Bummed About My Bum Ankle

I tend to twist my left ankle. It usually hurts for a day or two and I whine like a baby but after a week it's normally completely healed. Well 3 weeks ago I thought I'd be all macho and run from the gym back home to Kringsja. Just barely 100 meters into my run, I tripped on a sewage drain sticking up from the sidewalk and twisted my ankle so badly that I started crying on the spot. I can tolerate a good amount of pain but my entire foot hurt no matter which way I moved it and the pain went up to my shins. Luckily a Norwegian woman saw and helped me back to the gym where we went to the cafe to ask for ice. The girl working looked so confused and came back with a slab of frozen meat. Apparently the cafe doesn't have ice? I was so upset and in so much pain that I hopped outside and sat by myself crying with my foot/ankle in the snow because the stupid gym didn't have ice.

I walked with a serious limp for the first couple days and it started to improve, but then I decided to go to Paris and suck it up with tons of Advil. Unfortunately all the walking didn't help the ankle situation and it just got worse. After two weeks of pain I thought maybe it was time to see a doctor. Man, trying to set up a doctor's appointment in Norway through my home health insurance is not an easy task. Especially when the automated voice recorder on the other line is in Norwegian. I never want to get injured in a foreign country again. It was a very complicated process that involved long conference calls with the doctor and the insurance company, tons of paperwork, and lots of kroner. And the only thing I found out after 2 doctor's visits and an x-ray was that it wasn't broken. Great. Well it still fucking hurts.

The worst part about it is I feel so lazy. I can't do anything. I can't run. I can't go on serious hikes. I can't join in on a simple football game behind our building. I've never been so depressed to not be able to move around.  With the weather getting warmer, I've actually found myself getting envious of the people working out and playing outside.

Meh.

On the bright side, Cindy came to visit this past weekend. We did a lot of things that I hadn't done in Oslo yet, like the Viking Ship Museum and the ferry out to the islands.

Can I please live here 

I can't believe she's already done with her study abroad in Barca. I still have 2 more months before I'm back in America and I feel like I won't have time to see everything I want to see in Europe.

J'aime Paris

I am in love with Paris. And I will be back soon to get more banana nutella crepes.

I went to Paris a couple weeks ago with Dorota, Ida, and two of Dorota's Polish acquaintances. The first day in Paris was really an adventure. Dorota, Ida, and I walked to our "hotel" (which really wasn't a hotel because the bathrooms weren't in our rooms, they only gave us 2 baby sized towels for the 3 of us, and there was no soap or shampoo provided) in a pretty rundown part of Paris and quickly realized that we were the only female non-dark skinned people walking the streets and that was why literally everyone was staring at us. We were so starved by the time we finally made it to Paris that we settled for a greasy quick kebab dinner and contemplated stealing soap from the bathroom of the kebab shop. 

Nicer than our hotel bathroom

After our very traditional French kebab dinner, we got some cheap wine and headed towards the Eiffel Tower - the first of our many Eiffel Tower experiences. All 3 of us pretty much fell in love the moment we saw it and couldn't stop take pictures of it the rest of the trip. We took pictures of it at night, during the day, when it was lit up, when it was sunny, when it was raining, from the top, from the bottom, from the boat, etc etc. I also don't understand why everyone thinks that Parisians are rude to tourists because everyone we met that day was so nice to us. A couple guys pried the metro doors open for us, another group led us to the metro and helped us jump the turnstile, and a server at a restaurant literally translated the entire menu for us. I thought everyone was very friendly. 

Eiffel Tower: Love at first sight

The next day we did a walking tour of Paris where I also met up with a few of my sorority sisters. It's crazy how we all ended up in Paris the same weekend without planning it - 1 from Madrid, 2 from Rome, and 1 from Tours. During the tour Dorota, Ida, and I (having lived in Norway for the past 3 months) were so ecstatic to see flowers that we tried to take a picture with all of them. One of the photos required us to lie in the grass with the flowers, and we found out from our tour guide that Paris is particular about their grass thus no one is allowed to even stand on it. My apologies, Paris. After our tour we all ended up grabbing lunch, going up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and taking a boat cruise down the River Seine together. 

SO GREEN SO PRETTY

Flowers AND the Eiffel Tower. Doesn't get any better

Sisters on the love bridge

We had no access to a wine opener in Paris so we had to improvise with what we had. Aka scissors. And this is what happened:

The scissors broke

The next day was free museum Sunday so we went to the Louvre and Musee D'Orsay. I don't really have much of an interest in art so we literally walked in, went straight for the famous pieces, and walked out. It was pretty straightforward. We also went to Notre Dame, Centre Pompidou, Champs Elysee, and L'Arc de Triomphe. I met up with Hilary again at the Arc de Triomphe and had a swanky French dinner with her and her friend at Cafe Marly. Soooo delicious. I highly suggest it for anyone who is going to Paris. 

Paris is such a large city that even with 3.5 days I couldn't see everything I wanted. A lot of our time in Paris was spent waiting in some form of a line so I can't even imagine how long it takes to do everything in the prime of tourist season. We didn't have enough time to do Versailles, Sacre Coeur, or the Catacombs so I made a promise to myself that I will make it back again within the next few years. Besides the occasional dog poo on the street, the piss smelling metros, and the gypsies hounding you to sign their petitions for "peace", I thought Paris was absolutely stunning. One of my favorite cities by far. 

Freaking Cold Stockholm

Student housing finally realized I never had a roommate even though I was paying rent for 2-in-a-room and sent me a message threatening to charge me an additional 1000 NOK a month to stay in a single or else I would have to move in with someone else. After numerous messages and calls trying to fight back, I lost the battle and had to move in with someone else on a different floor. At least my new roommate is someone I was already friends with before. It's just hard going from a single to a double room, especially since I had never had a single in college before. So now I am happily on the second floor of my building in a a VERY CLEAN kitchen (yay!) and my address has changed. Here is my new address:

Olav M. Troviks vei 24, H203
0864 - Oslo, Norway

During the move to my new room, I refused to leave the mirror I bought from IKEA mounted on the wall so I ripped it off the wall so I could try to put it in my new room. The adhesive tape holding the mirror up was so strong that it pulled off a large chunk of plaster from the wall and now there is a large hole in my old wall. Woops. Hopefully student housing will not notice it. I transported the mirror to the wall of my new room, but the adhesive was not as strong after I ripped it off the old wall. After a couple days the mirror fell and shattered. It was a sad sad day.

Stockholm, Sweden
The weekend following my move I went with my ex-flatmates to Stockholm for 2 days. Man it was cold. Temperature wise it was about the same as Oslo, but the wind made it unbearably cold. We spent a large portion of our time hiding inside Cafes to stay out of the wind. Stockholm was just another city to me. I wasn't impressed, but it may have been due to the fact that I could not stop shivering from the cold. We spent some time in Gamla Stan and did some museums on Djurgården. I liked the Vasa Museum the most. The Vasa was a warship from the 1600s that sank as soon as it first set sail and lied at the bottom of the sea for hundreds ofyears until it was restored in the 1900s.

Vasa Ship

Gamla Stan

The one cool thing about having been to Stockholm is that I just started reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which takes place in Stockholm and other parts of Sweden so I understand some of the references. 


Anyways, Stockholm was okay. It would have been better if we made it to the world's largest IKEA.  

Blog Fail: Amsterdam

Keeping up with a blog is a lot harder than I thought it would be. But I've gotten numerous requests to update this silly thing so here is a month's worth of my life blogged in one day. I will start with Brussels and Amsterdam, which occurred exactly one month ago.

Brussels & Amsterdam
The weekend after Copenhagen we went to Brussels and Amsterdam - we as in Kevin and the four of us girls. Our trip quickly became known as the Spice Girls World Tour and as the fifth member of the group, Kevin was named Ginger Spice, a title that he was not too happy to have. He was a true champ though, dealing with the 4 of us and playing the roles of tour guide, photographer, and father.

Brussels should thank RyanAir for not flying into Amsterdam because it gets so much tourism from students like us who just want to pass through Brussels to get to Amsterdam. I wasn't expecting much from Brussels, but I was definitely impressed with the Grand Palace and the number of chocolate shops and waffle stands lining the streets. It certainly smelled like heaven to me.

Beautiful chocolate eggs

After a morning spent in Brussels we took a bus to Amsterdam and the aroma that filled the air there was a huge change from Brussels, but still a nice one. We were sort of hollered at as we made our way to our hostel, but when the two guys saw that we were walking into our oh so cool Christian hostel, they changed their minds. Staying in a Christian hostel was definitely an interesting experience given that we were in Sin City Amsterdam. I had to hide in the corner of my room behind a bed to drink my bottle of wine, we weren't even allowed to visit the boy's dorms, and we had to come back from the night looking presentable, as if we were in high school again trying to make it past our parents. Also, we traveled all the way from Oslo, Norway and what do we hear as we are checking into our hostel? NORWEGIAN. Yep, there were Norwegian girls in our hostel as well. In addition to a really unfriendly girl who we renamed Calypso because she looked just like the character from Pirates of the Caribbean. For those who need a refresher on what she looks like:

Yeah it was not fun waking up to that face staring at you. 

Amsterdam was such a beautiful, bright city. During the day we rented bikes and rode along the canals and through a park. We also stopped at the Picasso museum and had lunch outside in the sun. 

5 bikes locked to each other. Had someone stolen all five at once, we would have been very impressed with the robber

The city does a complete 180 during the night. Our Christian hostel was adjacent to the red light district so we just bar hopped throughout the red light district during the night. At first I was really shocked by the prostitutes in the windows but after an hour it was like, "Ehhhh another pathetic looking prostitute. What a terrible life". We also walked into some funny shops where we found a toy called "The Destroyer". 

Amsterdam was extremely fun, filled with inappropriate laughs, and we came out of it knowing that God will always love us no matter what we do.

Copenhagen Cruisin'

For how often I look at Groupon, I have actually never bought anything because my conscience kicks in before the credit card does and it goes "You don't need it. You never would have spent money on that". But my Groupon virginity was taken when a deal for a cruise from Oslo to Copenhagen was only $25. Our entire floor plus others in the building bought the deal and we went to Copenhagen for the weekend.

The deal was 2 people for $50 so we booked in pairs thinking that we would have to share a cabin with one other person, but once we got on the boat and looked at our boarding passes we realized that we all had separate rooms...as in our living situation was better on the boat than in our dorm rooms in Oslo. The cruise itself was a lot of fun. We took advantage of empty bars and discotheques, climbing apparatuses on the upper deck, and "free items" on the ship.

Once we got to Copenhagen we realized that no one had a map or any clue of what to do so we just started walking around. Eventually we got a map from a mini mart and made our way to Christiania, which is an autonomous part of Copenhagen. It's grungy and no pictures are allowed inside otherwise your camera will be smashed so here is one picture from the outside.

Lots of psychedelic murals inside

The city itself is beautiful. The canals throughout the city look exactly like they do in pictures. I can imagine how lively it gets in the spring and summer time and can't wait to go again with my parents when they come to visit at the end of June.

After a confusing one hour water taxi up and down Copenhagen, we finally made it to the Little Mermaid, another statue that in my opinion is overrated. Europe really loves their small insignificant statues. It's okay though because Adrien did his own interpretation which was much more entertaining. 

There were some complications coming back into Oslo but we all made it home tired and exhausted from a very eventful weekend.

Andrea's Visit

Sorry for the lack of blog posts these past couple of weeks...I have literally been all over Europe. Bear with me please, there will be posts coming one right after the other.

So Andrea came to Oslo the first weekend in March. My first visitor! It started off a bit rough because the morning of her flight I went to the ski championships where Sally and I met some fine Alaskan men who were generous with their liquid supplies to keep warm - hence I passed out midday and slept through my alarm to get Andrea at the bus station and left her stranded for about an hour. I think everyone I've told this story to has been like "WTF YOU ARE THE WORST FRIEND", and all I have to say is yes, yes I am. But at least out of all my friends Andrea is the one who can handle it the most. Literally woke up to her phone call and ran to the bus station, face still covered in "USA USA" from the championships.

I think mother nature must have known she had to impress when Andrea came to Oslo because the weather was  the best I had ever experienced in Oslo that weekend. The sun was out everyday, it was in positive temperatures, and I even got a little hot in my winter coat. I'm glad I got a visitor because I finally got to see all the tourist attractions in Oslo. You'd think after 2 months here I would have seen some more sights but I had that mindset of  "Oh, I'm here for 6 months. I'll make it there eventually". We spent over an hour and probably 2 miles walking around Vigeland Park trying to find that famous naked baby statue. I was under the impression that it was a huge statue because it's one of the most famous pieces in the park...but after wandering around we had to ask a Norwegian where it is. Turns out its like a 2 foot statue on a rail of a bridge. Lame. I don't understand famous artwork.

Fuck you baby 

Beautiful weather

We only had one full day of sightseeing because the second day we spent being true Norwegians - skiing. In the morning we went cross country skiing. For any of you who know Andrea, I did not expect her to do well. Surprisingly she made it down a huge hill that most people eat it on and only fell once on a tiny tiny hill. Of course that had to be documented since she was stuck for a while and had to be helped by a man skiing by.

Her legs got a bit twisted too

Then we spent the rest of the day at Holmenkollen Ski Jump to watch part of the ski championships. Beautiful weather and world ski championships? Andrea definitely picked the best weekend to come.

FIS Nordic World Ski Championships

I don't have tickets to any of the events for the world ski championships but we did go to the opening ceremony Wednesday night. The city is also decorated beautifully with ice/snow sculptures of Edvard Munch's artwork for the championships.

Go America!

I didn't physically see this because I was too short to see past the crowd, but I guess this is what the stage looked like.

Death and Love

The Scream

The Kiss

At the opening ceremony we met an American woman living in Oslo who gave me her number and invited the other Maryland boys and me over for dinner sometime. She asked me to call her so I have to be the one to make the first move. Not something I like doing. But after everyone convinced me it will be okay since there are 4 of us, I decided to give her a call last night. No one picked up. I wonder if she'll call back. 

London > Classes

My class skipping last week continued with a trip to London to visit Andrea. 4 days was the perfect amount of time to see all the major attractions without being exhausted at the end of the day. I think I actually saw everything and even got fish and chips for only 3 pounds! The city has a different feel from Oslo - much more sophisticated and populated. One thing though that is similar to Oslo are the high prices for everything. Womp.

I was completely overwhelmed when we went to Harrods. I knew it was an upscale store but I expected it to be more like Saks Fifth. Nope. Saks Fifth is like Walmart compared to Harrods. Harrods was HUGE. A maze of designer clothes, shoes, toys, home decor, kidswear, accessories, and pet things. We picked up a scarf that was 950 pounds! It even had 2 gift shops just for the store. If we even got close to touching something there was always someone a couple feet away from us watching to make sure we didn't ruin it.

Harrods

Designer pillows for your dog? Why not.

Camden was the most interesting part of London. It had tons of quirky shops and delicious smelling food places. We were bombarded with free samples of chicken just walking down the food strip. And other times when they wouldn't openly offer us samples we'd just stick our hands out and ask for them. It worked most of the time.

They had fish pedicures where the fish would swim around (and eat stuff from?) your feet

Places to sit 

Andrea and I managed to get many people to fall in love with us, including a duck inside Regents Park. You may think it was just hungry and begging for food, but really it fell in love with me.

It came right up to me and put its beak against the fountain <3

And here are some touristy pics:

Lions in Trafalgar Square

Had to.

Getting back to my bed in Oslo was problematic and tiring. First the bus back to downtown Oslo was delayed so I arrived after the last metro. Since I didn't want to pay for the cost of a taxi by myself, I opted to sleep in the bus terminal for 4 hours. Doesn't sound too terrible...but the heat wasn't on, they would only let me sleep sitting up instead of lying down, the bathroom cost 10 kroner, and there was a questionably drunk homeless man winking at me and asking "Hvordan har du det?" Google translate that if you don't know Norwegian.

Barcelona

I don't know anything about architects and architecture, but I think Gaudi may be my new favorite architect. I took my first trip to Barcelona two Saturdays ago to visit my dearest C squared, aka Cindy Castro. I arrived in Barca only to discover that my phone doesn't work internationally, which resulted in Cindy and I wandering around lost at the train station looking for each other for over an hour. Mucho stressful and I freaked out a little but luckily we spotted each other.

I did the usual touristy Barca things and tried to do the bar to club and dance all night scene but my body (and feet) could not last all night and I had to call it quits at around 3 or 4am. It really is a whole different world in Spain. Everything is so laid back and relaxed. No one rushes. Everyone walks so slowly without a care about where they have to be. And they party all night long.

Park Guell and Sagrada Familia were my favorite things that I saw. Both are designed by Gaudi. So beautiful and colorful - like it belongs at the beach.

Sagrada Familia. Construction started in 1882 and won't be completed until 2025! 

Park Guell

Mosaic ceiling in Park Guell

I spent my Valentine's Day with Cindy and 2 of her friends. We went to a Chinese restaurant in the Gracia neighborhood. Oddly enough our server started speaking to me in Mandarin Chinese so I had a conversation with her in Chinese. Who would have thought I would need to whip out my Chinese in Spain? Thanks mom for 13 years of Chinese school. She ended up giving us more food in our orders because she felt bad we were students. After our Valentine's Dinner we went to a really cool lounge called Sham's Lounge that had Buddha decorations and couches everywhere. The atmosphere was very cozy and perfect for a relaxing night. The bartender charged me less than what I ordered so all in all it was a very awesome Valentine's Day.

Being in Barcelona was the first time since leaving America that I really experienced a language barrier. I don't know any Spanish and definitely don't know Catalan. I guess I've taken for granted that everyone in Oslo speaks English very well. The experience wasn't too horrendous though...I had Cindy to translate and speak for me. I was like her mute child in public.

I came home to snow and -20 degree Celsius weather in Norway. Typical. By the way, I walked around in jeans and a tshirt my first day in Barcelona. Man do I miss warm weather. 

Northern Lights

See aurora borealis in Norway: Check.

Aussie Day in OZlo and Happy New Year!

First of all - HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! and HAPPY (belated) AUSTRALIA DAY! We are such a cultural bunch.

There is, surprisingly, quite a large contingent of Australians in our exchange program. At one point I found myself in the kitchen surrounded by 9 Aussies and I was the only non-Australian. I haven't yet understood exactly why someone would leave the beautiful summer heat of Australia to come to the opposite side of the world in the middle of winter, only to go back to more winter once our program is over, but at least they are enjoying it. Last Wednesday (January 26th) the entire building celebrated Australia Day with the Aussies. Picture America's 4th of July in -16 degree Celsius weather (3.2 degree F). Completely wrong season and setting but the decorations more than made up for the lack of sun and warm weather.

The day was complete with Australian food, music, and chants. Almost made me wish I were Australian. 

All my classes have started. I am only taking 3 classes here: Norwegian Language, Norwegian Life and Society, and Marine Mammals. I really love my marine mammals class. The professor has some sort of connection to the fishing world and said that if he is able to get one, we may be able to dissect (and eat?!) a dolphin later in the semester. How fucking awesome. We would never be able to do that at Maryland. 

Kevin, Silvia, and I explored the Oslo Opera House this week. It is such a beautiful building. The roof of the opera house angles straight into the harbor and goes into the water. It opened in 2008 and won a world architecture award. Our floor just booked tickets (the cheapest ones possible) to see the ballet Don Quixote in March at the Opera House. Now I just need to find a nice outfit to wear. 

All the people here from different countries have been cooking traditional meals from their home countries. Like today for the Chinese/East Asia New Year, the Koreans cooked tons of  Korean dishes. Saturday night the French kids are cooking a French dinner. I really want to do something American but 1) I don't know what traditional American dishes are and 2) I'm an awful cook. I thought maybe a Thanksgiving Dinner would be representative of America but I can't seem to find any turkeys here. Or a place to buy flip flops for that matter. My flip flops broke this week and I have been a mess without them. Do you know how hard it is to find flip flops in the middle of winter in Norway? It's actually impossible. So impossible that I got desperate and ordered some off Ebay. It may be cold in Norway but I still need my thongs. 

Falling Everywhere

So I rented cross country skis for 3 months. I feel like a fool when I'm skiing but it is quite the workout. We've been going out on the trails behind our apartment building and met this little 9 year old boy Andreas who helps us and races against us. It's not really a race because he can ski two laps to every one of ours but hes adorable anyways. There is also a gym in our student village that isn't university affiliated and we found out this week that it is the Olympic training gym for the national ski team...or something like that. No wonder there are all these super fit, super fast Norwegians skiing laps around (and laughing at) us.

We haven't ventured outside of the city yet, although I hope to leave the country soon to buy alcohol and other necessities since everything here is so ridiculously overpriced. Norway is an extremely green, ft nation so anything that is detrimental to your health is purposely outrageously priced. Smoking, drinking, and driving your own car are expensive habits to have in Norway. Last week we did a lot of city touring. The Nobel Peace Center, where they hold the meetings to discuss the prize, is located in the heart of Oslo. There is this eerie sign attached to the building that lights up "SLAUGHTER" but the S flickers so it reads "LAUGHTER". It seems almost satanic in front of the Nobel Peace Center, like it should be the setting of a clown horror film.

Seriously?

Oh and by the way, this is the scenery around the Nobel Peace Center:

Stunning

I still don't have a roommate. Everyday I come back to my apartment, I wonder if someone new will be there. The University housing messed up and tried to put a boy from the Czech Republic into my room but our rooms are not cogender. Nor would I be comfortable sharing my bedroom with a boy. No worries though because my flatmate kicked him out and sent him somewhere else immediately. 

My sheets were the cheapest ones at IKEA. They feel like dryer sheets. 

With all the skiing, icy roads, late nights, and bad traction, I find myself falling a lot. I have a terrible bruise on my knee and my entire body hurts, but it is so fun!