Sorry for just posting! It has been a rad first two weeks here in Oslo so far, I have much to tell you 😉

So, that Tuesday two weeks ago was Orientation Day! Whoo!

Orientation was at 9:30 in the Georg Sverdrups Hus, which is basically the main library on campus, even though each of the 8 faculties have their own library in their buildings. The equivalent of the MIKC on the UNR campus.

We had a welcome lecture from the top dog of the school, I think he was he dean or the president, can’t really remember, but he did have some good dad jokes!

Also, forgot to mention in my last post that I was able to try some Norwegian food. The first thing that I tried was called “brunost”, which is the most beloved cheese of Norge. This is a brown cheese that has a slightly caramel flavor to it. Very good! It is made from goat milk whey.

I also tried their mackerel on bread with what I am assuming was mayonnaise. This was also very good! Incuded with this food, was a ham product, which I did not try for obvious reasons, and there was additionally fruit platters and an orange drink similar to Fanta.

After this orientation day there was an ice skating social at a “rink” close to downtown. Now, when I say “rink” I don’t mean what you would traditionally assume an ice rink to look like. This rink was basically a sheet of natural ice in what is like a playground setting, it would seem someone had just hosed down a large flat area at the park and let it freeze over night. There were no side walls for any newbies to hold on to to prevent falling. I did not skate because organized physical group activities are really not my thing. Also, the weather was pretty crappy for being out and about, let alone ice skating.

P.S. Norwegians really like bread and “samiak” which is a salted black licorice, delicious! And don’t forget regular old yummy chocolate.

That night was also the first night that I actually made real people food! I made stuffed bell peppers; the stuffing had rice, chicken, more bell peppers, and spices. Good stuff! I almost burnt it though because I forgot that Americans are weird and use Fahrenheit, when the rest of the world uses Celsius. OMG. I had set the oven to 275 degrees celsius, yikes. That’s 400-something degrees fahrenheit.

I think there was another outing at a pub somewhere, but honestly, I’m not much of a pub goer. Seems like a lot of forced social awkwardness since you don’t know your buddy group that well and can’t really be completely comfortable with them yet. Ugh. I have 6 months to get comfortable though, so who cares about one or two missed nights of elbow to elbow, shouting into ears, and interesting people watching pub crawls.