To My Fellow Californians, This is What Fall Looks Like

And it's cold.  It's actually a good thing I took these pictures when I did because it snowed the next day.  Just a little, but enough to stick on the ground.  I was actually really happy when it started snowing because I had been commenting on how cold it is for a little bit and everyone would look and me and be like "oh man you're in for it."  I blamed being from California, but then last weekend I went to a dinner with a Colombian friend from my research group Maria, and she only had on a not so thick sweater and was fine while I was layered up in a sweater, wool coat, gloves and a scarf and was shaking.  At that point I started to wonder if I was just a wimp.  So when the snow came, I felt validated.  If it is cold enough for snow, it is cold.
If you ask any Norwegians about the weather (which they love to talk about) they will tell you they had their coldest winter ever last year. I thought to myself...phew dodged a bullet there.  But then on the train today I overheard a women telling her friend...."yeah, the weather forecasters are saying this will be the coldest winter ever..even worse than last year."  So, cross your fingers for me.  On the bright side, it means there will be a lot of snow for me to take up skiing like I have been looking forward to.

What else to tell you?  Hmmm well...my research group is awesome.   I was invited to a dinner hosted by a supervisor in my research group and he told us to bring Belgian beers for a beer tasting after.  Consequently, I learned a valuable lesson about life in Norway: don't try to buy alcohol on a Saturday.  So their alcohol laws are funny...the grocery stores aren't allowed to sell drinks with more than 4.7% (I think) alcohol..so if you want to buy wine, hard liquor or real beer, you have to go to the Vinmonopolet.  Also, you can't buy beer after 8 on weekdays, after 6 on Saturday or at all on Sunday.  I thought I was in the clear by going to the Vinmonopolet at 3:30 but it was closed.  I thought to myself, are they taking a waffle break or something?  But then I looked at the store hours and they close at 3 on Saturdays.  Of course.  So I came without Belgian beer to the dinner, but it was okay anyway.  I thought it would be a early night in, but after a delicious dinner, our group hung out until I think like 5:30 in the morning.  It was really nice to hang out with my research group outside of school, they are all really great.  Most supervisors don't drink with their students and play in rock bands...so I lucked out for sure on this one.  Also noteworthy, in a bit of a Belgian beer blur, I agreed to play floor hockey on Wednesday mornings.  I'm fairly certain I will be awful at it, but I am looking forward to it because I think it will be a lot of fun.  The friend that invited me Tore, also told me that Glenn (my supervisor) gets really mad when he gets scored on so I am a bit curious to see that as well.
Oh this reminds me, another friend Norith was nice enough to invite me to do yoga last week.  Now, I am not exactly known for my grace or balance but I thought it would be fun to try it out.  I brought along two other international students that were interested as well.  Being the silly foreigners that we are, we went and sat in front of the wrong room and didn't realize it until right before class started. So, we had to run into the actual room only to find that all the spots were taken expect for the front.  Crap. So we went in front and were surrounded by people so flexible they could probably lick their own butts if they wanted to.  The best part though was when it was really quiet and we were all trying to hold a pose with out arms wrapped around one leg, my friend Katie lost her balance and fell ever so loudly into the table right next to her.  I was dying I was laughing (quietly) to myself so hard.  It took me about 5-10 min to gain composure after that.  Though I'm not sure I ever looked particularly composed.  Anyways, I enjoyed it and plan on going again next week and this time Maria will join as well.  I think it will be a good relaxing thing to do after a long day of studying.
  
What else is new?  I've waged war with US Airways.  They are refusing to refund the refundable ticket I bought for coming home this winter.  I can't use the flight because I have a final that day and because as I told my dad, I would rather have a kidney stolen by a band of gypsies than ever fly US Airways again.  For the first time ever I lost it on the phone with a customer service person and have been swamping them with emails.  I figure if I keep bugging them enough I might get my way, and if I don't atleast I will make it difficult for them.  We'll see.
What else?  Oooh there was a party for biologist on campus last night, which I went to.  Every time I go to something like this where the have set up a bar and a music on campus I can't help but laugh and think of how different it is from back home.  Americans are up tight.  Though this is odd with how strict Norway is with their alcohol laws.  Maria has a theory that Norway is only strict with the drinking laws because when it is cold in the winter, the government doesn't want people drinking and sitting around in the cold and dying.  I think there may be some truth in that.
Well, it's time for me to go.  There is a ski sale and my hallmate has offered to come with me to see if we can get some affordable skies for me.  It is snowing, after all...

Yeah, yeah, yeah

I promise I will write a new blog tomorrow.....


Update:  Ug, sorry.  I lied to my own blog. 

When You Think You're Good at Something

So I got a little gym crazy this week. Maybe it was because friends kept going to the gym and I didn't want to be the lazy one sitting at home instead, or maybe it was the deep seeded fear that I would come home for winter break with some extra lbs and give Jiro the satisfaction of being able to say "It was only a matter of time." Either way, I have been taking a page from the Norwegian's book and have been particularly active.
The newest developments in my workout regimen have been..ahem ragga jam dance class and swimming. I'll start with ragga jam. So, I really wanted to take Zumba, which my Estonian friend Liiri told me about...but she told me the classes fill up really fast and that you have to sign up for the Monday class between 8:00 and 8:15 on Saturday morning in order to get a spot. Ug, seriously? Well, I did it anyway...I ever so enthusiastically woke myself up bright and early on Saturday morning so I could sign on to my student housing page and then have them tell me that my password for booking sports doesn't work. Shocking. God forbid a password I type down in this country actually be correct. So later that day, I went to the gym with a friend and asked the receptionist why I can't sign up for group classes online. She scanned my card and said, "Well, you have to be a member to sign up for classes." I looked at her with my ah..kind eyes and told her, "I am a member." She then told me that I had not paid for the gym this semester and I told her, "Yes I have." And after 5 minutes of arguing with her, she discovered that I had paid but that they forgot to put my email into the system. Since Zumba was full now, my only option was to drop in to a ragga jam class. Fine. A couple days later, Liiri and I went to the ragga jam class. Before class, I was thinking..I did Zumba back home...I can shake it..I'm from California, home to hip hop and latin influences...I've seen the Norwegians dancing at the bars...maybe I should tone it down a bit so as not to scare them. Ha, well..little did I know that Norway is home to fifteen Shakiras all of which happen to take ragga jam class at the gym. After about 15 minutes of stumbling around like an idiot, I couldn't help but chuckle at the irony. Fun fact: ragga jam is much more technical than Zumba. My favorite was a series of 4 choreographed arm and leg moves that we repeated 8 times and not once did I manage to get the whole thing right. I actually thought the teacher was trying to repeat it until I got it right, but gave up. Nevertheless, humbling as it was..it was a lot of fun. What wasn't so fun was when I woke up at 8 am again to try and sign up for the next Zumba class only to find that the receptionist did not actually fix my online account.
Now for swimming. So for those that know me well, you know that I swam in high school and did junior life guards and what not..so I'm a good swimmer. Well, I was talking to a friend in my hall and said I would like to start swimming laps over here instead of running. He said, "oh me too, let's swim together..how about tomorrow?" Happily, I said yes..it's always better to work out with someone. Then he proceeded to tell me how was on his college's swim team. "Crap. This is going to be embarrassing" I thought to myself. I am definitely not in swimming shape anymore. Then I made the mistake of mentioning to another friend later that I was going to swim laps the next day. He asked me, "are you a good swimmer?" and naturally I told him.."yeah." Well, he called my bluff. He then said "oh let's swim together sometime next week, I played water polo and swam a 3K race last spring." I thought to myself, "Oh fuck me, what are the chances?" So now after spending the last 6 days at the gym, two of which in the pool...I can hardly move. I actually woke up this morning thinking I had the flu because there was not a single muscle of my body that didn't feel like I had a knife in it. So as of today...I'm boycotting the gym until next week and I have decided that the next time someone asks me if I am good at something, no matter what it is, even knowledge of English..I should just say, "oh god, no."

Sissies

Well, I was getting complaints that my former blog background was hurting some people's eyes.  Disgruntled as I am about having to change the format I was rather fond of, I of course do not want to be the source of any migraines or temporary blindness. Being the fickle creature that I am, I will most likely change my mind on the format a number of times before I settle in.  Fair warning.

Update:  Alright, I'm sticking with this one.

Never Make Assumptions

Libby and I have learned that it is best to never make an assumption in Norway because you will inevitably be wrong.  As we have fully embraced the "what can go wrong, will go wrong" attitude; just to keep us on our toes, Norway throws us a bone once and a while.  Exhibit A:  Train ticket checking. 

Okay, so I have been a good little student and for the last almost 2 months have paid for my train tickets or had my 30 day student travel card and had yet to have anyone check it.  My time to renew my travel card was a few days ago but I got a bit lazy and put it off thinking I'll get it tomorrow and that they don't check anyway.  Well, of course they checked tickets in my few day lapse.  I'll admit, I really should have seen that one coming.  

Anyways, I look up to see a woman in a train control uniform asking for tickets.  A wave of fear came over me, a woman controller, just my luck.  She looked nice enough, but I was not to be fooled.  No one wins with a female cop back home...always have something to prove, and I wasn't about to roll the dice on her.  I contemplated bolting, but it would be a little bit before the next stop and that seemed awfully dramatic.  

Then I saw the male ticket checker and thus a small glimmer of hope.  I nodded to the woman that I would give it to him and did without any look of concern.  He stared at his scanner thing for a second and then sat down next to me.  Hmmm this is not good, I thought for sure he was sitting down so he could write my fine.  He told me that my card had expired and I quickly told him, "oh no, I thought I had more time on it!"  He stared at his monitor and said it didn't.  I told him, "please don't give me a ticket, I'll get out and walk."  He sat for a second, looked up to read me and without saying a word I told him "yes, I am a crier."  He whispered back to me, "Get it today" and walked away to me whispering "thanks".  Success!  Naturally, I went to renew my card immediately afterwards but the only machine near my housing was broken so I have to attempt to deal with it tomorrow, but I didn't get fined.  It is nice to know that even in the land of gender equality, the men have sense enough to know that a hysterical woman is best avoided.  

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.