Some Week-and-a-half Random Thoughts

(How I miss thee!)

It's been a week and a half since I got here! Which is, of course, not a long time. However, I am starting to develop some independent thoughts. The stars in my eyes have faded slightly (definitely not all the way. I still really like it here and could go on for a long time about everything I like). But:

1) ILLNESS. This is not Norway's fault, but it's still lame. I've still got a nice little cough going on and cannot be anywhere without my Kleenex supply. Today, however, I went to class, relaxed in the sun, and went shopping...so it's not a hopeless situation or anything.

2) CLASS. Oh my. This semester will not be easy. I will admit that I'm supposed to be doing homework at this very moment, but I got sick of it after like 5 hours, so now I'm stopping. So much to read! For my literature class, the reading is all in Nynorsk or some weird old Norwegian! WHICH I DO NOT UNDERSTAND!! And which cannot be found in any dictionaries apparently...however, one of the sagas we're supposed to be reading is now posted online, in English...thank the lord. And my Advanced Norwegian class's homework took up my entire evening. This cannot continue.

3) SHOPPING. Well. Everything costs way too much here, that is for sure. I could not bring myself to purchase three hangers for four dollars...thus I have only two lame wooden hangers in my closet that came with the place. I'm kind of hoping I'll make it to IKEA soon, where hangers are more like 10 for 6 dollars. Yyaaayyyy...also, the kantina (the little cafeteria) at the school, and the nearest grocery store, conveniently do not except my debit card. The two places where I'd most like it to be accepted. And there's a $5 fee at every ATM, so getting cash is something I don't want to do a whole lot.

4) FOOD. I've gone back to the basics. Here's what's in my fridge: Milk. Cheese. Orange juice (I don't even like orange juice). Jam. Bread. Apples. Corn. And my pantry: Special K, plain. Wheat crackers resembling Rye Crisp. Salt. Rice. Pasta. Meanwhile, here is what would be in my PLU dorm-room stores: Milk. Sugary cereal, like Captain Crunch or something. Protein bars. Macaroni and cheese, Top Ramen. Lots and lots of Diet Coke. Maybe some apples. Crystal Light. And some leftover fast-food Asian thing that Kelsey and I went and got the night before. Oh, and coffee, and cream for the coffee, and individual packets of Splenda. Possibly one of those tubes of cookie dough (I'm layin it all out on the table now). Microwave popcorn. Tostitos Hint of Lime. Six kinds of tea. Meanwhile, today I couldn't bring myself to purchase a simple packet of Lipton Green Tea. It was like 36 kroner. Divide it by 6. No way man. Point is. I miss my unhealthy lifestyle from before...especially the Diet Coke and the popcorn. They don't sell pop in cans in packs of 12 here...just 4-6 bottles of it for like 65 kroner. Siiigghghh. Also I don't have the guts to buy a coffee maker yet (399 Kr.) so that sucks. Again, my salvation rests in IKEA...a French press for 89 kr!! Hallelujah!! (PS...no microwave for popcorn, and why can't I find popcorn seeds?!)

5) IKEA. All the way in Oslo. Today I said to Anjuli, "when are we going to IKEA?!" and she said, "when are we going to feel better?!" Oh yeah...shoot.

Well I guess that's it...whine whine whine. We'll call this the W-post. I'll end with one non-whine, though. Guess what I watched last night...Will and Grace!!! On Norwegian TV!! The selection of American TV shows that are aired here is really quite impressive. I might even be able to watch ANTM this season!! They have Norwegian subtitles which is actually kind of fun to follow along.

Okay that's it!!!

Yay swine flu!

Well...I'm sick. Dang it. I guess it was bound to happen, hanging out with all these international students all the time. All those foreign germs floating around...bleh. My friend Anjuli is sick too, and we know of at least two others who are sick in a different dorm, one guy from Kosovo and one from France. We don't actually know if it's swine flu...honestly, I sort of think so, just because it came on suddenly and is quite miserable and seems to be spreading quickly. I didn't really move from my bed all day yesterday. I'm already feeling a bit better this morning, which could mean that it's not swine flu, or just that I'm lucky I have a nurse for a mom who made sure I packed all my really intense medicines and made sure I started them right away. Thanks mom!! :)

I only have one class today, and that's not until later this afternoon, so I'm thankful for that. I'm still debating whether or not to go...I don't want to infect anybody, but this is my first Advanced Norwegian class, and I've been kind of excited for it...I don't know. We'll see, I guess. If I do go I'll just bring my hand sanitizer and disinfect my area or something. Haha.

What else...nothing, I guess. On Saturday morning, when I was still feeling okay, we made pancakes for breakfast and had them with jam and fresh blueberries. The blueberries grow everywhere around here, all along the roads and the trails, it's just crazy how many there are.

Boring post, sorry. There's only so much you can do when you're sitting in bed with nothing but the computer for company. Facebook, email...update the blog! I would watch TV shows online but there's something stupid about international agreements...I have to be in the US to watch shows on ABC or NBC.com. LAME.

Picture Captions! (find the pics one post down)

1) This is Johan's strange Dutch truck in which he drives us places now and then. If we're lucky, up the huge hill back to the dorms.

2) Anjuli and I went on a walk, and ran into this beautiful little river! It's right opposite a campground called Beverøye, which means Beaver Island, which is hilarious.

3)This is Kroa i Bø, where we go to see concerts and other cool shtuff. Bad picture. It's just a big old building.

4) This is a little glance down Bø's main drag. It's a small town but has just the perfect amount of places to find everything you need. Bookstore, clothing stores, three grocery stores, an appliance and technology place called Expert, and even a little mall where you can find all sorts of stuff.

5) The city from the top of the hill where I live.

6) This is my house! Ida and I occupy 1/4 of this little place.

7) This was at the Postgirobygget concert...quite a popular Norwegian band. Very fun night. After a while I could even pick up the words in the choruses and scream them with everyone else (DET VAR KJÆERLIGHET!!) This was at Kroa. And that phrase means "It was love!!" I'm a genius.

8) This is me and Bibbi, my Norwegian friend/orientation guide. Bibbi is short for Birgitte, how cool is that?! All the international students went for a hike to the top of this hill thing, and we had a great panoramic view of Bø from up there.

9) Me with Hope and Anjuli, two American friends, both from University of Wisconsin Madison.

10) Yours truly.

11) Some view. It was a cloudy day, sorry.

That's all!!!!!1

Formatting is hard, so all the pictures are going here and the comments on the next post.

Det er så bra å snakke norsk!

Over the last few days I have spoken much more Norwegian than had been happening since the last time I posted. Okay. That was not a catchy sentence with which to start this blog post. Sorry.

I know I said I wanted to make friends with Norwegians...not International students (because how will I ever learn Norwegian if I'm not friends with Norwegians?!)...well...I have to eat my words a little. Anjuli (USA) and Johan (Netherlands) have been my two besties for the past two days, and they each speak very fluent Norwegian. Johan has studied here before, and Anjuli has lived and worked here. Even more importantly, they know how it is to be shy when learning to speak a new language. So they nag me. ("Kelsey, why didn't you ask for that coffee in Norwegian? Kelsey, talk to the barista in Norwegian!! Kelsey, you can read a book about driving a car, but that doesn't teach you how to drive the car! You have to get behind the wheel!") OMG...GIVE ME A BREAK ALREADY!!! ITS MY THIRD DAY!!! But they are right, and it's great to have them encouraging me to not be so shy. It's true...once you start talking Norwegian to a Norwegian, they generally won't switch over to English on you...unless you accidently admit that you're from the USA. They like to practice English. In the picture, Anjuli is on the left, Johan is holding the spaghetti pot, and Minna is on the right (a very awesome Norwegian friend!) We made a lovely dinner and ate outside, it's been beautiful weather.

Last night I stayed out too late at Kroa. A band was playing called the Augustana Quartet, and they were quite good. We were dancing and having a good time and couldn't bring ourselves to leave despite the fact that we had to wake up early! I overslept my alarm this morning but woke up in time for our trip to Aust Telemark (East Telemark. This is a funny dialect thing...I learned "øst" for east, but in Telemark dialect they say "aust" instead. Oh the joys of learning Norwegian!). The trip was for Scandinavian Studies students, Creative Writing students, and Culutural Studies students. About 30 of us in all. It was great to see more of Norway. It is SO beautiful, just everywhere you go. We were in a bus on a curvy road going up into the mountains and I just couldn't believe how pretty it was. Everywhere you look you see mountain streams, waterfalls, little red barns in seemingly impossible locations (very steep slopes, for example). I was basically looking out the window the whole time and just drooling.

We saw Heddal Stavkirke, a wooden church built in the 12th century, and the largest of all the remaining stavkirkes (in the dialect: "stavkyrkje"). It's amazing to think it's been around for so long...and no metal! It was built with wooden pegs instead of iron screws...crazy. We also went up into the mountains to see a fiddle player...the fiddle has a special name...forgot, of course. Harbringer...? Hardinger...? Yeah. Something like that. Then we had lunch at a mountain hotel...a very fancy lunch, I might add! And we ate off of very special china...(Grandma B! Check out the picture at the end of the post!) After all this we went back to Notodden, which is near Bø, where we visited a gallery and a woman spoke to us about the Notodden Blues Festival, which is, apparently, a huge annual event which all sorts of famous people attend.

(Heddal Stavkirke)

A theme throughout the day was that I understood about half (maybe two-thirds) of what people were saying (everything was in Norwegian). The fiddle player was extra hard for me to understand. Remember that the dialects make everything harder. A funny moment...in the gallery, I sat in the front row while the woman debriefed us on the Blues Festival. And she kept talking to me. Like, really, directly to me. Direct eye contact, sometimes she'd lean over and talk quite close to my face (usually when she was simulating a conversation with someone in one of her stories). She will never know that I only understood vague details of what she talked about. Haha.

Wow, this post is so long. If you made it all the way down here, congratulations. I wish I could give you a door prize, because you have excellent reading stamina, plowing through all this boring nonesense like this. Hurray for you!

In short, it's been a great week. I look forward to tomorrow, when I finally start classes and also we get to go on a hike in these gorgeous hill/mountain things!! And håpenligvis snakker masse norsk!! (Today I learned how to say, "a little slower, if you could be so kind!")

(These saints, painted on the walls inside the church, date back to before the Reformation, when Norway was Catholic. Thus this picture is dedicated to my good friend Kelsey E Phiz.)

(Attn: Bestemor Beachie! :))

Arrival!!!1

I'm here! I made it! Wow! My thoughts:

1) Sad to leave the fam. (Friends, whatever)(Totally kidding)

2) Everything was stressful and hectic.

3) But I did it!

As soon as I got off the train in Bø I was greeted by three lovely ladies from TUC (Telemark Univeristy College) and they took me to my dorm to drop off my shtuff (the above are some boring pictures of my dorm room. That's all I've got right now. Nice bedspread, eh?!) Then they said, "everyone's eating pizza at the pizza place, wanna go meet some more international students?!" Of course I was like "yeah!!" even though at that point I'd been up for like 36 hours running on 1-2 hours of sleep on the plane. Oh well. The pizza was free, and good, and I met students from the US, Bali, Spain, France, and Italy to name a few. The Norwegian guides are really nice and helpful and speak great English, which made it easy for me to slack on learning Norwegian. I decided to try harder when I wasn't running on pure adrenaline.

I met my roomate, Ida, after the pizza. She's so sweet!! She must've said "sorry, I'm not so good at English!" about 20 times, and then I would say, "Du kan prøve det på norsk!" but she would keep truckin' right along in English. We are at about the same skill level in our second languages, which I think will be a great thing for both of us. Last night, for example, she learned how to say "frying pan" from me, and I learned, "stekkepanne" from her! Wow!

The dorms I am in are like little cottages, and they are a 15-minute hike up a long snaky hill from the school (feels loooong with grocery bags!) In each cottage there are 4 "doubletts." In each doublett there are two people. These two people have seperate bedrooms with desk, table, closet, etc., but share a kitchen and bathroom. So really it's like a two-bedroom apartment, kind of. I haven't met anyone else in my cottage yet, just Ida.

We visited the school briefly; it's only one building, but big. In my Scandinavian Studies program group are six Americans. We are in some of the same classes but some different (classes start later this week). They are from places like St. Olaf, Luther, University of Wisconsin Madison, Linfield College in Oregon, etc. Really nice people, and two others staying for a year!

In about 20 minutes I am leaving to go to a place called Kroa, which is the student-run hangout place here in Bø. I guess it's like the Cave at PLU, but less lame. You can get beer there, for one thing...hahaha. And also people actually go there, because really cool bands come to play, and there's always something good going on. So I've heard. There's a "disco" tonight...a dance...and a bunch of us are going with our Norwegian student guides. I think it will be fun!

Bø is really pretty, by the way...it's surrounded by big rolling pine-y hills. Reminds me a lot of Mt. Vernon, WA in that way. The town is small but so cute...all the houses are sort of nestled cutely in the hills. Lots of bright reds, blues, yellows. I love it so far!! We'll see how this orientation week goes...