Freia Tour and Norwegian Exam Results

Today Micah, Lara and I went on a tour of the chocolate-producing company in Norway, called Freia. It was really neat how they set up the tour. First we went through the history of chocolate and of the Freia company. We walked through the jungle, sat inside an Aztec temple and even rode in a time machine! Unfortunately I was not able to get any pictures of this, so let your imaginations run wild. I thought we were going to see quite a bit of the actual factory too. They made us put on hairnets and lab coats, but we were only in the factory for five minutes max and all we saw were some wafers being dropped into a container and the packaging rolls. Disappointing to say the least. We also got to mold our own chocolate to take home. That was cool, but all you did was pull a lever and chocolate came out. We didn't get to melt it ourselves or anything like that. The best part was they gave us a good amount of free chocolate :)

The results for our Norwegian language test was put up online today, also. I got a B, which was kind of what I was expecting. The grading system goes from A to F (with E also included) so B is a very good grade. I knew I didn't do quite well enough to get an A (a couple silly mistakes). Lara did get an A and I am very proud of her. She spent a lot of time studying (and worrying) about it. Her grades do not count back at her school in Germany, just the credits transfer, but she's one of those people who isn't satisfied unless she does what she is capable of.

Lara and I had a nice conversation on the T-bane today coming back from the Freia tour. It's always nice to get to talk to people from other countries (even Canada) because you are learning new things all the time. Germany I found out doesn't really have any holidays to honor the military or Germany, at least not like in the  U.S. Lara told me that while  they do have parades for certain festivals locally, they do not have any holidays where everyone gets together to celebrate with parades and national pride. We talked about why that might be, and thought about Europe's long history and Germany's long history and decided that it might have something to do with that. All of Europe has so much history and each country has undergone so many changes since the beginning of its existence, whereas in the U.S. it is very clear when we became our own nation, and we are built on the idea that our nation is exceptional because we broke away and made our own nation, yada yada yada. Something to think about.

Well...better try to get some stuff done before our trip to Stockholm!