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! :))