Gratulerer Med Dagen

I have now been in school for exactly one month! And I finally know how to put pictures in here and have the patience to do it, so here they are!

As for actual schoolwork....it's beginning to get much harder than at the beginning. The papers and reading are starting to pile up and I'm not looking forward to them, but at least it feels more like school now. :) Oh, here are some pics of the school and surrounding area.....it's pretty, huh??! The first pic is taken from across the river of the campus, and the second is of the mountains and river that run right next to the school. I'm pretty lucky I have all this around me, all I have to do is walk a few feet and there it is.














I've done a lot of fun stuff lately, so here goes.....first I want to tell about a hike up one of the mountains....I have affectionately named the one closest to the dorms as MY mountain....it's the one I hiked up. Halfway up said mountain, there was a small stream and the guys I was with stopped and I asked if you could drink out of the stream...fully expecting a negative response. Well, I was wrong....both of them bent down and started drinking! Well, you just don't do that in the US, but I keep learning more and more that you can do things here that you don't do at home and you'll be just fine. So, as soon as I saw them taking big swigs of water from this little stream....I wanted to as well....I figured if they were ok thus far, well then it's gotta be ok. I took a chance and drank, too. It tasted like normal water...there were a few floaties of dirt in it, but I didn't taste it. :) That was my first time ever to drink anything that didn't come out of a faucet. I was hoping not to get sick the whole time and I think I'm just fine...nothing wrong with me that I can tell.

On this hike, I also saw big mushrooms that
looked like pancakes on the forest floor...so
of course I had to get a picture of them. I did
NOT eat them, but here's the pic. I also found out where the Smurfs live....These other mushrooms that were growing along the edge of the road look exactly like the Smurf houses....the pictures are currently stuck in my phone, but they'll come out soon. Who would've known that the Smurfs were living in Norway this whole time??!

I also saw a large old animal trap that I had to get in of course. It wasn't a metal trap or anything, just a big hole in the ground. You can't tell much from the picture, but I'm about 5-6 feet down from the forest floor.



Also, here's a view from the top of the mountain once we got a little farther up.










A couple of weeks ago I got to attend the Oslo Institute and it was fabulous! I had to go to the missionary class because it was the only one in English, but it was so good. It was great to get back into the church scene and be with some people my age that are in the church. I'd say that is one of the hardest things about being here in Norway is that the church isn't very big here and I miss that aspect of being at home. I get by, though. This is a pic of the church building I go to in Hamar and also some other pictures of the city of Hamar. (We meet in the top of the gray building). I wasn't sure what that little car thing was, but it made me stop and look for a second...if you look closely, you can see that it's plugged in. :) It's quite a nice city and I really like to walk around in it. The last picture is of the bay at the largest Norwegian lake called Mjosa.







On Saturday nights I stay with church members that live around Hamar and sometimes they don't speak English at all....those are fun times. We all manage just fine, though. I stayed for a whole weekend with the branch President and his family a couple weekends ago and they all speak English. They took me to some other cities and to the mall. :) I have begun to have a very fine appreciation for waffles with fruit and whipped cream since I got here. They don't eat it for breakfast so much as they just have it for a treat during the day....either way is fine with me. Oh, and another thing about Hamar or Norway in general...I paid to pee the last weekend. Yes, it costed about a dollar to use the bathroom. I think it's kind of dumb, but if you gotta go, you gotta go, there's no way around it. You just insert a coin into the door handle and you get to use the bathroom. That was when I wanted to shout "Free the Pee!" like in the book/movie Bridge to Terabithia. :)

One thing that my friends started to do is hiding their beer. :) It made me laugh the first time...my roommate was hiding something behind her back when I came into the room, so of course I wanted to know what it was....and it turned out to be a beer. I told her that I knew they drank and they didn't need to hide it. Then another time they saw me come in and they put it under the table. :) They are worried about offending me because they know I don't drink. :) They're so nice to me! I told them not to worry and that I wasn't offended, but they are always careful now. ha ha ha.

They are starting the Norwegian class next week, so I soon will be able to learn and speak a tiny bit of the language. I'm pretty pumped about it. I'm kind of tired of being in my own little world all the time when I can't understand what anyone's talking about. Granted...my little world is a pretty nice place to go I must say....they like me there and are very agreeable. :)

Here are some things recently that have made me laugh...When talking to a friend about the mountain we were going to hike, he said it might be a little "steepy." :) That made me laugh soooo hard! Now I say it all the time. Here are some from listening in class, we were talking about habitats being "fragmentated." I think they like to put '-ated' on the end of words because in my last post I wrote how they said "trafficated." :) One thing I misunderstood in class last week was I thought my professor said "dynamic dysentary." Well, that's not quite what she said....with her accent working on the pronunciation of "dynamic systems theory." Wow, that one made me smile a little....imagine what dynamic dysentary would be like..... :) And one last one that made me smile a little. The prof was talking about a bird called the capercaillie that they're studying a lot and she said "the capercaillie is a big bird living in the forest, we like to kill it and eat it." Well, hunting is a little more popular here than at home...and they eat what they're studying apparently. :) I must say, though, that the word "steepy" is currently at the top of my list of favorites.


Oh my, I almost forgot to mention another thing. I was having dinner with some people the other night and here is a description of what was eaten....ok, imagine a few large bowls of big honkin shrimp still in their full shells and antennae. They shell the shrimp, put a bunch of them on a piece of white buttered bread and then put mayo on top and eat it. I've learned that it's a traditional summertime dinner often eaten in Southern Norway. (I did not try it....I'm not a fan of shrimp, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves) I hadn't ever seen anything like this, so here's the picture before everyone started eating...it was interesting to sit there and watch...OH, but there's one more cultural food thing I thought of. Instead of putting spaghetti sauce on spaghetti, sometimes they just put ketchup. Um, that's kinda gross in my opinion. :)

That's all the fun stuff I can think of for the moment...I'm sure there's more coming. :) The meaning of "Gratulerer Med Dagen" is Happy Birthday. I learned it last week and it's the only actual phrase I can say. I know a couple words, but this is the only phrase. It's a good one. :)