Minotel Bjorns Lillehammer

... Buddies planned a lot of activities for the International Students. We roasted hot dogs over the fire (and ate them with lefse, which is how Norwegians often eat their hot dogs...it's pretty good). We went sledding, played games, and met lots of other International Students from all over Europe. Here are some pictures of the gorgeous landscape at Fagerhøi. One of the top 10 winter attractions in all of Europe is the ...

... don't know the language. I feel sort of uncomfortable sometimes because I know that often Americans just expect others to know their language rather than learning the language of the place they are, and I don't want to be one of those. I'm taking a language class 3 hours a week and trying to pick up things wherever I go. Sometimes I can understand what ...

... in Norway. Dag (pronounced like ''dog'') has written several books, including one about Norwegian values, and this past week finished up a document of objectives for Norwegian compulsory education with 13 other people from different political parties and parts of the government. A fascinating man with stories to tell from his work with famine preparedness with the UN and with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, Dag Hareide is a key ...

8th of June, Our trip with Rolf and Liv who promised us to see the west coast. We take the E6 to the north and at Dombas we turn west towards Andelness.We are very excited to see the first snow on the mountains and all the waterfalls and start making photos despite Rolf saying it will get even better.We pass the Peer Gynt Valley and imagine grieg writing his beautiful ...

... from Bedford to Milton Keynes at 5:50am and then catching another bus from Milton Keynes to Stanstead airport. My bag was thankfully under the Ryan Air limit so after securing all liquids in my checked in luggage (including lipgloss!!) and having my shoes X-rayed I enjoyed a peaceful flight into Oslo Torp. From there it was a 2 hour bus ride into Oslo and after locating the station a 2 hour train ride from Olso to Hamar. Wenche met me at the ...

... now desperately trying to find a way to send proof that he, the father, had legal residency in Norway while his son waited 3 days to hear from him. We tried faxing the papers 3 or 4 times without any success, and the process took at least 15 minutes every time it failed so we quickly wasted an hour. It turns out this man was living with a guy from the Congo who I had met at school and had also met all of the Namibians that we have classes with, so we all ...

... have had instruction in English which they can use to explain whatever extra is needed, although often English is not their mother tongue. If I was teaching ESL, there wouldn't really a back-up language quite like that. Unfortunately for the Norwegians, not everyone speaks English, so they do have to be creative sometimes. Being in the classroom made me re-consider trying to work with adult-ESL rather than with school age kids. I really enjoyed being there.

... with "two beautiful American girls from Seattle". They remembered our names from the beginning, and I couldn't tell you even one of their names. After a rather tiresome two hour meeting with a few of Lillehammer's local politicians at the city hall, the group was invited to a tour of the city hall. Taking pictures in the different offices, they pulled each of us into several of their pictures. "Hey, we want Christy!" "Lauren, come be in our picture!" I ...

... so there will be steadily less and less daylight. Fortunately, there are things to do on each end of the commute. Today we had a lecture from Steinar Brynn who works at the Nansen Center for Dialogue in Lillehamar. I heard him speak at PLU last year, but I was just as impressed today as I was then. I am completely convinced that dialogue is the only way to have a lasting impact on groups under conflict. I was really interested today in how ...

... which I personally LOVE. It was fun to see it with Norwegian subtitles too since there were a few places where the subtitles didn't match up at ALL with what the characters were saying, but they were just as funny. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I hope we do it again. We were also invited to go to a sort of an open-house party at the student pub area at the agricultural campus near Elverum, so we caught the bus at 9:40pm and headed up there. There wasn't ...