Stockholm, Sweden

Here are some pictures from when I was in Sweden. Sorry they took me so long to put up. Coming back to school has been extremely busy for me.

The Opera House in Stockholm

The Globe (Globen) I went up in that little sphere on top!

The Royal Palace

View from inside the sphere on top of the Globe

Made it Home

Hello all,

Just putting up a quick post to let you know I made it home all safe and sound. None of my flights were canceled or delayed so that was good. And I didn't get searched when I get through customs so that was a relief. Hopefully I will remember to put up some pictures of my last few days here soon, but with Christmas and stuff, finding time is harder.

Moving back to Luther on January 2nd too.

Hope to see some of you over my break!!

Tuesdays in December?!

Hello all!
Well, this past couple of days has been more stressful for me because I had all of my classes finishing up. This means finals and presentations happening left and right! I have made it through all of them but one. Yesterday was my written Norwegian final. I know that some parts were not very good, but others seemed to go well. I just hope that my grade comes out alright. On Thursday this week, I have my oral part for my Norwegian. I wish that I could talk in front of my friends instead of the teacher and sensor. I always start to get really nervous and make mistakes all the time. Fail. But I can just imagine it is just casual conversation with my classmates again. But once I get done with this, I am officially done with everything related to classes here. All that is left is to wait and see with what I wind up with.

This Saturday I will be hopping on the earliest train from Bø and head to Oslo. In Oslo, I have to purchase my tickets to get to Stockholm to see a family friend. They will not be there until Sunday, so I will be staying on my own the first night. This will truly be my first experience alone. All my other travels have been meeting up with someone I knew. But at least it is only one night and I'm sure everything will go smoothly.

Saturday is also the day that a couple Americans will be flying out. Some of the other international students have already left and headed for home. It is still crazy to think that a whole semester has already flown by. But I am glad that I am making one final trip in Scandinavia before I head back. Hopefully Stockholm this time is more fun than my first time there spending it in the airport.

I don't have any new pictures to put up, but I will take my camera to Stockholm and hopefully get some good ones there. Hope you all have a great rest of the week and I look forward to seeing a lot of you in the next couple weeks!

Coldest November in 222 years?

Hello Readers! As you can tell by the title, it has been one of the coldest Novembers on record here in Norway and Europe in general. I was watching the news this morning and they are talking about the snow that they are getting in Spain and Portugal. It looks like it is shutting down traffic pretty much all over. I still think this is normal, but it helps that I am from Wisconsin. :)
The Thanksgiving meal went well at the school and there was a lot of mashed potatoes and turkey left over. And now that it is the last day of November, it is hard to believe that I will be going home this month! 20 more days here. I am hoping to get to Sweden sometime after I finish my exam and visit Aunt Julie's friend there. Since tomorrow is the first of December, I will finally get to open the first window of my Advent Calendar. I hope that the chocolate is good. :) It was the cheapest one at the store though. :D Yesterday I started tracking all of my money expenses for Student Support Services at Luther. I think it will be neat to see what I come up with, especially since it is in a different currency. I asked one of the lead people there if there would be a prize for spending the most money since my rent is due soon.
I have been trying to study for Norwegian off and on, but I feel like I am losing it all when I don't get to use it. I try to watch more TV and stuff like that, but I still need a lot more practice. The written exam is in less than a week now. I also have an 8-10 page paper due for Friluftsliv on Monday and a group presentation on Thursday. Hopefully it will all go smoothly. It is nice to think that these are the last things that I have to do for these classes.
O yea, last Friday, we went to Morgedal on a field trip. Morgedal is called "The cradle of modern skiing" because Sondre Norheim grew up there and he was the first to revamp this form of skiing. They actually the style "Telemark Skiing" which is named after the 'county' that I am in. Pretty cool if you ask me. We also went to a museum that had Østbye ski wax section. The tour guide pronounced it like Ostby though. Maybe there is some relation?

Østbye ski wax.

View of the valley from Sondre Norheim's house.

Sondre Norheim

The snow-covered mountains from my window this morning.

Thanksgiving Week

Hello readers! How have you all been doing? I hear that snow has finally started to reach the midwest. :) I am currently getting flurries here now. This week has some ups and downs in it since it is Thanksgiving at home. It sucks that I am missing the festivities at home and getting to see family again, but the international office here has planned a Thanksgiving dinner here. It should be a lot of fun and I hope that people really enjoy it. I wish that we could celebrate other culture's holidays, but I don't know of them and one of the coordinators here is from the states so that helps. :) The temperature isn't too bad yet, but some people have really started to bundle up which surprises me. I am still in my light jacket and I don't feel like a hat is needed most of the time.

I tried to find a simple thank you note to send the people who gave me a scholarship, but nothing could be found like I wanted. I settled for a polar bear card thing. The others had cute kittens and flowers on them, but I don't think that would work quite as well. They have a lot of birthday cards here though. While at the shop where I got my card, I stumbled across some movies again. I think this has to be the final ones that I buy because they soon won't fit when I come back. I bought Mulan and a Harry Potter movie today. I already purchased Pocahontas, The Prince of Egypt and Toy Story. They are actually not that expensive. And since I am here, I thought I might as well get therm while they were on sale and I didn't have to pay to ship them to the states. I don't even know if you can do that. Anyway, my limit is five, so hopefully I will be able to hold back all temptations.

I bought an Advent Calendar at the store the other day so I am looking forward to the first of December when I can start to open up the windows. :) I didn't spend much on it so I hope the chocolate is good. I have been trying to eat down my food supply still. It is going well for the most part. I have only purchased four things this week and one was milk so that is kinda hard to make last. The milk here expires so fast too! I have had unopened milk that went sour even before its sell by date. I was pretty upset dumping that down the drain.

I am officially finished with my Telemark Regional Identity class so that is exciting for me. I have two more Norwegian classes before my exams and only one more class of both Friluftsliv and Ecophilosophy. Now if only would have know that I would be done this early when I bought my tickets! But hopefully I will be able to travel a bit. London is still a possibility, but so is Sweden. Norway would be the easiest I think, but I don't know.

I think that that is all I have for now. Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and I will be eager to catch all the good online deals with Black Friday. This is where my time zone will really work to my advantage. :D

Not too much is new

So it has been one week since I have written anything up her and unfortunately, nothing is too new. I have a presentation on Friday for my Telemark class that counts for 60% of my final grade so I hope it goes well. I also have another paper due for Ecophilosophy on Monday. I am writing about the Emission Trading Scheme in Europe. It is kind of interesting, but I still would have liked to write about something that I had more interest in. But as long as it fulfills the requirement, I will be happy.
Yesterday I got to talk to some of the people at the Helpdesk. Kalsow, Aung, Matt B and Thandeka. I wound up talking to Thandeka for like 40 minutes. It was good to catch up with them again and I can't wait to get back and be able to see them all the time again. I really miss working at the helpdesk and working with all my other organizations at Luther. I also got to talk to my advisor person for Student Activities Council (SAC). We are trying to figure out if we can squeeze in an extra act next semester. I hope we will be able to. :)
Other than that, I don't have much. We have about 3 inches of snow on the ground and it doesn't look like it will be melting any time soon. The sidewalks are really slippery in the morning and I have slid around a lot, but never fallen down. Next week we are gonna be celebrating Thanksgiving here too. They are making turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy for us at the school and we are doing a pot luck thing for the rest of the food.
Please leave me some comments and remember your name. :D

Flurries that led to Accumulation

Here is what I woke up to this morning.