Lapland Trip Overview

Hello everyone! I arrived home from my trip to Swedish Lapland early this morning. Overall the trip went very well. It was a nice break and I am happy to be back in Oslo. I decided for my blog that I would write an overview post of the trip and then compose one separate post for each day. At this point I have all my pictures up on facebook from the trip so feel free to check them out whenever, and I will be sure to add pictures to the posts about the specific days.

The one thing that struck me most about the trip was how beautiful everything was. The scenery up there is absolutely stunning. Nothing compares. It's very frustrating actually trying to take pictures because you just can't capture something like that. On the way home I was perfectly content for about three hours just staring out the window. Most of the drive was made along winding, snow-covered roads. Everywhere you looked there were pine trees as far as the eye could see. It was mostly hilly terrain, with some flat areas of course and some gorgeous mountainous areas, as well. On the way home I saw the most vibrant sunset I have ever seen, and it seemed to last for such a long time. Even after it was gone there was a greenish patch where the sun used to be set against the deep blue backdrop of the night sky. Simply incredible. That's all I can say.

The trip there and back was somewhere around 18 hours. Each way we left around 3 in the afternoon, so a good chunk of the travel time was spent sleeping. Neither trip seemed awfully long, just not very comfortable. Our tour guide rode up with us. She was from Latvia, and her name was "Sanna" (not sure about spelling). She was very enthusiastic and peppy, which was good except sometimes I felt like she was talking to us like we were children. Overall she did a good job, though. Our bus drivers were Swedish and they both had good senses of humor.

The first town we stayed in was Kiruna, known for the largest iron ore mine in the world. I took a tour of the mine, though not everyone did. The interesting thing about Kiruna is that the town has to be moved in the next few decades because the mining has caused a crack to form that is slowly getting closer to the town itself. Abisko, the next town was smaller and set on a very large lake where I've heard is a great place to see Northern Lights (we didn't see any on our trip). Finally we ended up in Jokk Mokk, another fairly small town where we stayed at a camping center.

The highlights of the trip: Kiruna mine tour, meeting a Sami man and his son who spoke with us and allowed us to feed their reindeer, a BBQ in a Sami tent, a traditional wood-heated sauna followed by running outside in the snow, the Ice Hotel, and the Sami Heritage museum tour.

We were also supposed to take a day trip to Narvik which is a town in Norway that played a role in WWII (basically the reason the Germans invaded Norway). However, the trip to Narvik was iffy from the get go because they often close the roads because of weather. While the roads were not closed, we ended up turning around and going back to Abisko because the weather we would be driving into was much worse than what we were experiencing. That day was not a complete bust though. Sarah and I took a very nice walk and later we had time to spend in the Sauna.

Overall it was a very nice trip. I would have liked a little less downtime and some more exciting activities. Not seeing the Northern Lights was a disappointment. Each night we went out it was quite foggy and the moon was bright, not to mention the activity of the lights was labeled as "quiet," a 1 on a scale of 9. So we did not have the right conditions to see them.

One surprise was how nice the weather was when we were there. I was expecting it to be very cold when we were there and there were only a couple days that got past -10. There were even some days that got up to 0! We also didn't experience a ton of precipitation. Overall, besides being cloudy when we wanted to see the northern lights, the weather was very agreeable.

This ended up being quite a bit longer than I had originally imagined. I hope you will look forward to my next posts outlining each day in Lapland :)

Good Food All Week Long

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.

Thursday night our "family" met up to make Valentine's Day waffles (because they are shaped like hearts if you pull the pieces apart). They were delicious, as always. Sarah had knitted little hearts for all of us too! :) I had also made some heart valentines to give to everyone.

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!

T-Bane Troubles, Knitting Supplies, and Rock Step SWING!

I had a bit of trouble getting to class this morning. The train we were on stopped a few stops before campus and announced that there was a train stuck on the tracks in front of us, so we could not pass (I learned this from a very helpful Norwegian who was sitting next to me). We ended up going backwards to the previous station and I walked with the helpful Norwegian girl to campus, two stops down the line. It was actually a nice walk, not too cold this morning, just very slushy. The nice Norwegian girl was actually not going to campus, but to work out at the newer athletic facility, so I also got to find out the location of that along the way. It's very close to the main campus. I ended up being about 15 minutes late to class, but that was okay.

Language class went well this morning. We started learning more about food words and how to talk about buying and preparing food. After class I met Sarah and Micah for a waffle and hot chocolate at the cafe downstairs. Mmmmm :) Then we went in search of a knitting supplies shop near Majorstuen. Sarah and I both bought a couple colors of yarn to take with us on our long bus trip next week.

Tonight was my first dance class-rock step swing. It was really fun. I know I keep saying this, but everyone is SO NICE. We went a bit slower than the free lesson I went to a couple weeks ago, but that was alright with me. I was so glad I went to that lesson. For one, I knew what I was doing for the most part, and that helped especially because the class is all in Norwegian (who woulda known?). There's only three (or four maybe) of us that don't speak Norwegian. It's kind of cool actually because it isn't too hard to figure out what they're saying, especially since I had the intro course previously. I still laugh at the instructor's jokes just because I know he's a funny guy from before and it's pretty easy to tell when he's being comical. I think it will ultimately help me learn the language. Another cool thing we found out is that every other Wednesday they have a social dance night from 8-10pm where basically it's just an open dance floor. They play swing songs (west coast, rock step, and boogie woogie) and I guess a lot of the dance students go so you get the opportunity to dance with people who really know what they're doing. I'm excited to add that to my calendar.

Tomorrow should be a very full day. I have pilates in the morning, gender/family lecture, then my family/gender seminar for the first time in the afternoon. Later Sarah and I were invited to "Taco Night" at a friend's house in Kringsja. Should be fun!

Happy Fat Tuesday! (Can't believe that snuck up on me so quickly!)

Change to Address-Please Read

Hey everyone, I just realized my postal code was written wrong in my original address post. I have received mail, so no big deal but it should be N-0864. Originally I put an extra 4 in I think. Sorry about that!

Food Pics!

 Caramelized bananas on french toast (thank you Sarah for the inspiration), spaghetti pie heated up with broccoli and garlic bread

 Family Dinner! (see above and below)

 "Brown Cheese." Norwegians like to eat it for breakfast on waffles and other things. It has the texture of cheese but is much sweeter, more like caramel.

A Not-very-exciting Saturday

Just got back from a good night of "family" time. We switched family dinner to Saturday night this week. We went a bit of a different route: mashed potatoes (from flakes) from IKEA, meatloaf (sort of) already prepared from KIWI and some frozen veggies. The meatloaf was definitely not something we would do again. It wasn't bad tasting, but the consistency was a little sketchy. Not really sure what was in it either. The veggies were honestly the best part. The potatoes were good, but they got a little burnt on the bottom of the pan, so they had that burnt taste to them. Overall not a bad meal, but definitely not our best.

We spent about three and a half hours (at least) playing the card game, Phase Ten after dinner. (I was very close to winning, but Joschka beat me to it). And now here I am..

I took a walk this morning around the lake with Sarah. Actually, we cut across the lake :) First time I've walked on a lake before.. It was very sunny out this morning. The snow was very sparkly. I also attempted to do some laundry today, but for some reason I couldn't get the dryer to start so I lugged everything back to my room and hung it on the closet doors and in the bathroom instead. I'm hoping my comforter is dry by tonight, but I guess it's warm enough in my room that it doesn't matter so much.

Last night Sarah and I went to an 80's party on campus. I scrounged up all of the clothing I had that could possibly be 80's and ended up with a pretty good outfit considering. Sarah and I ended up being the only non-Norwegians there. It actually ended up being pretty cool. (The joke about Norwegians is that they are all very shy until you get them drunk). I was proud of Sarah and I for stepping outside our comfort zone a bit. We didn't know anyone when we got there and at the beginning it looked the party might be kind of a disappointment. No one was dancing, just sitting at tables. By the end of the night we had made a few friends and danced quite a bit, so a fun night overall :)

Tomorrow is Jared's birthday. He is turning eleven, which is crazy to think about. How did he get so old? I'm hoping that I will be able to skype when everyone is together at my house! Won't that be fun?!

Well, maybe I will some of you tomorrow! Good night.

Norwegian Phone Number and Spaghetti Pie

Hey everybody, (not that this really affects anyone) but I finally have a Norwegian phone number:

+47 (country code) 40380516

I ended up just buying a cheap little phone since the SIM card wouldn't work in my iphone. It was all in Norwegian at first but I figured out how to change it to English. Phew! (see below...and the last of my m&ms)

I also tried my hand at making spaghetti pie today (Thank you to Alice Cunningham for supplying the recipe). I ended up overestimating how much spaghetti I needed and so I made two pans instead of just one. But no worries, I'm just going to freeze the rest. I also overcooked it a little, as you might be able to see by the picture, but I had a piece and it still tastes great. The first picture is a bean burrito I made for dinner last night-first time cooking black beans and it went well! Mmmm mmmmm :)

Not much else to report as of now. It was a beautiful day again today and it looks like it's going to be an equally beautiful night :)