Hello,
I am in
Norway at this very moment! We arrived safely yesterday after not having slept
for more than 24 hours. After arriving, we were picked up by my mother’s PhD
advisor, Dr. Holter, who was accompanied by another student, Zephania. We
gathered together at Dr. Holter’s house, where his wife had laid a wonderful
spread of smør brød fixings. When we came home, after unpacking our suitcases, I
promptly went to bed at the unearthly hour of 3 in the afternoon, and then woke
up at 10 in the evening.
A good
thing about being awake in the middle of the night in Norway is that it is the
daytime in my native city of Bellevue, Washington. At 3 in the morning I was
able to Skype with my friends, Annaliese and Jalynn and then accompany them to
our youth group outing at Menchies, the frozen yogurt place. My mother had just
given me the Wi-Fi passcode, so I was also able to catch up on my social media.
Now for
the actual Norway stuff:
Today
we visited the school that I will be attending, Giske. I got to meet my teacher
and ask a few questions, as he asked some of me. I was able to get a look at
ACTUAL NORWEGIANS! As I met with the teacher it was their passing period, so
they walked right by us.
When we
met with the teacher, we told him our plans and goals for the semester, which
is a cool immersion experience focused on language and culture learning. I am
already ahead in most of my studies, so not transferring 3.5 credits won’t kill
me. I have a feeling I will do great in my English and Spanish classes, so
basically anything that is not in Norwegian. At this point in time, in the English
class they are learning about the Native Americans and tensions among European
settlers… this is going to be interesting.
After
visiting the school, my mom and I went Grocery shopping. It was an interesting
experience. First thing is that we do not have a very advanced Norwegian
vocabulary, so we had to judge the lunch meats based on what they look like, it
could be reindeer for all we know. Also, not to brag or anything, but Norway
has Kinder Eggs. We bought a frozen pizza for dinner tonight, after a bright “American
Classic” sign caught my eye. However, the “American” pizza had weird extruded
meat worms as a topic, so we stuck with the 3-cheese pizza. Another cool thing about the pizza was that
the box featured an “American” skyline, featuring several boxy sky scrapers,
followed by the Seattle space needle. That was the only building we could
recognize.
Norway
has no Pandora radio. :(
Norway
has ‘Elementary’ on Netflix. :)
An American in Norway,
Anya Hanson
