headed to Frankfurt to meet some friends! :) and to top it all off not only did i successfully finish a presentation in my marine biology class today, i have a new camera! expect pictures and posts when i return next week on tuesday.

happy weekend to all! i send you much love from the nordland.

"I thought she was going there to study."

i took a break from my late night presentation preparations to check out blogs, and i quickly realized (again) how large the space between my posts are. Of course, my response was to begin a draft of a new post, rather than work on my powerpoint. It was that time of the day when i am most efficient, and most extraordinarily efficient in regards to getting all the little things i wanted to do done, not the ones with due dates. It was that time when i seem to be more inclined to clean our shower drain than to settle down to answer chapter questions, and that is exactly what i did. It's odd though, i am currently sitting in the same manner as i was when i posted my last post, arguing (again) with blogspot concerning its absurd random picture placement, and (as always) chastising myself for my horrendous spelling. Here i am in the same situation as before, feeling as though i wrote only a few days ago and wondering two things - how is it possible that it has been three weeks since that post and why on earth did i begin this post at 4am?

Here i go! i have a lot to write about it seems, so bear with me if you have time. If you are short on time, i'll try to get some good pictures up for you to scan through :)





At the moment i am just back from a trip to Frankfurt, originally planned so two of my friends and i could meet up. The title of this post is a quote from my Grandpa Spencer...it was his response when my mom told him that i had been to Stockholm, and Frankfurt, and was planning on going to Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia over our Easter Break, which begins at the end of this month. It made me laugh quite a lot when she told me he said that. Don't worry Grandpa, i promise i am studying too :) Since i have done a bit of traveling as well, i thought it would be good to share some stories and some photos.

i traveled to Stockholm at the end of January. A dear friend with whom i was fortunate enough to live this past summer is currently on a Fulbright in Emden, Germany. We had been wanting to meet up while i was in her time zone, and we managed to put together a trip that would result in our meeting in Sweden. We put it together pretty last minute. Lacey booked the hostel and recruited some friends while i booked my train tickets and Ryan Air flights. i left Bodø in a rush, nearly missing my bus that would take me to the mandatory meeting at the Bodø Police Station. i needed to get my student permit to be here in Norway and then head to the train station to begin the long journey to Oslo.




















Let's begin with something that has become a fact of life and travel here in Bodø...the train. Travel to other countries is fairly cheap from Oslo thanks to the wonderful things know as low fare airlines - such as Ryan Air. They sometimes run deals that can get you fr om one country to another for under $10! The issue is getting oneself to Oslo, which is something around a 500 mile trip as the crow flies, if i have my facts correct. The Bodø train station is as far north as the train runs in Norway, and it can provide a cheap way to get south. Train tickets can run as low as 199 kroner (around $35 depending on the exchange rate) whereas plane tickets can run you over $100 and sometimes even near $200 or more depending on how good you are at planning ahead. If you want to go places, your choice is pretty straight forward - cough up the money and fly for an hour and a half, or pay less and take an 18 hour trip that includes a night train from Trondheim to Oslo. i put up a map of the train routes just for fun (i suppose i should note that it originally came from raileurope.com). You can see where the route stops, and that's my home away from home! Bodø, Norway.

i spent most of my first trip either sleeping or quite agitated. i seem to be a pretty nervous traveler, and when i wasn't resting my eyes or debating whether or not it was actually ok to take the little blanket they give you on the night train (yes, in fact, it is - i now have two) i was stressing about buses, planes, and finding my way to the h ostel. While refusing to get a cell phone has been a near liberating experience, it's also a little alarming to have absolutely no contact with the person you are meeting other than a previously agreed upon meeting time. i knew i was supposed to meet Lacey at the train station in Stockholm, and she knew an approximate time that my bus would arrive.



Now, after several trips around Europe, i'm happy to report that i'm slightly less stressed out when traveling. The pictures i have of the train station in Trondheim are sites that have become almost familiar after three times there. i have this hope that travels here will rub off on travels elsewhere, and maybe i'll just keep getting less shaky when i don't know exactly what i am doing (?) Who knows! The ability to simply think things through and figure them out as i go is one i am hoping to come back possessing more strongly than when i left.

Traveling is always interesting when you don't speak the primary language. You travel knowing that you will not be able to say much of anything. i was afraid that this would take away one of my favorite things about long times spent in transit - random conversations with interesting strangers. As it turns out, being the lazy one with only one language has been ok, simply because my language is English. If someone is clearly not interested in speaking with me, they won't. i have; however, been able to express my frustrations concerning bus inconsistencies and shared a great trip into Oslo with a very cool German who was on her way to meet her boyfriend; on the train into the city we met a lovely woman from Ghana, and an individual in a Norwe gian metal band on his way to record an album in L.A. (his band's name was Bulk, i still need to Myspace them and see what i think - Norway has a thing for metal music, do you suppose it is the lack of sun through half of the year?) i have flipped through the pages of a book written in Arabic, backwards and strange to my eyes, and have learned a lot about what it is like to live in small-town Germany and be a meteorologist in the Airforce for six years. It is always interesting to see what discussions come up with complete strangers, and i enjoy tracing where the conversations go despite the sometimes multiple language barriers. i eavesdropped on a German/Norwegian conversation concerning eating habits that lasted for over an hour and a half on one bus ride. Oddly, i seem to find myself sharing opinions about the environment quite often, and people (unless completely scornful) usually seem interested in basic life as a student in the United States and abroad.

The trip to Sweden was my first practice round at planning and executing small-scale travel in Europe. i got on the train and was pretty quickly lulled into a sleepy torpor by its steady rocking. This trip lasted into the night, getting me into Oslo early the next day. Needless to say, i missed a lot of great scenery because of the night. i curled up in the corner of my seat with a book and slowly reviewed my travel plans again and again to make sure i had figured it all o ut correctly. i knew at that point that i had 18 hours to kill before the stressful change in my mode of transportation would occur. It was a great relief to hear the conductor give the main announcements in both English and Norwegian.

By now i know several things about traveling. Firstly, you can't count on ALL announcements coming in English, so keep your ears open and eyes peeled for your stop. For example, don't get off the train at the Oslo International Airport when you really need to go all the way to the main station in the city center. Most cities have a main area with a central bus terminal and train station, so listen and look for those when coordinating travels. They are conveniently some of the easiest places to navigate to when confused. Also, information desks are your friends, and yes, just in case you ever need to know, you can catch a bus from the Oslo International Airport to the Oslo City Center (Oslo S) every 20 minutes, except during the wee hours of the morning. It is possible that the ride will take you about an hour and a half and cost you 140 kroner, but then again, i could be wrong.




i have also learned that if you are planning on visiting someone Bodø, you should definitely take the train from Oslo. It's well worth the time. The night train is the journey from Oslo to Trondheim, and then be prepared for some fantastic scenery on the train from Trondheim to Bodø. The further north you go, the better the ride gets. You will find yourself winding your way around the sides of snowy mountains beside lovely bodies of water, and will pass through the vast number of tunnels that have made the rail line possible up here. Just as a note, your ears pop as the pressure changes through a very long tunnel - it's a simple reminder that you have an entire mountain over your head, an interesting thing to think about. At the moment, all the moose i have seen have been from the train - i don't think i mind since i'm not sure i am really very desirous of meeting one face-to-face on the trail - and two times now my train has had to stop to avoid plowing into whole herds

reindeer. It's funny, you can tell who isn't local when this happens. We are the ones with our noses pressed against the windows as we attempt to dig our cameras our of our bags quickly enough to get a shot of the running animals. The Norwegians only occasionally glance up from their pink tinted newspapers. It seems i got the best shots on my second trip northwards. the pictures i have put in are all shots from that journey. My apologies as most were taken through a slightly grimy window.

i keep wondering how much blogspot will let me post, but i guess i will keep writing and simply see! i spent a long time getting to Sweden when you count the train, buses to and from the city center and then to the small airports that low fare airlines utilize, conveniently located many kilometers outside of the cities. By the end of the day, you begin to wonder if you saved any money at all when you consider that you had to pay bus fare several times over to reach your cheap flights. Low fare airlines also use conveniently awkward times of the day, for example, i reached the airport outside Stockholm late late in the day and was finally at the train station where i was to meet Lacey very near midnigt. As it would happen, info desks have closing times. i couldn't see Lacey anywhere when i arrived, and began hunting the station for youngish individuals who looked like they might speak English and be willing to help me out. i found two very nice young women who instructed me to take a city train, either the red or blue line to a particular spot, look for a big open area, and then i should be able to see where i was going from there, at least, they were pretty sure that was the way to the hostel. Needless to say, i opted on taking a cab. i had never actually hailed a taxi before, but found my way through the rather abrupt and a unhappy looking crowd of drivers into the next car waiting to head out of the station. i managed to wind up with a driver who had never even heard of the hostel or the area in which it was located. He was; however, very nice and his name was Vladimir. He spoke to me about Scandinavia in general, how he was from Central America and had married a Swedish girl 12 years ago, and he very kindly did not charge me for the minutes spent driving in circles, quite lost and confused as to how to get to the hostel.

The good news is that i got there, just in time to play a guessing game as to what room i should be trying to find. The man behind the desk helped me figure it out with a couple clues from conversations i had had with Lacey while planning. The room was not booked under her name, but she had mentioned a friend named Adi and something about needing to make special arrangements for a room of five people. That was enough to get me in. Hooray for my planning abilities. :) i paid, joined Hosteling International, and got my key. Much to the surprise of Lacey's friends Ilke and Vanessa, i tiredly hiked into the room. They had just returned from the station where they had been waiting for me for several hours and Lacey and Adi were still there! i'm very glad they had cell phones and were able to contact the two at the station and let them know i had safely arrived. Later, Lace and i compared notes. Apparently they had missed me in in the short window of time they had used to take a break from the vigil to get a coffee! i still feel very badly that they waited for so long.

i spent some time getting to know the crew Lacey had brought with her and catching up with a dear friend. We planned to simply go out and explore the next day, more specific plans would follow. It turns out i really liked being a tourist with a fun set of people. We spent the first day exploring shops and the beautiful buildings of the Old Town (Gamla Stad), and then opted on buying a "Stockholm Card" for the next two days. i think a lot of cities have this option. You pay a blanket fee and get to utilize all public transportation and get into tons of museums and similar attractions. We made supper, planned our routes, and taught each other various games at nights in the hostel. i got to refresh my basic German, as we spoke a great hybrid of English and German the whole trip (well, i mostly listened to the German part). i had a lark of a time getting to know Adi, Ilke, and Vanessa as we goofed off and explored.

bugger...i need to go and get some studying done before supper. As Ellen put it, i have already written a book, so i will post my pictures and continued stories in my next post (which will hopefully come sooner rather than later.) Thanks to Lacey's creativity and a few pictures i took, i have some really neat ones. And thanks to my parents i can show you some things from Frankfurt too.

i hope to type at you soon! lots and lots of care from here up north. If you are tired of my sporadic posts, do keep in mind that i have a lot of my friends blogs linked to this one. If you look on the left hand side of the page, you can see a list of links. There are three from my friends here in Norway and then a bunch from friends all over the world. Zoe is my Canadian neighbor from across the hall, Jen is one of my dear flatmates, and Sam is another Canadian friend who lives in the other student residence here. i think she may be the most consistent in terms of blogging. She happily informed me the other day that she was up to 22 posts! oops, sorry guys. If you want, give their writings a read over. i'm sure you will find lots of good stuff :)

happy day to all!

It really is the small things

It turns out i'm just as bad at updating blogs as i thought i would be. Though i am extraordinarily thankful for the connectivity of the internet during my travels, i have to admit that it and i don't always get along.

i'm now officially been here in Bodø for over a month, and abroad even longer than that. It's so hard to believe that it has been four weeks already. Knowing how quickly the semester will fly makes it easy to appreciate life's small victories. On Saturday, i had the joy of figuring out what sour cream was - all by myself and without looking it up! Woohoo! Pappa would be proud, i made twice-baked potatoes for a group of us, and they turned out pretty well, thanks largely to the sour cream :)

i also discovered that it is rather embarrassing not to be able to answer the inquisitive 6 year-old boy who is asking you what you are doing. i think i smiled and laughed enough to satisfy his mother, but he was certainly confused concerning why i couldn't respond! Norwegian is odd in that each region has a dialect. For example, someone from Oslo will speak differently than someone from a more northern area like here in Bodø. i am learning bokmål, the standard language, which will allow me to read in Norwegian, however; if i actually speak to someone in bokmål, it is probable the they will answer in English because bokmål is different from the area's dialect. It is also odd to realize that there is a kind of age limit concerning the people with whom i can converse. It is likely that the younger Norwegians will know English well enough to communicate, but you can guess that at a certain age they won't, and it seems that most don't really like to speak in English if it isn't a neccesity. i have become accustomed to being unable to understand nearly everything i hear when traversing outside my little crowd of international students and have picked up basic words, but i hope i can learn quite a bit in the northern dialect before i go. It would be very nice not to respond with "i'm sorry, English?" when a local says somthing to me. (or rather, "Snakke du engelsk?") Words and sentence structures are similar to English and German, making it fairly easy to pick up on basic things, but the accent and the language remain strange on my tongue. i imagine it will remain that way for quite some time.


i have a thing for maps, so here is a map of Scandinavia. i live very near the city of Bodø, which has just over 46,000 residents, and is the second largest town in northern Norway. And because i like comparisons...

Norway: 148,746 sq. mi. - Population: 4,850,440 people - Density: 31/sq. mi.
Nebraska: 77,421 sq. mi. - Population: 1,796,619 people - Density: 23/sq. mi.
Lincoln, Nebraska: a bit over 250,000 residents


Bodø was built up quickly after the war, and as guidebooks will blatantly tell you, the city is not beautiful. If you ask me, being surrounded by mountains, trees and trails makes up for it. i live a 20 minute bus-ride away from Bodø's city center, and just a ten minute walk from my college.



















The area i am in is really very nice to see. All of the houses are about the same size and are great shades of navy, deep green, yellow, and red. i can see the mountains from my residence building, and we have a series of trails just behind our area. Below is a picture of our student blocks (i currently reside in the middle one with the red - Høglimyra, flat B 424) and the mountains we see everyday on our walk to school :)

























No one really has a showy home or a flashy car here. It has been interesting to speak with one of my few Norwegian friends about the culture and the situation. He was telling me about taxes and how it is virtually impossible to really get rich. Many of the things he explained sounded ridiculously like being a middle-class American.



























The weather goes back and forth between snow and rain, though the streets never actually loose their coating of ice and snow. It is always hat and scarf weather, and i've started wearing my underarmor habitually. Overall, however, i think the weather has been a bit more mild than home. Bodø has the Gulf Stream running very nearby to help moderate the temperatures. When you get further inland, it gets much colder, even though i am right inside the arctic circle. This is all not to say that it is warm by any means, but i think Nebraska's winter has certainly been comparable :)

In regards to sunlight - when i came we were at nearly four hours of light, though the sun never actually showed itself above the mountains. The light consisted of a long golden sunrise extending into a long and redish sunset with no sight of the sun at all. We were very excited to see the sun actually peak above the mountains one day, a very worthy thing to note. By today, we have nearly 6 hours of sunlight and the sun itself is actually visible for at least two of those hours. So nice to see! i am told that the daylight increases by something like 18 minutes a day, and when i leave in June, it will be very nearly time for the midnight sun.



i spoke with my wonderful Aunt Carmen in Tennessee a few days back, and realized that i have recorded little nothing about the area where i am currently residing or what life is turning out to be like. In complete honesty, i never pictured myself coming to a place like Norway - an area with a very high standard of living and a VERY high cost of living. i am taking my classes in English, and the entire international crowd more or less speaks English amongst themselves. (unless of course you find yourself in a room full of one particular nationality other than your own, in that case you may be out of luck :) The culture shock has been minimal if at all. i am extremely impressed by my friends all over the world studying and living in places so very different from home, more different than here in Norway. It is always interesting to encounter the sterotypes that are placed on you, and to be in a place where suddenly YOU are the foreign one. And to hear someone talk about the "American accent" was really interesting too. What i have missed most is the ability to pick up a phone and easily hear the voice of a loved one, but wonderful skype has eased that tension. What i have enjoyed most has been the change, learning how to travel, living only with what a suitcase and a half can hold, and meeting the incredible people i have met.


















i was lucky (yet again) with housing situations. i live in a flat with 3 other girls, and we each have our own room, and the flat has a very decent shower and a kitchen that has been most convenient for cooking together. It's funny to me, now that i have so much less stuff with me, i have about twice the room i normally have at Wesleyan! i think i will have to go home and dramatically reduce. Two of my flatmates are American, and the third is a very mellow Norwegian. Trine doesn't seem to mind sharing her space, and seems to enjoy the company of the international students, though she is rarely here for many days in a row. Jen is originally from Ohio, while Ellen has her roots in Missouri. We were all a bit disappointed to learn that we were living with Americans, but jointly decided to make an effort to get out and meet people whenever possible. We were quick to discover how like-minded we are concerning issues such as human rights, the environment, and other priorities. It makes for great conversations. There are only four of us Americans all told, the other is John from Tennessee who has never seen this much snow and ice in his life. The picture of us was taken by John when we Americans teamed up and explored Bodø without really knowing what we were doing. We were some of the first to move in, so we had some time to explore, get lost, fall on the ice, and proudly figure out Bodø's bus system all on our own. The other picture illustrates the street conditions pretty accurately, i had to walk on the rail to get any real traction up the incline and laughingly pulled Ellen along with me.






Days pass quickly and i find that time fills itself easily. Jen, Ellen, John, and i, as well as some of our Canadian friends are studying the same program, making classes very fun. We fill our other time with things like hikes and exploring, getting to know the bigger group, cooking, sledding, and travel when we can can. We have enjoyed each other's company so much, that even quiet times in the flat are quite nice.

Georg is an Austrian who has been mountaineering for about 6 years now. He has been the most adventurous concerning going out and exploring the area's great trails. He took a group of us out on a hike one saturday morning. It was about a six hour day - we left with the morning light and returned in the near dark. Alex is a tall and talkative Russian who accompanied us with his near professional quality camera. The pictures i put in here are thanks to his camera skills and willingness to share the results (he took over 400 pictures that day!)




Here is the gang that was willing to get up before 8 AM on a saturday - Zoe (our wonderful and spunky Canadian friend from across the hall), Georg, John, and Alex.









Zoe and i initiated a short break on a very large, very cold
rock.


















Remember the story of "Three Billy Goats Gruff?" Before i came, i had all but forgotten that trolls are part of the Norwegian storytelling. The bridge the goats had to cross is one we have driven over now once or twice on the bus. The trail system is pretty impressive up here with signs all the way through it, and i'm fairly certain this one translates into "troll street." It makes complete sense that these stories originated here; the landscape is completely conducive to such ideas. Walking amongst the stones of the ground and the mountain slopes all steeped in age-old cold and half covered in moss is enough to make you feel as though a little hairy creature may be around the next corner - ready to stop you on your way and demand of you why you are there. Maybe part of the reason i like it up here is that the land is so perfect for fairy-tales.



And here is a good one of the landscape and the intrepid Georg.


We took some time to goof off and explore our area just after a brief break for lunch. You couldn't stay still very long, or you simply became too cold. It was best to keep the blood moving and enjoy where we were.




































It was a fantastic way to spend the majority of a saturday, and i hope we go again soon. i have been on a lot of smaller hikes around the area, thanks a friend who had been here a semester already and was willing to take some of his time to show us around.

Now that i have nearly written a book in one post, i think i'll save my sledding stories for the next post, because, yes - as some of you already know - we went sledding on a cake pan. Small things like that certainly seem worth noting to me :)

To anyone reading, i send my love from the arctic. i hope to have more soon! But, well, it seems as though that never quite works out as i plan :)