Wadahl Hogfjellshotel Lillehammer

... it will be hard to get a meal that is below $20 anywhere. I think that I've fallen in love with almost every aspect of Norway. I love the beauty. I love the culture. I love the people. I love the city. I love the country. I love the snow. I love the mountains. It's wonderful. Don't worry, though....I still love all of you more than that. :) Take care and write to me! I love to hear what everyone is up to at home. God Bless! xoxo

... flavored mayo. It was just kind of a weird texture. Here is a picture of the meal. Yes! I took a picture! I couldn't believe I was going to eat FISH, let alone a FISH PANCAKE!!! :) For everyday meals we eat a lot of grains and dairy. The bread comes in fresh loaves you cut yourself. We eat a lot of granola, wasa, sandwiches, lefse, cheese, yogurt, milk, juice ...

... and delight that summer has arrived is infectious to all. No wonder summer is the busiest tourist season in Scandinavia!! After quickly packing up our luggage and checking out of the Munch Hotel in the morning, Claudia and I boarded the Oslo S-Lillehammer train on track 11, my most favorite and well-known route. I took this train many, many times (at least 20 times!) to and from Oslo, and I still firmly believe that the train is by far the best ...

... not be back before we leave, but most of the goodbyes will take place in the next 4 days. I hate this part of study abroad. Especially when you say goodbye to someone and then you run into them the next day just by chance, and it's good to see them, but then you have to say goodbye again. It's lame. Well, after Wednesday afternoon when we have given our presentations of our papers to the class, we will be all done ...

... from Iran. I had tried to introduce myself to a few of the people from the class, and the 4 women from Somalia who were all wearing long dresses and long head-coverings which left only their faces and hands showing were all very friendly and shook my hand, but when I tried to introduce myself to a man from Somalia and put my hand out to shake hands, he threw his hands up backed away and said "nei takk" (no thanks) with a smile. I wonder if men are not ...

... are from the same general region. Finally, we were able to convince them to make the trip back up the long, icy road to the train station so we could make our train back to Hamar. We caught it with two minutes to spare, and laughed and laughed with tears in our eyes the entire way back to Hamar. Now really, how many other times in life do you get to say, "Yeah, I hung out with Serbian and Albanian politicians who are my dad's age in Norway when I studied ...

... then heard him say "so please leave a message" in Norwegian. I was caught off guard by the answering machine badly enough that I forgot my phone number and had to pause long enough to look it up after trying to explain in Norwegian who I was. It wasn't quite the way I wanted it to go. So next I tried his cell phone, which he answered immediately (making me feel even dumber about the message on the ...

... after my dabble in an ESL linguistics class last semester. Anyway, I'm a bit nervous, but more than anything I'm just excited to participate in making this exhibit more available to a wider audience since it is such a cool exhibit, and since a large number of people in Norway and visitors to Norway speak English much better than Norwegian, even if English is their second language. In any case, I've got to get some sleep. Here's to waking up to a winter wonderland in October!

I'll write some more detailed stuff later and probably erase this entry, but I feel I should post something. We just got back from a week-long excursion to the north. I've got some incredible photos, so hang in there and you'll be in for a treat. I'm absolutely exhausted for now since we were supposed to sleep on the train last night. I've got class tomorrow morning so I'm off to bed, but I promise photos sometime this week. Thanks for checking in on what I'm up to!

... scared. We were in safe hands. Apparently our driver has never crashed or gone off the tracks. The track is 1.7km long and 110 metres high. We travelled at about 120 kms an hour with a g-force of 4.5 and finished in about 60 seconds. A few guys pushed us to get us going, at first it wasn't to bad, then it was really fast. I kept hitting my head on the cage, side to side and above- good thing for ...