Norway

Well, here I am at last. Daughter of Norway is in Norway. The flight wasn't so long but I couldn't get much sleep. I watched some Icelandic shows on the plane and every announcement was in both English and Icelanic. Norwegian and Icelandic are similar, but I think they are more different than British and American English.

I'll start with some pictures of my dorm. I have my own room that I can lock with a key, and then I share a common area with kitchen, sitting room, toilet, and shower with 5 other people. I found out today that the reason we don't have 3 of our roommates yet is that they will be Norwegians and so they will come next week after the International student orientation events are over. Here is my room:


Close observers will note the sweet orange colored duffel bag from Gino. I was surprised to see one other orange colored bag of almost the same design at the baggage claim. The room is much tidier now after I finally put stuff away this morning. I was going to do it yesterday but I fell asleep almost immediately at 9 PM. Here is the view from my window:



It was a rare sunny day--others here have told me it's been raining a lot, and sure enough it's been raining almost the whole day today.


My building is called Børsen, with the unfortunate meaning "Stock Exchange". I thought I was in an Environmental school. Here is a view from outside:



We are on the second floor. So far it's me, a guy from Greece and a guy from France (Brittany). I of course told him about visiting my cousin in Nantes and spoke a little French at him. He took it in stride. They are both very nice and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better.

As promised, the sun really did set extremely late last night. Here it is after 9PM:

In midsummer it can be setting at 11 PM. I went out and appreciated the sun even though I was really tired. I went to a few places on campus and I walked to the grocery store, about a mile and a half away. The store clerk knew I wasn't Norwegian somehow--I'm still trying to figure out why. He was an Asian guy and probably spoke way better Norwegian than I.

In terms of classes and my major, I haven't heard much talk of ecology yet, but Norway as a whole is much more ecological than the states in some ways. They compost as well as recycle, and just looking at the country form the sky I could see many more forests than I usually see. I talked with a really interesting guy from the US about his travels to Nepal and Bhutan doing sustainable agriculture. Really cool.

Oh this is disgusting--I can barely stay awake! I guess that's all for now til my jetlag wears off!