Saturday morning we hiked to the famous "pulpit rock" or preikestolen near Stavanger, which is a 3.8 km hike to a cliff that drops 600 m down to the ocean.

It was pouring rain a good part of the time - and I forgot my raincoat! Luckily the family I stayed with for the weekend had an extra one. They gave everyone on the hike free little backpacks, and amazing sandwiches to bring up with us. The hike was rocky and slippery, and there was an insane amount of people on the trail considering the weather. I'm just going to post pictures now, because I think they'll show the hike much better than I can describe.

On the ferry from Stavanger

Straight down!

All the students

After the hike we ate at the restaurant in the lodge below the trail ( we get a lot of free food at these conferences!) then went back and got ready for the formal dinner. The dinner lasted 4 hours, which is a lot of speeches, mostly in norwegian although I think one might have been swedish; I couldn't understand enough to tell. 

I feel like my norwegian is improving though; I'm starting to be able to follow simpler conversations. My speaking is getting better too, but I still find it confusing with the different dialects. Where I live, we read mostly bokmål, which is almost danish, but speak a blend of bokmål and nynorsk where the proportions of the two seem to vary from person to person, but lean more towards nynorsk. I feel like I'm speaking a different dialect every day! I'll write another post sometime and explain this better once I know more about it; these are just my impressions. If anyone norwegian is reading this and wants to correct me, go for it!

Today ( Sunday) we found out our presentation to the rotarians was supposed to be more in depth than "jeg heter Lauren, jeg kommer fra Canada" like last week. Alyssa ( from Merritt) and I frantically pieced together a short powerpoint about Canada and ourselves, which I think turned out alright.

So, that was my weekend in Stavanger, back to school tommorow. I finally got a laptop to use in school, although I still don't have my "personnummer" to be offically registered, which means I can't get a bank account or a student bus card. 

Alrighty, sorry for the really disjointed post!

ha det :)

Language camp, conference and sweden

I spent the past week in Halden for a week long norwegian language course, and Ski (which apparently is a place) for a district conference. Both are close to Oslo, but I really had no idea where I was. On Friday I flew to the Oslo Rygge airport, then took a bus to the train station, then got on the train which I thought went to Halden. I bought my ticket speaking norwegian (which basically consisted of "hva koster det" and "takk") and then smiled and nodded when the conductor told me something about a bus, which I didn't understand. Turns out I had to take a bus after the train to get to the Halden train station, I still don't know why. Luckily Devin happened to see me get on the train, otherwise I probably would've ended up in sweden or something, which I wouldn't actually have minded.

View out the window on the train from Oslo

Language camp was in a hostel next to a fortress which was once used to fight Sweden. It was a pretty random location, but interesting nonetheless. We met the other 20 exchange students in Norway, from Brazil, Ecuador, Japan, USA and Canada. North America was definitely well represented. It was really nice to speak english without fear of being misunderstood, and after a week with other exchange students I felt like I'd been on a holiday in North America. 

Devin, me and Abby being monsters

Part of the fortress (picture stolen from Kate)

Five days of lessons later, I knew a few more words, had gotten slightly more confident in Norwegian, and had a nice new book to work in throughout the year. I already knew most of the material we covered, but it was still a fun week. We watched two crime movies set in Bergen with english subtitles, one of which was called "The woman in the refrigerator." They made me see the city in a different light, and made me afraid to walk around the hostel alone for fear of looking up and seeing a dead girl hanging there. We ate a lot of mystery meat, bread, various forms of moussy desserts, and nugatti (similar to nutella).

Nugatti in a tube....yummmmmm

On Tuesday afternoon we took the bus to Sweden, which was about 10 km away. Clothes were slightly cheaper, and food was a fair bit cheaper. We went to a big shopping centre near the border; I don't actually know where we were. The first place we went was a giant candy store, and filled bags with assorted chocolates.

Crossing into Sweden...as uneventful as crossing into Alberta from BC

A small section of the candy store

This cost about 5 dollars :)

After the chocolate store, Abby, Noellen and I went to a salon and tested out the sample dyes in spray cans. I found out that pink makes my hair look moldy and gross, silver makes me look old, and gold doesn't show up. We left leaving a trail of sparkles behind us, without buying anything. A few hours of shopping later everyone met up at McDonalds, and I bought the cheapest thing I could; a cheeesburger for 10 kr. Then we managed to miss the bus back, and had to call a taxi which cost double the bus.

On Friday everyone took the train to Ski, where we stayed in a really nice motel for the district conference. It was really nice to have a shower that was seperate from the rest of the bathroom; in the hostel the shower sprayed over the sink, so we tracked dirty water all over the room. If you took the elevator to the second floor, it opened up on a massive shopping centre, which was pretty dangerous!

We met up with the students from Australia, New Zealand and Argentina, and spent Saturday planning presentations for the rotary members at the conference. We divided into groups; Aussie/New Zealand/Japan, North America, and South America. We sang the Canadian and American anthems, showed a slide show of our hometowns, and made up a poem/rap for both Canada and the US. "Everything is bigger in the US of A, we're just like Canada without the Eh"....etc. 

Saturday night was a formal dinner with all the rotarians, with the first meal I'd eaten all week that wasn't stuff your face buffet style. ( I managed to gain about 8 pounds during this week despite going for runs several of the mornings...yikes!)

The meal took about 2.5 hours, which was a lot of polite conversation in broken english with a bit of norwegian thrown in.

Roommates before the dinner: Abby (from Wisconsin) Me, and Sara ( from Colorado) ( picture stolen from Sara)

On Sunday we thought we were going for a hike, but we ended up going to a 900 year old church, some houses in the forest from the 1700's,  catching crayfish and riding on a steam boat.  It was a bit unexpected, but definitely interesting.

I travelled to the airport with Brianna and Caity from Australia, and Tre from the US. All three are living around Ålesund, which is on the west coast north of Bergen. In the airport I learned just how expensive food can be in Norway; I bought the "San Diego" at a random little food booth, and paid about 13 dollars canadian for a chunk of breaded chicken in a tortilla plate of nachos with "guacamole" (which, to be gross, looked just like the substance that came from the intestines of the fetal pig we dissected in biology), and a drink which I had about a quarter of before we had to go through security. I think I'll remember to pack food from now on!!

Overall it was a crazy fun week, but I'm glad to be back "home" in Arna.

Oh, and just thought I'd mention, Friday the 10th was my one month anniversary of arriving in Norway!!! :)