Tha last of the nice days...?

It has been raining here a lot. In Ås, nearby Oslo, further north, and probably other areas of Norway. A few people, mainly professors, have told us students that the last two or three summers were among the wettest summers on record. So I have taken to spending time outside as much as I can when it's sunny out.

It was nice today, and so my German neighbor Sophie and I decided to go to Oslo on the bus, which has cheaper tickets for students and takes the same amount of time. We didn't do a lot--mostly walked around in the sun. We passed this river in the morning:


Clearly not overflowing at all. The ducks at least seemed happy about it.

Sophie wanted to find an Asian market, and it took a bit of wandering but after the iffy directions from a tipsy Norwegian guy we found it:



A bit disappointing for me because there were no drinks like coconut or mango juice, and not a lot of selection. I'd say it's passable for Norway. Asian markets are probably a newer thing for them. The name is not a typo--that is actually "supermarket" in Norwegian.

We took our treats to the nearby botanical/natural history museum park, with a pretty good view.

On the top in the distance is the newly built ski jump. Why would someone want to ski down a structure you can see from this far away. I guess the answer might be, why not?

I really like Sophie. She is nothing like the German stereotype I've been given through television and other media, proving once again that basing your worldview off of TV is at best mistaken, and at worse problematic. Is catastrophic too strong? Anyway, Sophie is laid back, vegetarian, really friendly and laughs a whole lot. She doesn't even mind that my idiot self wants her to say "There's a bat in my pants" in German because I think it is so funny and cute. There's a backstory to that but it's not very interesting. She laughed along but I won't stretch my luck with that.

We walked towards the main station and I wanted to climb to the top of the opera house, which it built slanted on the sides so that you can easily walk up.



At the top. At this point the sky had already clouded over getting ready for the rain that is falling late tonight.

The last thing we did was have a coffee at a really old looking brick cafe called the Carousel near the main station. You can drink coffee and watch all the weirdos go by. I mean, tourists and Norwegians. Observe them in their natural habitat, following their keen instincts towards a good deal in an expensive market.

I've been studying Norwegian when I can, and using it on people in stores and my Norwegian roommates with some success. The pronunciation is very hard, mostly because of the vowels and the rolled "r". I asked for a quick lesson with my roommate Ingrid,which will hopefully become a semi-regular thing. She is so selfless at 18 years old I can't believe it sometimes. I learned that people with different dialects in Norway are often (if not all the time) spoken to each other, and they understand just fine. It seems to me anyway--most of the time I listen and and it's just loopy gibberish to me and one word in 500 I understand. Anyway, Ingrid told me there are three different sounding "r's" in Norway, and each of my three roommates has a different one. Lucky! Maybe...seems like a lot for me to tackle this early, but it's good to get my ear attuned to at least some of the differences.

And then I spend a lot of time with French students. Someone actually said "bonjour" to me in passing, because they thought I was French because I am always with the French groups. So in listening to French a lot, that language memory from being in French class many years in grade school and Jr. High wants to come out too. My French roommate and I took another "walk to zee lake" the other day and though I mostly helped him with English we spoke in French a bit too. I am going to be so confused! I can't wait.

About Norwegian Food

I've heard Norwegians don't care about eating well as much as they do about eating cheaply. Organic here is pricey as it is in the States, a sad result of our strange economy. Anyway, I wanted to share some interesting food items I've come across.

The first is the tube thing. Cheese, cheese flavored with seafood or bacon, and caviar (and other things as well?) come in tubes:


Good ol' cod eggs with sugar and salt...it's good on crackers, bread, on eggs and pretty much anything else. And it's pink. Probably not naturally.

Norwegians know that all kids love liver pate. But just in case you forgot this brand reminds you how to make your kids happy:



The two make for a great afternoon snack. Even adults love it!




Clearly this picture should be next in line for their label.

Another amusing discovery was the character Mr. Melk, appearing on Tine Melk's milk cartons. Or cartoons.

They have different ones. This one has a cute (read: lame) poem to teach me Norwegian, I mean it might be there for their add campaign. I love how even though Mr. Melk talks about Facebook on this message, he himself chooses to write on parchment with a quill. At shirtless o'clock. Very nice. Nice try, anyway--I'm sticking to soy.

Ytre Hvaler Nasjonalpark and Øystre Slidre

I let too much time go by and now I have an extra large update plus I'll be adding another short entry right after.

Ytre Hvaler

Starting with two weekends ago, I went with Unni, Finn Ove and Lill Nora to Ytre Hvaler Nasjonalpark, which is one of those Norwegian words I don't have to translate, right? "Ytre Hvaler" seems to translate to "Outer Whales". It's a cluster of islands that look like whales, and it's at the south end, or outer part of Norway. Most of the park is actually marine, with over 6,000 species and counting. On land, it's beautiful enough:



Those pines just grow right into and over the rocks. And:



See the little flag? Near and around the park they say there have been settlements since the Bronze Age. For Norway, that's between 1700 and 500 BCE...wow that's old! Thanks Wikipedia. And close up:



The coastline. I'm a big fan of little flowers and grasses growing out of rocks, and I got that in abundance here. I took a picture of every new plant I saw, especially the ones I could tell were related to the ones I knew back in Minnesota. Finn Ove asked me if I was going to take a picture of everything. Every plant, Finn, every plant. We swam at the beach:


And had dinner on a little charcoal grill. It was nice to be immersed in their Norwegian chatter and sometimes understand because of the context. My reading in Norwegian is still far above my listening comprehension because I still spend more time reading it than hearing it so far. But I'm studying and it's only a matter of time and commitment. While also keeping up with my primary studies. On this trip I learned a saying in Norwegian from Lill Nora: "Finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klar" which translates basically to "There is no bad weather, just bad preparation". Makes sense for Norway!

After dinner Lill Nora and I and their sweet sheltie Celine:



Went for a walk along the coast. As an aside, Celine is the best dog I've met in a while--she's super calm most of the time, but when you give her a plastic ball she kind of plays soccer with you. Unni calls her a guru or buddha dog because of her calm and very aware nature. She's also good at leaping from rock to rock--I think they told me her breed is from the coastal islands:



Other animals just like to pose on the rocks.



Humanae extensio I think they are called.

After a nice sunset we slept in a tent with 3 little rooms off of one big middle area. It was a nice tent and I slept pretty well. In the morning I went for a nice walk on the same coast, going farther in. There was some litter here and there, but I guess that's what happens to popular places. Actually, so far I'd say that compared to Minnesota, at least when it comes to State Parks and the like, I never saw litter like I do here. People will have a fire and leave debris, like cigarettes and plastic containers. I wish we could stop with the plastic, at least the vast proliferation thereof. All in all I had a great time camping, and I can say I went this summer unlike last year when I wasn't able to get people together or muster up the inspiration to go by myself. Thanks Unni. And Finn Ove for driving, and Lill Nora for the Norwegian lessons!

Øystre Slidre

For my class we took a two day trip to Øystre Slidre, northwest of Oslo in the mountains. The purpose of the trip was to see a farming research center, hear about goat farming from one of the local farmers, and climb a mountain to see a receding glacier. Our class has focused on climate change and primarily how farmers deal with the changes, and how economic policies affect environmental changes. Our professor interviewed many farmers in this region for her dissertation, so she had us take a trip here. For free!! This good life can't possibly last, but I'm hoping for more field work like it.

For the goat farm part I didn't take pictures, which is strange when I think about it. I was and am such a fan of goats, and it's part of my cultural ancestry, but on this trip they were all milked by machines so that one farmer could handle 100 goats to milk twice daily. That was different from when I came here when I was seven and even the little girl younger than me could milk them by hand. It's changed a lot in just 20 years--they said only a few people milk by hand anymore. Even with the increased mechanization the most farmers in this area still have to have a side job in something else, often in tourism.

The next day we climbed a mountain--two hours up and a little less than two hours down. It got pretty steep on the way up, and we were in a cloud:



The didn't really warn us about how difficult it would be. But we all handled it well and took enough breaks to recover. At the top it was cloudy still:



Eating lunch.

But we had a brief moment of clarity:



Where you can see the glacier. It was hard for me to tell where it receded, but our prof. said there is a gray area around it where more ice used to be. I saw more strange animals, lemmings mostly, and some that like to pose in front of vistas:



The way down was easier, and the sun was out so it was much warmer.



It was difficult to watch my step and enjoy the view at the same time. So it is good that cameras were invented.

Nothing like a mountain to make you feel small:



I practiced my Norwegian with the Norwegian students (and some with the non-Norwegian students) on the way up and down. Simple stuff like "Jeg liker fjellklatring!" "I like mountain climbing!" Learning a language is much like climbing a mountain. It just takes longer.