"Chanzia" and the Most Expensive Choir Robes Ever

So I have not been too good at keeping this blog up for the past couple days, but hopefully now I will write a little more regularly. Honestly, Monday was not all that exciting aside from it being the first day. My daily schedule appears to be conforming to a mold like thus:

7:15- get up, whine to myself about how tired I am, realize it's my fault for keeping up with friends back home.

7:40- go down to lunch room to eat with my friend Gus who goes to St. Olaf and is also in my first class. Breakfast is usually this puffy rice cereal and some brunost and bringebær syltetøy (raspberry jam) on bread. The day I see cold waffles is the day I do a spastic joy dance.

8:15-10:00- First class, Norwegian literature. So far the class seems really interesting; I can't wait to read Ibsen, because I'm not at all familiar with him. But I trust the hubbub I've heard is not for naught.

10:02- feel intense hunger pang, scamper across the hall (literally, sort of; my classrooms are the in the same corridor) to my next class.

10:15-13:00- Norwegian I, the course I have dubbed "babynorsk." Three hours long, but I definitely enjoy it. My teacher is Margaret O'Leary, the same teacher Peder had last year. In fact, I'm taking both of Peder's classes from last year. You'd think it was planned or something.

13:01- Realize how hungry I am, go back to Blindernstudenthjem (BS from now on, not that I don't like spelling nineteen-letter words out or anything) in time for the post-class lunch rush. Lunch is whatever they have; whatever they have can be anywhere from haddock cakes to vegetarian curry to halal chicken hot dogs.

The past two afternoons have been spent going on shopping excursions, first to get a thirty day pass for all the public transportation (I got a nice discount for being under 20; apparently all teenagers are still considered "barn" in Norway), and then to get food. First expedition I got dried mango and Store Lomper (lefse's cheapskate half-sibling), both of which were gone by this morning, for different reasons. The dried mango was so good I ate it in one sitting. The store lomper apparently had to be refrigerated, and by the time I woke up this morning there were suspicious black spots all over them, and the bag was filled with condensation. Second expedition I got a kinder egg, to whose existence I am enslaved, and this nifty candy bar called "Smash."



Basically it's chocolate with Bugle- like corn things in them. I think it's delicious, and apparently they're super popular in Norway now.

However, the definite highlight of yesterday was going downtown to UiO's Faculty of Law for the Opening Ceremony of the summer school. We left campus at 18:15 with the expectation that we'd get there and be seated and continue with our lives. This did not happen, so that left us to sit around in front and take pictures of anything we felt compelling.
Finally, we were let inside. The ceremony was held in the hall where the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded until 1989. It had been newly restored, complete with some lovely murals by Edvard Munch himself.





The program itself included an amateur choir who sang traditional folk songs in their bunads. I have long parted with my fantasy of owning a bunad; they are about 3000 kroner each and take forever to make. However, since different bunads come from different parts of Norway, one could look at each singer and know from which city they came. I am not well-versed in my bunads, so all I could see were pretty frocks.



After the ceremony, we went to Oslo City Hall for a banquet (implied: FREE NOT BLINDERN FOOD) held by the deputy mayor of Oslo. City Hall was beautiful, again decorated with murals and the like.





We were served delicious finger food as well as champagne. The champagne, unfortunately, had quite a bite, and the bite tasted suspiciously like cardboard. From then on my friend Lauren, also a Linguistics major at UW Madison, and I dubbed it "Chanzia," a portmanteau of "champagne" and "Franzia."

All in all the night was very enjoyable, though I did have to do homework at the dorm afterwards until the wee hours of the morning.

When Imports Attack/ How can a Bus Tour be Exhausting?!

So these past two days can be summed up thus: essential. Boring stuff. Yesterday and this morning were primarily unpacking/ registering/ going to the ground rules meetings. I did get my internet up and running (obviously), AND I got a second roommate: Katia (not sure of the spelling) from Georgia. So far I get along well with both of my roommates, though we're all taking different classes and so I'll probably not see much of them during the day.

However, a certain highlight did come yesterday with the miniature expedition to the grocery store. Stuff in Norway is generally expensive, and imports are no exception. So though I emerged relatively unscathed from the experience with a Kinder Egg (the hipper, European version of the Wonder Ball), Solo (think Fanta, but actually tasting of orange), and some "Jordbær og Pepper" flavored water (I had assumed the pepper would be a false cognate; that was a false notion), I could not pass up the opportunity to take pictures of the prices of some imports.



Gourmet Uncle Ben's rice for 30 Kroner, or about $6



The exotic Hubba Bubba, for about $2.70.

And then, just because it was so amusing, I took a picture of this Nesquik equivalent.



Today seemed both truncated and exhausting. I didn't get up until 10:15, fifteen minutes before a dorm meeting we had to attend, because the alarm for my computer I got from the app store last night decided to have the most confusing interface ever. Looks like my phone WILL have a use now!

Though aside from losing those two hours, my day has been otherwise quite eventful. I went on a four-hour bus tour of Oslo, where I went through Holmenkollen and saw the ski jump (where I bought a Coke for 30 Kroner... ouch) and the entire city from 600 meters up, over to the Viking Ship museum on the island of Bygdøy, down the mountain to Vigeland Sculpture Park, stopped at the Opera House (which had been constructed since I was there last), and finally through Johan Kristian's Gate/ the heart of the city on the way back to campus. I took way too many pictures, so you can all see them here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1932298188612.2101110.1276980227


Turns out I tend to like taking the same pictures twice. Here are a few shots that I duplicated, even after three years.

Angry Boy

2008



2011



Reaching Kids

2008




2011



Crazed Babies

2008



2011



Obelisk

2008



2011



... Random seagulls enjoying themselves in the fountain

2008


2011



I look forward to keeping you all updated!

-Cali

I'M ALIVE

Now THAT'S a plot twist! But not really. I am safe and sound in the great country of Norway after a "leisurely" (read: LONG) layover in Amsterdam. I got in yesterday right in time for lunch and was basically a loner until dinner.
In terms of travel, my day wasn't particularly interesting or eventful; the whole day from about 8 AM in Amsterdam til about 4 PM in Oslo is deprivation-incurred blur of hopping on and off trains and lugging suitcases. I do remember not liking the train system.

I have my own SECRET WEAPON though, which I have already used extensively, I think. It is my very own cousin Peder, who was on this exact same program as me last year at this time. So he's taken a lot of the guess work out of it for me already, though I still managed to get on the wrong T Bane (their subway system; super easy to use unless you're cracked out and me). I did, however, make my way back and got to the school easy enough. It has its own stop on the subway system, so that's nice.

I am living at the very beautiful, very buttery yellow, Blindern Campus at the University of Oslo. It's a very nice campus with a lot of trees and a lot of sunshine. I'm staying in the West Wing. Yay, west!

Here are some picures.


View from my window


View from my window to the East Wing


View of the West Wing from the Main Office



View of pretty trees from the entrance.

I'll post more pictures later today; yesterday was rainy and gross so I didn't spend that much time outside.

My roommate also came later last night; her name's Simina and she's from Romania. Very cool. She's taken Norwegian before so she's one of the smarter sessions. She seems very nice, so I think we'll get along quite well.

And finally, here's me after being up for about 24 hours straight. I made it to 30 hours straight and then DIED.

Departure

Hello, everyone! I made this blog about twenty seconds ago, and this is my first post! I'm very excited to return to the country; it seems like yesterday that I was over there for a measly three weeks.
I'm fairly certain of what I'm going to get out of the experience at ISS (varmepølse and twenty-two hours of sunlight aside), but I still can't wait to be back on a college campus and in the land of Solo! I'll keep you guys posted on the stuff I do (interesting and mundane; I'm an egalitarian. You're gonna get a lot of both) and of course, bombard you with visual stimulus in the form of pictures. Maybe I'll even post old pictures from my last trip to Norway just to compare (but probably not).

See you guys all on the other side (of the ocean)!

-Cali