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:

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....oh, and my birthday and pancakes

So I guess today was the first day of advent, which means that the house smells like candles now. Koselig :D There's some kind of Christmas melody playing on tv, and the wind seems to be blowing hard outside, based on the dancing piece of plastic I can see outside the glass doors. It's in just the right place that every couple minutes my peripheral vision glimses it, and I think there's someone out there. You'd think that after a couple months of this I wouldn't notice it, but my instincts don't seem too capable of adapting.

Anyways, lets start with last Thursday. Our art class went to the city in the afternoon to visit a couple art galleries. The first was called "press play" and was about art from video games. We didn't spend long there, but it was really neat!

Walking from the train station; frozen lake with a Christmas tree in the middle. Saturday evening the tree was lit at "lysfest"

Inside the "press play" show

I liked this one...along with pretty much all the others

Into the next gallery; this one was a REALLY random mix of different types of art, seemed to have something to do with promoting artists from Bergen? I didn't understand the whole presentation, so I'm not entirely sure!

I said it was random!

This guy freaked me out when we came out of the gallery....had to check if he was really dead! :P

Not a bad way to spend my birthday afternoon! Friday was Norwegian class all day, and everyone had a test that seemed similar to an english exam at home: comparing texts and whatnot. My assignment was considerably easier; write as much as I could in Norwegian about my experiences here. I was surprised how much I'd picked up from reading blogs, the newpaper, and everyday things in norwegian; I felt like it flowed pretty well. Even as I'm writing this, my brain is feeding me norwegian words at the same time as english ones, and I have to filter out the correct language. I want to write "samtidig" instead of "at the same time as" and I almost wrote "osv" higher up, when I was going to write "etc". 

The "test" took me about two hours, then I went to the store and spent 150 kr (about 25 dollars) on 3 litres of chocolate milk and some candy for my birthday. Norway DEVOURS money; at home I would've laughed at the idea of spending that much for so little food. I'm SO lucky to have a host family who pays for my food; because it's so expensive here! 

Then I went to SFO ( the kid's after school program) again, and spent an hour sprinting back and forth across the gym floor, dragging eight year olds with a hockey stick. They thought it was hysterical, I thought it was exhausting. But it was still fun! It was a different group of kids this time, and I never really explained to them that I wasn't norwegian. It didn't take them long to realize though, but one girl asked if I was swedish! That made me laugh. 

Tonje and I went for a run after that, around 3:30, and it was getting dark! It was also relatively cold, and one of those runs where the only motivation to keep going is the prospect of a hot shower at the end of it. It's so nice to have someone to run with though!

Later that evening Emma, Susanne, Tonje, Julie and Karoline came over, and I made pancakes, canadian style, with maple syrup, raspberries, and whipped cream. They hadn't tried that kind before; despite Norway having every imaginable form of baked/fried dough with sweet stuff on top. They were also surprised that people normally eat pancakes for breakfast! I burnt a few of them, but I think they turned out good anyways. 

These turned out to be some of the fail pancakes...

Emma opening some of her presents ( her birthday is the same day as mine)

Yumm ...

Tonje and I....no longer freezing cold from our run! :D

We ate pancakes and candy, attempted to play some (not very serious) poker, and just hung out. I ended the night with 2 new pairs of mitts, a new dress, a cookie cookbook in Norwegian, some earrings, and other amazing gifts! It was a very koselig evening, and I'm lucky to have such nice friends here.

Saturday I took the train into the city, and met with some exchange students here from another program, AFS. There was about 10 of us (a rough guess), from all over the world. Bolivia, Belgium, Dominican Republic, Japan, China, Thailand...I'd never met so many people from so many different places before I went on exchange! I found it fascinating that for a while, I was the only one with english as my native language. Still, the group of people was all using english to communicate (with some norwegian). We waited for a bus for about an hour, and went to an ice rink to go skating. It's been a while since I've been skating, and it was really fun. 

We went to the "lysfest" afterwards, which is the beginning of Christmas here. There was a stage set up, and various artists singing Christmas songs, with the crowd singing along. I was kind of lost, seeing as I never learned the lyrics to Jingle bells in Norwegian, but it was fun to listen and be part of the big crowd. They lit the lights on the Christmas tree in the middle of the manmade lake, and lots of people had torches. 

In the newspaper today, it said there was about 23 000 people there! Double the population of Nelson, all singing christmas carols! By about five o clock the entire day of standing in the cold had was getting to me; it was really windy at the lysfest as well. My two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks, boots, wool shirt, cardigan, scarf, winter jacket, and mittens still weren't enough, and I decided to take the train home a bit early. Soon after I left there were fireworks, but I was glad to go home and make soup! Then I hung out with the same girls as the night before, and slept over at Susannes. 

Before it got dark, above, and later on, below.

It was a busy and fun few days, and now I'm sitting in my usual chair, typing and occasionally glancing up at the piece of plastic blowing outside in the wind. 

Life is good.

As of right now, I'm 17 in Canada and 18 in Norway

....how weird is that?

Observations after 3 and a half months of living in Norway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like the mix of facial expressions here

My attempted description of this picture:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hadet bra fra Norge <3

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."