To My Buds

When I was younger, actually the first 19 years of my life, the only thing I was ever going to be when I grew up was a veterinarian. I would go get my undergrad somewhere, then immediately be admitted into vet school and finish up schooling by the age of 25, which was also the age I was going to get married. It all fit so well into my head, that what plan COULD ever be better? Well as you can see, none of those plans worked out...nor do plans ever really work for me, but that's ok, I'm a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl, so spontaneity in life is the best thing for me. I did have the opportunity twice to go to vet school, but other things were better for me at the time and as you all know, I did not get married at the age of 25...or 26...and it is highly unlikely to be in my 27th year. :) Not that I'm complaining, freedom is something that I absolutely cherish and I love not being tied down to anything. I'm not saying that I wouldn't love to get married and start that portion of life, I'm just saying that I'm thoroughly enjoying being single. I keep getting announcements from close friends about how much they're in love and are getting married soon, and all I think is "another one bites the dust." I'm extremely happy for their happiness, though, don't get me wrong. It's just that the things I think about are vastly different than them. Things to think about during this time in life include: "When is it going to snow enough so I can go cross-country skiing again??" ... or "what am I going to watch tonight on my computer because there's nothing better to do in Evenstad???"...or "how do I ever give a church talk...in Norwegian?????" Different things to think about is all. :) So, to all of you that worry about their kids and fiances and husbands and future kids and what you're going to make for dinner....well, I'm kinda glad to not worry about that...yet.....being single has its perks!!! I'm sure I'll have my moments in the future with all that, so I should bite my tongue, but this post is more for the single people enjoying their singleness since we don't have what we really want. :) This is for my friends that still hang in there with me and complain with me and bond with me. This is for you!!!! Thanks for being my buds!!!!!! You all are the greatest people and examples to me!

Other than that, life in Norway has been a tad boring. I only have one class per week for another month, so I've been struggling to fill my time. However, I have started some new hobbies.......I've taken up knitting.....and cross-country skiing.....and playing ping pong with myself. Very different, yes, fun, yes, productive, YES. It's been snowing for the past few days and I'm in heaven. I LOVE SNOW. I'm excited to go play in it. I don't have anything funny lately to write about my experiences here since I haven't really been in class, but I'm sure something will come soon. I do plan on learning more Norwegian this semester and I'm excited to laugh at myself when I say things completely wrong. It's all about a positive attitude ladies and gents....in whatever situation you get yourself into. Keep on truckin is all I got to say.

Metal Rooster

I was born in the year of the chicken, or rooster. I verified this using good ole Wikipedia and then also found that the specific element for my year reveals that I was born in the year of the "metal rooster." What does that mean?????? (I dedicate my blog to the metal rooster....as seen by the big chicken in the background)........I looked up metal rooster and found that I belong to a clan called the "rooster people." There was a special site just for the metal rooster people telling us all about ourselves. Apparently I am the most high-minded of all the zodiac animals. Hmmm. One would think that we could be called something better than "rooster people."

Turning over a New Year

To start off the New Year I am back in Norway. I flew back here on New Year's Eve and spent the night somewhere above the big pond.....sleeping in a plane. I'm not even sure when the new year turned over. I think I missed it completely because of the time change. I did see the fireworks on TV in Sydney, though. That's gotta count for something. So after a night and a day in the airport, I finally got here on New Year's day. It's a bit colder here than when I left and just a tad colder than Texas. A tad equals about 40-50 degrees colder. I am here nonetheless and happy to be. Much to my chagrin, there were no pants-less men at the Oslo airport when I arrived. It sure does give a little jolt when you're dog-tired. I had no problems while in transit, except for the fact that my shoulders fell off from the bag of books I was lugging all over the world as my carry-on....who needs shoulders anyway....or books, for that matter? Just wanted to say that all is well, Norway is cold and snow-covered :) and I'm a happy kid. I loved being at home for 2 months, but now it's time to have my American conveniences taken away and start roughin it here again. I even got my hair cut a day before I left so I could lengthen the time before I slaughtered my own hair again by cutting it myself. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! Don't forget about me out here in the land of trolls.

Get out of the Country!

It seems like no country really wants me around....the other day I was in my friends house, just being a good little girl, minding my own business and watching Enchanted when another lady comes in the house and is very stressed because she had just hit a car. A red car. My car. This lady is very nice and knows the people whose house I am in, but she accidentally just backed into my car. She apologized about 500 times. It's not a big deal and very fixable, but these things just keep happening to me! (please reference the last blog!). So I have come to conclude that neither Norway or the USA wants me. First the pants-less man bids me adieu at the Oslo airport and then when I get back home, people steal my stuff, my car gets hit, and I'm in the middle of my second cold in 6 weeks. OR....maybe it's just Texas, YES, it's TEXAS that doesn't want me! Oh what a happy thought! Mutual dislike is always better than a one-sided dislike. I don't want Texas either! No offense to all my grand friends that live in the Lonestar State....I still like you guys. :) Now that I think about it, though, Utah didn't really want me either....I'm seeing a pattern here. Where to next?????! Who knows! I am known to change my mind on occasion....

Weird things happen....to me.

(this is me in the airport, in the middle of the night)

OK, picture this, a very tired Lindsey waking up in the Oslo airport after a restless night of sleeping on the airport benches waiting for her early flight. Only it's not just a very tired Lindsey, there are several people around sleeping on the benches and one in particular that I would like to note. After falling asleep around 2am I woke up around 4:30, got up and took a look around me at the few more people laying all around that weren't there a few hours before. Among these newcomers was one man laying on the bench across from me, this seemed to be a normal enough sleeping man, but there was something that was awfully wrong with this airport picture of him. He had NO pants on! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this middle-aged man was pants-less, and not only that, but his pants were right next to him on the floor wadded up in a little pile. Now is the part were you can start making assumptions...based on the following information.....next to his wadded up pants there was also a LARGE puddle of liquid on the ground under the benches. I saw no spilled cup anywhere. All I saw was: wadded up pants, pants-less man, and a large puddle.....you do the math. There probably was a plausible explanation for this, but I decided when I saw this across from me, I would QUICKLY relocate myself to a different part of the airport. I almost took a picture....but I, and he, might be pretty embarrassed if the pants-less man woke up in the middle of the snapshot and asked me what I was doing. So, that was my goodbye present from Norway. I'm a lucky gal.

I've been back in the states now for a month and I've been having a grand time with family and friends. I never realized how nice it is to have only English spoken in the airport, and everywhere for that matter! I had a huge smile on my face when I flew into Chicago from Europe. I felt like my language was no longer confounded and I could talk to EVERYONE! And then to have men open doors for me was so nice too. I had found that Norwegian men do NOT open doors for woman normally, so it was nice to get back to the gentlemen of the USA. :) Thanks guys! It's great to be back....although not for long....

A couple days after I got back my brother Ben and I went to my storage unit to get some clothes for me to wear. As I turned the corner to go to my unit I ran over something and it was dragging behind me....well, much to Ben's amusement, it was a mattress. Yes, a queen size mattress. How I happened to NOT see it as I turned the corner is beyond me. Ben saw it and almost warned me, but then I just ran over it and he started laughing. Well, I tried to get in out from under my car, but it got stuck......

To get it unstuck, Ben almost got hurled into the storage unit wall as I put the car into reverse really fast while he held onto the mattress. Fun times with Lindsey. (I don't know why that's underlined, I have problems). The pic is of Ben before we tried to get the mattress out. :)

At this same storage unit a few weeks later, I went to get a suitcase out so I could go to my Mom's in Missouri and there was a different lock on my unit that I hadn't put there. It turned out that someone broke into my unit, stole my empty suitcases (which I needed), CDs, tapes, a box of books, another suitcase full of clothes, my toolbox, and 3 boxes of plates and bowls. Well, it is beyond me why you would steal empty suitcases and plates, but I guess whoever stole them REALLY needed them. They didn't steal everything, but they were probably planning on jacking the rest of it since they put their own lock on my unit. (I had to get it drilled off to get in). This happening was actually kind of coincidental. A week before I was telling everyone how I just want to get rid of all my stuff and not have anything to worry about.....well, I got my wish partly.

Thanksgiving was pretty great. I got to go with my Mom to Maryland, I had 2 turkey dinners, visited a ton of family, shopped for a few hours, and was headed back to Missouri within the 3rd day of being there. It was quite the whirlwind, but it was fantastic.

I'm headed back to Norway on New Year's Eve. The date stinks, but the price was right, so I had to make the sacrifice. Sacrifices are coming more often now....I bought some hiking boots the other day for $140....that was a bite. Good thing there's no tuition in Norway....If there were I'd probably have to go collect money with a big boot like the firemen do in the middle of the streets.

It's official. I can be Norwegian for 9 more months.

Today was a good day for me. I finally got my visa, I finally got my "D-number" which allows me to open a Norwegian bank account, AND I got to get pulled around on a go-cart by dogs. What a day!!!!! I am allowed to stay in this grand country officially for 9 more months, according to the little visa sticker now affixed in my passport (funny side-note, there is a picture of me that goes with the visa and it looks like I'm about to hurl....hopefully that's not some kind of sign or something). Also, I have a foreign bank account now....does that mean I can do sneaky things with money??? Or does that only work with "swiss" bank accounts? All of my money is Norwegian at the moment, so it doesn't matter either way I guess. :)

So the best part is that I got to get pulled around by dogs today. My friend will be doing dog-sledding in the winter and before it snows, the dogs get trained on this dune-buggy/go-cart contraption with wheels. The ride was so fun! Today the "retarded" dogs got trained....which means the dogs that don't go on the normal runs or the ones that are too small, young, oddly shaped, weak, or sick. All it meant was that we went a little slower up the mountain. This happens to be one of the only pictures I got because, of course, on my 3rd picture my camera's batteries died. I will hopefully go on some more rides, maybe even with the bigger dogs....and I'll get more. This is what was in front of me on the ride, I was sitting on the cart connected to all those ropes and my friend Eskil was standing behind me. As you can see....there's no snow yet....

I got to go to Oslo last weekend for stake conference (for the non-mormons, it's a regional meeting in the church)....I figured out that Oslo is where all the mormons are hiding in Norway. I never knew there were so many. The stake covers all of Norway, but I think the vast majority of the people live in Oslo. The meeting was in Norwegian, which is normal....but that means I don't understand anything and this time I had no translator. Basically I just had to imagine what they were talking about for 2 hours. :) Luckily some of the leaders that came to speak are from England, and didn't speak Norwegian, so when it was their turn to talk, it was so nice to hear a church meeting in English again.

I'm coming home in a little over a week, and I gotta say....I don't really want to yet. I've been enjoying myself here and there's too much to do with school! I will be taking a final exam over the phone and turning in a paper while I'm at home. Not so sure how everything's going to work, but oh well! I would change my plane dates again...but I don't really want to pay another $300 to change it AGAIN. On the other hand, it'll be sooo incredibly nice to have my car again and be free to go anywhere at any time. :) I've missed my little Red car. I will be coming back again in January for semester #2, that's when I get to do all the fun stuff in my classes....like track animals......oooooh.

Here's a pic of a great rainbow that was here the other morning. It made a complete arc across the sky...although you can't see it....it was so pretty. (the 2-story red building is where I live).

I don't have many funny things to say this time, but have changed the name of pirate chew a tiny bit. When people spit the wad on the ground, it looks like poo, so I now use pirate poo and pirate chew interchangeably. I'm so clever. :)

Oh, almost forgot something.....I got to drive a couple weeks ago. I found that it's hard to know what to do when driving when you don't know what the signs mean. None of them have words on them.....good thing there weren't many cars around, I might have caused accidents....how are you just supposed to KNOW what to do??? Maybe I shouldn't drive next time. :)

That's it for now....I'll probably see most of you soon! Ta ta.

I don't want your water, I have a blue bottle.

I have been thinking a lot lately of just how much people are blessed and don't realize it. This post might be a little more on the serious side. I look around me every day at the beautiful land of Norway and am in wonder of it's people and blessings. The people here have life sooooo good. They realize that a little, but really have no idea of just how good they have it. If I didn't love my own country so much (and it didn't cost an arm and a leg to travel here), I'd want to live here. I tend to wonder every day also about why the heck I am even here in the first place! Like I said before I came here..."Who goes to Norway????! " Certainly no one I know! (actually since then I have found several people that have been here or have family here)...but no one ever talks about this country or really even knows anything about it.....or knows where it is in some cases. :) As I have said in other posts, I am really in the middle of nowhere, just surrounded by low mountains and a river running beside the school. So, how on earth did I end up here?? Out of all places, the middle of Norway in a college with only about 120 students that no one has heard of, there is only one explanation of how I got here. It is somewhere God wants me to be. There are things I'm here for, there are people to meet, there are things to share, there are experiences to be had. It is an amazing thing to know that something divine is happening in your life. Just that one inkling of knowledge can make you a completely different person. I would say that since I got here, I have been overwhelmed with cheer. Yes, cheer. I have never been so cheerful all the time in my entire life and it is great! There are huge challenges here and so many things to get used to and adjust to, but it really doesn't matter one tiny bit. I haven't talked to one of my family members in over 2 months except through email, and that's a bit hard...but knowing I am in the right place at the right time makes up for every challenge I can think of. I love the people here and have found every day that I am the example to many people of what I believe in. I am the different one here, I am the "American," but I am also the American Mormon that doesn't drink alcohol, tea, coffee, use tobacco, watch bad movies, and goes to church every weekend. Let me tell ya, I've had some funny looks come my way! If I weren't so stubborn and strong in my church, I don't know what it would be like here. It's different on all accounts. How weird and interesting life can be. It changes in a heartbeat and I'm grateful for everything that comes my way.

As for an update on school and such. I'm still learning the Norwegian language bit by bit and am proud to say that I can say a few sentences. I have learned how to say "Go Away, you stupid!" and "I don't want your water, I have a blue bottle." I also know how to say "beer is gross, I hate beer" and phrases like "thanks for the food," "you're welcome," and some body parts. I also know the word for cheesecake...that always comes in handy. My teachers ask me often what some words are in English and when I smile when they say words wrong they say we're going to have an English lesson taught by me after class. I made the mistake of mentioning that they had no idea how much I laugh in my head when we're in class and my teacher (who is also the dean of the school) said that he notices that I laugh in class when he teaches. Oops. Good thing they have good senses of humor.

Oh, I have an update on "Drunk Tuesday." I have been informed that other people that I don't even know are now calling it Drunk Tuesday. I feel so proud for giving it it's rightful name. I also know how to say it in Norwegian and also to say "I hate Drunk Tuesday." What useful phrases I'm learning. :)

No more updates I can think of. I'll be coming home soon for the holidays and I'm pretty excited, but also sad to leave. It's bittersweet. I can't wait to come home and eat my heart out during the holidays. :)