My mom would be so proud!

This post is dedicated to my MOM because she always wants me to try new foods. I would like to tell her that I ate MOOSE. Yes, her favorite collectible. She has moose everywhere around her house, from on pillows, figurines, to a singing christmas moose head. She loves her mooses. Well, last week I went to Sweden with school and walked and walked and walked around the woods counting piles of moose poop for a study on the population of moose in the area. On my second night there, we had moose for dinner....and it was GOOD!!! I didn't know it was moose until after I ate it, I thought it was just a special meatloaf we were eating, but after I found out it was moose, I went back for seconds because it was so yummy. Moose is eaten tons more here than in the States, by the way, but I hadn't had it before then....oh but maybe I had. Another time I was in Sweden with school we ate moose sausage...it wasn't as tasty, but everyone else liked it. Anyways, that is my adventure with counting moose droppings and eating moose (not eating their droppings....sick!) OH...one other thing. We had a little tutorial before we went out to count the piles to teach us how to tell the difference between fresh and old piles....and also what other animal droppings looked like. The place we were staying is a youth hostel in the middle of the woods and we were learning what all these droppings looked like. We had samples of them on the dining tables in the hostel. Yes, there was poop spread all over the tables...where we eat (it was dry and old). I feel sorry for the other occupants who noticed this. :) We wiped off the tables quite good before eating, don't worry. I told one of my friends that one subject that is talked about quite often in my program is moose poop and he laughed maybe thinking I was kidding....well, I wasn't kidding. :) It's true.

Did you say "paste"?

I hereby have a new favorite thing that a friend accidentally said. We were walking along and we had to hurry a little bit and he said "we have to pick up the paste". I asked if he really said paste instead of pace because I thought I heard wrong...but no, he said paste. HA HA HA HA. All I could think of was picking up a new bottle of Elmers. :)

A Dedication to the Bathroom and a Bucket Update

I keep forgetting to mention a little piece of bliss that I enjoy most weekends. When I go to peoples' houses on the weekend there is one thing that makes me a very happy girl when I get up in the morning. Many of the houses here have heated bathroom floors. What joy I feel when I step off of the cold unwelcoming floor with my chilly toes onto a nice toasty one in the bathroom! An unlikely place, you might say?? Oh no, not in Norway! When I "grow up" I want a heated bathroom floor too.

Aside from the amazing warm bathroom floors, I have an update on the bucket situation previously written about. I stayed at the house that doesn't have an indoor toilet and they, INDEED, had a bucket for inside use. :D They mainly prepare the bucket for night-time use so you don't have to wander outside in the middle of the night to the outhouse and fall, perhaps breaking bones, peeing your pants, or getting eaten by the moose. :) Gotta love it. I, however, could not bring myself to use the bucket. I am ok with outhouses and the woods, but I just couldn't do the bucket for some reason....call me a city-girl, call me a wuss, or whatever you want, but the bucket was an impossibility. I held it all the way to church in the morning so I could use a toilet. (to clarify....I did not hold the bucket....I waited to pee until I got to church) :) Oh man, I could never make it in the old days.