Torch Walk, Løvenes Konge and Houseparty

Well, it's about time I actually write this.  I think I'll write it in parts since each title topic has nothing to do with one another.
Part 1:  Torchwalk
Last week my friend Libby and I went on a walk through town that apparently Norwegians partake in to celebrate the first day of fall. The walk started up near my student housing and wound along the river all the way past downtown into Grunerløkka.  Initially, Libby thought we were going to be given torches as it was a torch walk, but I explained to her that I doubted the Norwegians would think giving a bunch of kids torches and sending them off into the woods would be a good idea.  Turns out I was right.  We arrived at the beginning of the walk and found the path was lit by TONS of candles so we followed the masses of people along the path.  There were little mini concerts and artwork set up along the walk which was really great.  Kids had set up waffle and coffee stands so we bought some coffee for the walk since it was beginning to rain, but were dismayed to find cheaper coffee stands only a bit ahead.  Little kids ripped us off....oh well. Luckily we prepared for rain, because it started pouring midway through which actually added to the ambiance because it was really neat to look at the lit up artwork in the woods with this eerie sort of mist around it.   We discovered the worst job of the night was...candle relighter.  We noticed the minute a candle went out, a candle relighter would run up and light it again.  I couldn't help chuckling to myself and thinking if it was in the US there would be some little bratty kid blowing out candles all along the way.  So we walked, and chatted and walked..and walked and walked.  At one point I was convinced that this was all a big trap to walk foreigners to death.  Libby thought I was being a bit dramatic but I could tell she started to get worried towards the end too.  Eventually after 2 and a half hours of walking through the rainy woods and town, we came to the end...and I have never felt so Norwegian.  Of course when I came to class the next Monday I found that most of my Norwegian friends have never been on the walk...but it was still a good cultural experience all the same.
Part 2: Løvenes Konge
Laugh if you will, but I have taken to Disney movies in Norwegian to help me learn the language.  You know it's genius.  I have heard numerous people say that they learned English through movies and TV and decided that it would be a good idea for me as well.  The only problem is finding the movies in Norwegian online as I don't have a TV nor the 50 million kroners it would cost for me to buy it from a store here.  I think the fact that I am willing to watch the Lion King in 9 parts on youtube shows my dedication to learning the language.  I can understand a surprising amount, which is encouraging...but then whenever I try to speak to a Norwegian they always chuckle and kindly say.."almost" so I've definitely got a ways to go.  Something that concerns me is that apparently the characters in the Disney movies speak in all different Norwegian dialects, so one day when I said "konge" to a guy in my research group he said.."oh you said that in a good southern accent."  I of course was not aware of this and was slightly alarmed as I would prefer not to develop a strange hybrid dialect that no one can properly understand.  Vi skal se!
Part 3:  Houseparty
A friend from class was nice enough to invite me to a party at her house last weekend which ended up being a great time and taught me a valuable lesson: Norwegians are punctual.  I showed up with my friend Libby and a German friend from class a little before 10 when the invite said 8 and everyone was asking where we had been and were making comments about being fashionably late.  Naturally, I blamed the German for it, but noted this to myself.  When someone says a party starts at 8 back home, they don't expect anyone to be there until around 9:30 and even then it is a little awkward for the first people there unless they are close friends.  On the other hand, in Norway when they say 8 they mean 8.  Lesson learned.

I should also note that some Norwegian friends have started reading my blog as well.  It's funny, I posted the link on my facebook page so I would not have to keep giving the site to my friends back home, but I neglected to realize that as I made Norwegian friends, they would read it as well.  My initial reaction was to cringe at all the sweeping generalizations I have made about Norwegians because of course they are not all the same just as not all Americans are fat and religious.  But then, I realized that my blog is not about being politically correct, it is about my perception of Norway and I must stay true to that.  Luckily, my Norwegian friends found my blog to be funny and told me to continue to be brutally honest, so now I can safely say: Norwegians have an excellent sense of humor.

Bureaucratic Nightmares and My Contempt for Student Housing

As fond as I am of Norway thus far, it does not come without its pitfalls.  I have come to learn that Norway is not only the land of good looking people but also the land of long lines and bureaucratic nightmares (hence the title) in which you have to follow a million and one steps to get a final result.  And the minute you are lulled into a false sense of security and think that something just might be simple here...is the minute right before you are laughing at yourself for being so naive.  This has been one of the hardest things for me to get used to here, mainly because I don't want to...but its just gotten to be a joke between me and my American friend Libby.
To give you an idea, I'll use opening a bank account here as an example.  I thought the saga had ended once I finally got my national ID number from the tax office after waiting 4 hours in the police station to register, and then two weeks for them to send it to me, so that I could get a bank account, so I could transfer the money I had to put in my school banking account in order to get my residence permit, to my new bank account, so that I could touch the money I had sitting here to begin with.  Alright. I went to the bank, took a number, sat down and managed fairly smoothly to open an account.  This was odd.  I was just supposed to wait in the mail until I got my debit card and I would be good to go right? Ha. Well, one day I received a text with a personal code.  Then the next day in the mail I received a start code.  Then the next day a pin code.  Then my debit card.  Then a security token.  Apparently one of the codes needs to be plugged into the security token and then another code so that it can give a security code so I can log into my online account for which I have to punch in my security code and another code.  I have yet to get the sequences of codes right and as the system locks up on me when I get it wrong...I can only hope that the banking gods will one day smile upon me and that the stars will align just perfectly so that I put in the correct combinations. Until then, all I can do is laugh...
On a different note....I was able to change rooms in my student housing!  The only thing that I did not like about living in Norway (aside from the above) was that I hated the hall I got put into.  There were various reasons for this which I'm not going to get into, but I had been on the waiting list to move rooms for over a month.  I contemplated numerous ways to expedite the process.  On the first day they said they were going to have new rooms available I got there bright and early and prepared the waterworks.  Surely, student housing is not heartless and cannot deny my teary angelic face (haha). I wouldn't know though because when I got in there I overheard them telling two different sobbing people that there was nothing they could do as there were no open rooms.  I just left.  I had heard that a couple of people were able to move immediately because one had a mattress with bed bugs and the other had mold.  I thought to myself..hmmmm mold takes too long to grow and where could I find bed bugs?  No, no, too messy. But I noted...health issues gets people moved quickly.  Then a week later after my friend apparently started hysterically crying in the housing office, she was given another room.  That's when I snapped.  I went home and sent housing a polite, kindly worded and matter of fact letter explaining to them that "the man in the room next to me has a strong odor (true) and I have very weak stomach (less than true) and at times fall ill.  Consequently, I am worried about my health."  And I got a new room the next day.  :)
As I relished in my new bigger room with actual students in my hallway, where I could actually cook in my kitchen and walk in my bathroom without flip flops I was beginning to think student housing wasn't so bad...they had finally done me right.  Then I asked my hallmate who lived there before me and he said "Oh that room has been empty for weeks."
So I go on strongly disliking student housing, but now that I do it in a decent room, I am happy.  This happiness also enables me to better take the bureaucratic nightmares in stride.  I suppose, in the end everything works out...it just happens a little slower over here.

Jeg har en gruppe!

Ok..so good news.  I have somehow managed to gather up the cojones to talk to the biology researchers on campus and have found a research group for my thesis! This might be a little less exciting of a post than previous ones, but I'll do my best and have put a few pictures of downtown Oslo at the end so you have something to look forward to.

Last week I went around to various group supervisors and asked what sort of research they were doing and I chatted with a PhD student for an unbiased assessment of them.  I was immediately drawn to the research group run by the professor of my molecular evolution class and the head of the whole ecology and evolution department on campus (Glenn).  The PhD student also told me Glenn is also one of the best to work with because he is very available to help his students.  Before I settled on Glenn's group I was invited to attend their weekly group meeting so I could meet the rest of their group and hear what they were working on.  They put me on the spot and I had to talk about myself, but they were great and I was sold on them. I knew it was a match made in heaven when at the end of the meeting they organized a pub night for the group later in the afternoon.  So it was at the pub, with the beer that my supervisor bought me (and the rest of the group) in hand, I told him I would like to join his group and his response was "Cheers!" 

So what will I be doing for my research you ask?  My experiment looks into the hybridization of Italian and House sparrows.  They are one of the only vertebrates that mate outside their species at times but they do not prefer it.  We want to look into if they prefer not to hybridize due to sexual selection or if there is a genetic barrier involved.  I will be going with a Colombian master student (Maria) in the group (who I really like..luckily) to Northern Italy and the border between Spain and Portugal for 1-2 months in the spring and will be doing mate choice experiments on Spanish, Italian and House sparrows involving their feather coloration.  Then I will be genotyping (looking at the genetic makeup) of the birds to examine patterns of inheritance and to look at the genes related to their plummage color.  I will complete the experiments with Maria but when it comes to writing our thesis' one person will write about the genetic aspect while the other will write about the behavioral aspect but we will both be co-authors on each paper along with of course Glenn and whoever else.  Also, the genotyping we will be doing may be used by another master's student so we might be co-authors of his paper as well.  So after this is all done, I will have at least two published papers.  Pretty cool.  Additionally, I'd been stressed because I was supposed to write a research proposal by Nov. 1st for an introduction to master's class I had to take but Glenn explained to me today he prefers to write them himself....sweet!   So overall things are going really well here.  I have a research group, a Norwegian bank account and Norwegian friends (all biology people as it is a relatively small community). 

Though, I don't want it to sound like everything has been really easy over here because it has certainly been difficult at times. Especially in the beginning, there were many moments when I was completely intimidated and had to stop and make myself take a deep breath and think "you can do this."  Luckily thus far, I have come to find that the things I have found the most challenging have ended up the most rewarding.  

As promised...

PS.  It has been over 1 month and I am still continuing to blog so.....suck it Jiro!

Touristing It: Frogerparken

Now I Feel Like a Biologist

Don't worry, I'm back. After spending a week in Bergen (west coast of Norway) on a biology excursion with my class, I've found that the life of a biology student is very difficult.  We arrived into Bergen and were taken to the grocery store where the teacher told everyone in my class of 20 students to grab whatever we wanted.  We wound up with 3 giant carts of food and 2 carts of beer.  We rolled up to our "cabin" which was really a giant house on the water with a research building next to it and I already began to dread the day I would have to leave (See the "Norwegians Don't Slum it" post for pictures).  Then we proceeded to spend the week going out on boats and grabbing samples from the marine bottom and tide pools out on an island (See the "When you buy raingear the weather looks like this" post for pictures).  After that, we would spend the rest of the day in the lab looking at what we found and trying to identify the species.  We would all eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with each other and after the day was done we would drink in the sauna, go swim in the water to cool off, get back in the sauna and so forth.  Like I said, it was a stressful week.  The best part about it was that I got to know my classmates much better and I really had a great time hanging out with all of them.  They kept hassling me about being American (in good fun) and everyone was really great with all my "how do you say this?" questions. It was a good way to practice some Norwegian, especially since they wouldn't hesitate to tell me if I wasn't saying something exactly right. They even tested me and I had to translate the back of a cough drop bag and they almost rolled over laughing at the words I would fill in for the ones I didn't know.  Turns out "forklift" is not used to describe the nature of eucalyptus cough drops.  I also learned a couple new fun facts while I was there.  1) Norwegians always take their shoes off inside.  When my German friend passed out on the couch, they wanted to draw on him and I told them they couldn't because his shoes were off.  They looked at me confused and I explained in the US when someone passes out at a party, only if their shoes are on, are they fair game.  The Norwegian friend then furrowed his brow and said, "But why would someone have their shoes on in the house?"  Then I gave up.  2) Svalbard exists.  I had no idea what/where it was when a girl in my class told me she is moving to Svalbard next semester to finish the last year and a half of her masters.  Turns out it is an archipelago WAY north halfway between Norway and the North Pole.  It was explained to me that everyone that moves there must by law get a rifle license and carry it with them at all times in case of polar bear attack.      

When you buy raingear the weather looks like this

        

It rains ~260 days out of the year in Bergen.  We were advised to prepare for heavy rain.  A rain jacket, pants and knee high rubber boots later, this is is what we got.  Still, I'm not complaining.  

Norwegians Don't Slum It

Pictures of the cabin my classmates and I lived in during our week long biology excursion to Bergen.

Our Cabin

View From Porch

View From Balcony

Living Room

View From Other Balcony

Dining Table

Kitchen

My Room 

Why My Class is Better than Yours

On Wednesday I went on a field excursion with my marine ecology class.  I was a bit nervous about it because I would be spending the whole day with a bunch of Norwegians I don't know and to be honest, I do not know that much about the marine ecology of Norway either.  I had to take an early morning, hour long bus ride south to Drøbak, where I chatted with a French friend.  I got off to find myself next to the beautiful Oslofjord and I thought to myself...this might not be that bad.  We all walked over the the biology station which is actually this cute little cabin right on the fjord, where the teacher had coffee brewing for us.  Fun fact, apparently the town sold the cabin to the school a while back for 1 Nok = 12 cents.  Our professor, who I have really grown to like told us we would be going out on the boat and scraping marine life from the hard bottom and then identifying the species we bring up.  He cautioned us not to to talk to the captain until he had finished his cup of coffee.  We looked out the window at the scruffy, deadliest catch captain who was smoking and drinking a cup of coffee on the boat and all silently agreed that would probably be for the best.  I was the first group to go out on the boat, and it was really neat.  I made friends with some Norwegians and it was a beautiful day out on the fjord.  One Norwegian explained to me that the island out on the fjord where we could see a wall with cannons was an island that the Nazi's took over and sunk one of the Norwegian ships nearby.  There were tons of jellyfish out in the water and I decided against swimming in it this season.  We scraped the bottom of the fjord and pulled up all sorts of sea-stars, gooey things, anemones, barnacles, crabs and what not.  To my dismay, I had to pick them up and put one of each in a bucket.  Then we headed back to the cabin and spent the rest of the day out in the sun looking up the species we found in our books.  I was able to chat it up with some of my classmates and overall it was a really fun day.  Norwegians really don't like Texans.  One guy asked me why one of the most religious states was so judgmental and I told him that we should have just let the south succeed to begin with.  They like Californians.  I think. This bodes well for the week long excursion my class is making to Bergen next week.  At the end, when my professor was telling us a bit about our next trip and to think of food to buy in the grocery store because it was on him... this concerned look came across his face and he said "except for your beer, I'm only buying my own so you will need to bring money for yours."  I laughed and I am really curious to see what living in a cabin in Bergen with my professor and bunch of classmates will be like.  All in all, the day was great.  I mean, how many Americans get to say for their class they went out on a fjord and collected sea-stars?         

Welcome to My Hood: Kringsjå Studentby

So here is my student housing complex.  The last picture is of the train that I inevitably miss barely everyday and have to wait an extra 15-20 min for.  The meat advertisement is just posted as a challenge.  Try to say that 5 times fast.  :)