Field Trips

A couple of weeks ago, my class went on an overnight field trip to Sweden to track a wolf pack. We tracked the pack where they had been about 4 days before to see if there were any fresh bed sites or carcasses of animals they had eaten. The trip was so fun and we found 2 moose carcasses, a jawbone from a beaver, and several bed sites where the wolves had slept. We were on skis and snowshoes the whole time and this is what I looked like 17 times during the trip....


How embarrassing...yes, I counted. I fell 17 times. We were back-country skiing and I hadn't done that yet. I had only skied on flat areas and this was through woods and hills and such, however, I had a blast and I got quite an arm workout from pushing myself back up so much. :)

About a week before this trip, I also got to see a pack of wolves out on a frozen lake eating a fresh moose kill. It was very far away, about 2 kilometers, but here is a somewhat close picture of the wolves we saw. It is quite rare to see wolves like this so everyone came out of the woodwork to come see. There were at least 10 other cars lined up across the lake with us.
Like I said, we couldn't get very close.

ALSO. Last week I got to go see some actual collaring of deer. A classmate of mine invited me on one of the trips where we sat in the car next to the big pile of hay known as a "feeding station" where some red deer were eating. We inched up closer and closer to the deer and then when we were close enough, my friend darted one of the deer by leaning out the window. We found the deer after it had fallen asleep and collared it with a GPS collar so we can get data on where the deer goes. I just stood there while they did all this stuff, but at least I got to go. :) I held a flashlight, that was my contribution. There is a picture of me with the deer, but I don't have it yet. I'll get it and you will see that the deer looks pretty dead, but no worries, it's alive and has no idea that I got a candid picture with it. Needless to say, it is exciting to live here sometimes and go on adventures like this. :)

Another field trip was last weekend with all the international students in the area. Mostly I went sledding and made a large snow-deer/llama (you can choose what it is...).

AND. Here are some pictures of the icicles outside my window. So cool. I wanted to reach out and lick them, but thought that might be a bad idea.

I hope everyone's doing great. I miss you all!

Why Norway makes me Fat

This is called brunost or brown cheese. It is completely Norwegian and completely tasty. You just eat it on bread or these big cracker things they call hard bread (which is gross). They say most people that aren't from here don't like it, but I'm not most people....as you know. I love it. Cheese makes me happy.




Oh Good ole Walter! What would I do without your chocolate. This is my favorite candybar and I keep eating more and more of it and can't stop.

These two things are just two of the reasons why I get fat, the other one is that I just can't seem to stop eating. Even when I'm not hungry, I just want to eat whatever is in site. People say it's from the cold, but I think that I just really like to eat chocolate and cheese. Who doesn't???

Harry Tur and Such

Last weekend I got to go to Sweden!! It really wasn't that big of a deal because it was just over the border to do a little shopping because it's cheaper there, BUT I can say that I've shopped in Sweden now. :) When people take trips across the border to Sweden like that, they call the trip a "Harry Tur" or a Harry Trip. For some reason if something is kind of a dumb thing to do they connect it with the name Harry....so since the Norwegian government doesn't benefit at all if people go shopping in Sweden, some politician called it a Harry Tur. So I went on a Harry Tur to Sweden. I wanted to get a picture of a Welcome to Sweden sign...like they have for all the states when you drive, BUT there was no sign! What a bummer. They need to invest in a sign so I can take a picture of it.

Also, I gave my church talk in Norwegian last week....yes, in Norwegian. That was soooo very stressful. I had to write it in English first way in advance and then get it translated by a friend into Norwegian. It's hard just to write it in English in advance, I usually don't do my talk until the night before or morning of, so that was a bit of a struggle. So....I read the talk in church and it may have been the longest 10 minutes of my entire life.....but I got through. I've never not wanted to give a talk so much as I didn't want to give this one! Everyone said I did a good job afterwards, but I think part of it was them just being nice.......I hope I don't have to do that again any time soon.

Last weekend I stayed with my branch president's family (the Breiviks) and on Friday night Sister Breivik was cooking dinner and I wanted to help. I decided to be clever and try to use the Norwegian that I know, so this is what I said: "Kan jeg hjelpe deg med ingenting?" After I said this, she started to laugh....that means I said something wrong....uh oh....so I asked and she said I asked her "Can I help you with nothing?" Oops. Still learning.

Classes are going great! Today I learned about wolves for hours and I was in heaven, if only every day could be so great! Friday we are taking a field trip north where we get to track wolves. So so so fun. Pretty exciting if you ask me!! We tracked moose last week and my group won ourselves some chocolate because we got the closest in our tracking exercise. I have discovered that one way to my heart is through Norwegian and Swedish chocolate. I am getting fat because of it. Oh well, at least I'm happy.