Lillehammer Stasjonen Hotel &Hostel

... my first hockey game, Lillehammer vs. Trondheim (and Lillehammer won!) :) I went tobogganing down a huge & windey hill. I spent a weekend in the beautiful mountains at Fagerhøi. I went to one of the most famous winter attractions in all of Europe, and I went bobsledding. It has been so much fun! At Fagerhøi, a very beautiful area above the clouds with rolling hills, small cabins, and a lot of snow, the Norwegian ...

... bones but many screams and falls on my part. :) I definitely wasn't always so sure I was going to make it out alive. I think next time I'll spend a bit more time on the bunny hill before I hit the big ones. Here is a photo of a group of us beginners before we started--we had no idea what we were in for! :) New Words It's very different being in a place where ...

... bend, so she got bumped by the rear of the bus as we had to turn, and then we took out a few side mirrors on a couple of home mobiles on the very narrow roads, and yesterday a girl on a motorbike was about to move aside for the bus and ended up falling over and crashed straight into another car who got a big dent! Oh la la..the things you see on the road..Lucky I'm in the big vehicle... Anyway, hope you're all enjoying the beautiful summer and keep in touch! Cheers

... cooling off in the river with half of Lillehammer! We also had a chance to talk with Dag Hareide (you should definitely Google his name too!), who is the director of Nansenskolen and has years and years of experience in peacebuilding and international conflict mediation. We spent about an hour and a half on the veranda here at the school, enjoying the much cooler weather and listening to his experiences in Latin America, Ethiopia, Namibia, and ...

... as they are often near the railway track and get hit by trains often as well, though I hope that doesnt happen tomorrow. That is all to report for the moment. I really hope I find someway of getting these photos off my camera before Im all the way back in Australia and I can more effectively illustrate what I am writing. Til then I hope everyone is well and enjoying the blogs. I should have another entry in the next few days. Lots of Love, Amy

This was my first Thanksgiving away from my family, and I didn't realize how much it really meant to me. Thursday I was rather grumpy from having to spend the day in Oslo working on translations, and taking the train back to Hamar after being gone for 3 days. What a boring day. Anyway, I was really missing family, and worried that we would all end up too stressed out over the cooking process. But you know, although I wasn't too happy on Thursday ...

... with Berit Follestad who is in charge of the mediation program at Song and has been working with it for over 10 years. It was my 3rd day meeting with Berit, but first I went to meet a student that Berit had put me into contact with who has been working there once a week since September. Her name is Heather an she is studying i Olso with the SUST program and in her last year at Berkeley. It was fun to talk with here about being in Norway and about the ...

... helping me back on my feet. And just as we were walking to the train station to get on the train (for real, this time), we stumbled upon the friendliest politician (who I will now refer to as Online Lover... you will find out why) and his friend, the Serbian-Albanian translator for the group. After asking us why we hadn't got on the train yet, Online Lover and Translation-Man wanted to take us to the shopping center with him. We're always up for shopping as ...

... on their way out already. We got our first powdering of snow while I was away for the weekend in Bergen, but when I got back last night the platform at the train station was completely covered in a mixture of snow and black ice. Today the sun came out just enough to melt everything, but don't you worry, because since the sun went down it has been snowing for at least 4 hours and there is a healthy layer of fresh powder. I wore my long-underwear under my jeans today ...

We have had an extra-long weekend and tomorrow we will be back to classes again. Tomorrow we start our second module, "Democracy and Development". So far, we have been a class made up of 5 Americans, 4 Namibians, 1 Norwegian, and 1 Belgian-Norwegian. For our second module we are supposed to be joined by 7 Norwegians, so it will be nice to have some new faces. Our professor told us we should pretend we don't speak any Norwegian at all to help the Norwegians get ...