This is the longest it's been between blogs since I've gotten here-almost a week! It seems like the latter half of this week has been very full for some reason. Tuesday through Thursday afternoon is always pretty busy and tiring and it just seemed like everyday was filled up. Let's see, Wednesday night Sara and I went to "Taco Night." One of the guys we met at the dance party invited us and it ended up basically just being his buddy group and us. Everyone was very nice but we didn't really know anyone so it was a bit weird. The tacos were great though! And we had so much food. I have definitely eaten good this week.
Thursday was a pretty busy day. After language class I met Micah at Uglebo (one of the student-run cafes) for a cup of hot chocolate and a waffle to discuss trips. We spent about an hour and a half going through our calendars figuring out dates, whens and wheres, and so on. Overall we got a good overview of where we would like to go and when would be good to go, but we still have a lot of research to do. If I go everywhere that is on the list I would have visited eleven countries while I'm here! Too much? I also decided to push back Italy until June I think, so I am now looking for a travel partner once again because two of the three who were originally interested could only go in May. I think May will just be way too busy and I want time to study for my SIX HOUR final!!! We had seminar on Wednesday for that class (family/gender) and a couple people asked questions about the final-to which our teacher gave vague, wishy-washy answers. We're all international students, except for three Norwegians so we are all kind of freaked out by the idea of a 6 hour final. Most of our finals are usually only two, maybe three. The thing with Norwegians is that they've been doing this forever. They had six hour finals in high school. The rest of us have no idea how to approach something like this. We talked to one of the Norwegians, Adrian, after class and it helped a bit, but I'm still kind of freaked out about it. From what I gather, it's not like in the US where you are writing furiously for an hour and a half straight. I think it is much more relaxed. You plan for a bit, you bring your lunch, and you write as much as you can remember about the topic given.
Thursday was Valentine's Day and also V-Day. I took Sarah and Lara with me to One Billion Rising in Oslo. For those of you who don't know this February 14 was the 15th anniversary of V-Day which is a day dedicated to stopping the violence against women. The campaign this year was called "One Billion Rising." One billion because that's how many women in the world will be raped or beaten in their lifetimes (1 in 3). Can you imagine? 1 in 3. Anyway, all the participants learned a choreographed dance and each city performed this dance during their event. This dancing was a way of rising up to demand an end to the violence. There is a picture of the event in Oslo below. It was very small, way smaller than I would have imagined, only about 30-40 people. We didn't know the dance, but we followed along the best we could. There were a few speeches, one in English and two in Norwegian. Even though this one was small there were so many that were HUGE. I watched some live afterward (New Delhi, Atlanta, South Africa) and it was pretty cool. You can check out the videos here: http://www.onebillionrising.org/livestream They also have some shorter videos of women doing the dance in a variety of cities. In some cities they did it as a flash mob. I hear SUNY Fredonia did something to that effect. I made sure Julie Sticek made it there :) Anyway, the website is pretty cool in general and has a lot of information. http://www.vday.org/home is the main website for v-day and is also worth checking out.
It's just so amazing to think of all of the people, not just women, who danced and just came out for V-day. The Oslo event may have seemed kind of silly because it was so small, but there were cities where thousands of people who came out. According to the NY Times, people in close to 200 countries participated on V-day. There were women who risked their lives to come out and dance that day. Now, that's a pretty powerful thing.
Friday our big event was a BBQ at Sognsvann lake. The event was put on by ESN and to start there was a campfire building contest. There were only two teams so we didn't really participate. We bought some hot dogs and marshmallows to roast though. They were very good. It was the first time I had ever had a campfire in the wintertime. That night one of Lara's flatmates was holding a party for one of her friends that was leaving Oslo so we hung out there for a bit. The pub in Kringsja was also having a Valentine's Day party so we went and danced for a while too.
Saturday was a lazy day (like today will be) but it went by quickly. At night my buddy group had an international dinner. I'm so glad that I went. It was a great night. I was worried that I would have no idea what to make, but the answer just kind of came to me: Hot dogs with cheesy mashed potatoes. Thank you to Lori Isula! For those of you who don't know, all you do is slice a hot dog so that you can open it up like a greeting card, put some mashed potatoes on and a slice of cheese and then just stick it in the oven for about ten minutes. So easy, but soooo good. There were six Americans at the dinner and they really appreciated it., and I think everyone else did too. I'll try to remember what other dishes people brought. One of the South Koreans brought some sort of chicken based patty-type thing. It was really good, whatever it was. It had veggies in it, I think. A girl from the Czech Republic brought potato cakes, and a Japanese girl brought pancake type things with vegetables in it. One girl from Hong Kong brought spicy tofu. That was really good and not too spicy. I really liked this rice stuff one of the girls brought from Poland. I think it had some kind of meat in it too. She also brought a polish soup. I ended up just using it as gravy over mashed potatoes and it was awesome. We were short on plates so I actually ate out of a frying pan haha! Another polish student just brought a kind of fruit salad-raspberries, strawberries and some other berry. Oh, and a girl from Mexico made quesadillas that had chicken and potatoes in them. Some people brought desserts, as well. Thank you. Thank you. One of the Americans made apple crisp-so good, and another made "buckeyes" which were these chocolate peanut butter ballls-also so good. An Italian made Tiramisu-sooooooo good. And then a French girl made "chocolate salami." It was just chocolate with cookie/wafer chunks in it, but it was cut like a loaf of salami. Overall a fantastic night of food. I was so full, too full, for hours afterward.
I left kind of early from the dinner because today is Joschka's birthday and we were celebrating last night. It was a small party, but mostly people I knew so it was fun. We are making Mexican food for dinner tonight and apple pie for dessert! (Hopefully Joschka doesn't ready my blog because that's supposed to be a surprise).
Today will be another lazy day. I need to pack for the Lapland trip. We're also having a floor meeting in an hour or so to talk about the kitchen.. Jera and I did some major organizing yesterday and it looks so much better.
Well, I'm off to eat my leftover hot dogs and catch up on a tv show from Thursday. I probably will not blog until I am back from Lapland-so next Sunday at the earliest. I'm sure I will have lots to tell by then. Hope everyone is well. See ya!
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