This week we've been working on our film project. Silje and I worked together to make a film about oranges. ("Apple scenes") It was a really simple film with very little plot and such. But that was kinda the point. Anyway we didn't have time to film anything before Monday (even though we should've been done filming and ready to edit on Monday morning... oops) so we did it all on Monday and Tuesday morning. Then we started using the editing program. I hate computers. Oh my god it was so ridiculous, we tried to upload several stop motion scenes for our film but the program hates stop motion apparently and it took us an entire two days to get everything imported into the program. Yesterday we finally finished fiddling around with it and Silje uploaded it to youtube. I don't think I'll become a big filmmaker anytime soon. It was fun filming though, just not editing.

Next week we have a guest teacher and will start our three day book art project. The class/workshop/whatever is called "book as an art object," it sounds pretty exciting.

I also sold two items on Etsy in the past week, which was exciting. Except the post office charged me almost the entire price of the item i shipped, which sucks. It's freaking expensive sending anything in the mail here. I also was pretty disturbed the other day when I found out that the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the American. It's ridiculous how much the exchange rate has changed between dollars and kroner since I came.

VASKESANGEN-- to the tune of Mamma Mia

Mamma mia, det er meg igjen
Mitt, mitt navn øverst på lista
Mamma mia, jeg får nok litt skjenn
Når, når de ser at jeg "ditcha"
Nei, jeg kan ikke vaske
Har et image, en maske
Hva, hva vasker vi for uansett?
Mamma mia, alle med litt vett
Vet, vet at i går vi vaska rent

Se hvor skittent det er, her er en svinesti
Men jeg liker det sånn, og det sparer meg tid
Tenk så frisk duft, når du vasker skitt
Ute er luft, bare sitt her og slapp av litt

Nå skal ikke du vœr sœr!
Just one look--her er konflikt uten tvil
One more look--vi får nok aldri en deal

Mamma mia, her har ingen vœrt
Med, med skureklut og bøtte.
Mamma mia, hvor er dagens vert?
My, my, jeg må nesten "fløtte"
Her er kattevasker
Gjort av no' slabbedasker
Ser, ser de ikke all rot og skitt?
Mamma mia, tenk om huset mitt
Var sånn, tenk så sint jeg hadde blitt!

..............

TRUSETYVSANGEN

Trusetyven kom til meg
Jeg skal si deg hva jeg mener,
gi deg straffen du fortjener
Du bør passe deg

Trusetyven du er frekk
Jeg er i en dyp og stor sorg
Dovre, Sloggi, Cubus, Bjørn Borg
--alle er nå vekk

Trusetyven rensket bord
Her er ingen truse trygge,
Han tok til og med de stygge
de til bestemor

Trusetyven kom til oss
Du er gal og helt besatt
Vi skal virk'lig vise deg at
Nansens folk kan sloss

THE PANTY-THEIF SONG

Panty-theif, come to me
I will tell you what I think
Give you the punishment you deserve
You better watch out

Panty-theif, you are rude
I am in a deep sorrow
Dovre, Sloggi, Cubus, Bjørn Borg (panty brands)
All of them are gone now

Panty-theif cleared the table
No panty is safe here
He even took the ugly ones
The ones that belonged to grandma

Panty-theif come to us
You are crazy and completely obsessed
We will really show you that
Nansen's people can fight!

.............................................

GRAND FINALE

Dette er løftet vårt
fra bror til bror
Vi vil bli gode mot
menn'skenes jord
Vi vil ta vœre på
skjønnheten, varmen
som om vi bar et barn
varsomt på armen

Nansen
Dialog og humanisme
Kamp mot fordom og rasisme
Fred og forsoning er alle tings arche
Det ene, gode, skjønne
Russland, Balkan, Ibsen, Hegel,
Enhet i mangfold

Nansenskolen
Kjœrlighet og fred

(because) All you need is love!...

Nansen
Dialog og humanisme
Kamp mot fordom og rasisme
Fred og forsoning er alle tings arche
Det ene, gode, skjønne
Russland, Balkan, Ibsen, Hegel,
Enhet i mangfold

Nansenskolen
Kjœrlighet og fred

Nansenskolen
er alle tings arche!

....................

We just put on a musical we started creating on Friday night. It was about daily life at Nansenskolen, with everything from our philosophy classes to the infamous panty-thief we have roaming around the laundry room. We rewrote many well known songs with our own texts to fit into our storyline. It turned out pretty awesome even though lots of people messed up on the songs since we had so little time to prepare. It went well overall, though.

Also, I was mentioned on the radio today! Apparently they mentioned Skogfjorden and talked about what it was, and that both Norwegian and American students can go there to learn. They mentioned that an earlier Skogfjorden student is studying now at Nansenskolen! They didn't say my name but my teacher knew it was me and told me this morning when I went to class. It was exciting.

Here are some pictures from our winter week. We all made ice/snow sculptures. My sculpture is a woman reading. She's in the two first pictures, the others were made by the rest of the art students. I'll put more up later, I stole these from a friend.

Last week we had a Sami film festival, so most of the week we had lectures and watched films at the Lillehammer movie theater. It was a fun week but by the end of it everyone was so tired of movies. I think we saw about 3-4 movies a day. All week. It was a bit much. But I did learn a lot, and it was interesting. Definitely worth it.

This week we started a new unit. Our art class is roughly 15 people (actually I think now we're at 14... people have been coming and going so I'm not quite sure anymore) and we are split up into 3 groups. One group worked with filmmaking this week, another with a kind of photo process (which I don't entirely understand yet), and then my group had installation this week. We had to work in groups for this installation, so it was somewhat hard to come up with an idea. None of us were too motivated for this project either, but that's just mostly due to the fact that we were split up into groups by the teacher. So I was with Silje, Odd, and Margit. Odd and Margit are two of the older students in the class, I'm not sure how old Margit is but Odd is about 64.

We ended up making the printmaking room into a torture museum, and basically had a performance giving a tour around the room, explaining how all the items inside were used as torture devices. It was pretty over the top but that's why it was fun.

Besides working on the installation I've also tried some stop motion animation on my computer and made two new paintings.











Next week our class is going to be outside making snow/ice sculptures. Our teacher has named the unit "experiencing a season." He's kinda goofy. He knows what he's doing though and that's what counts.

During Thanksgiving break I was busy working on my final semester project. We got a week off from classes in order to focus on this project, and the art line actually got an extra week to finish up while we had classes. I created a concentration of dream pictures which I displayed in our elevstua (student lounge). The last week of school was spent presenting our various projects to the rest of the school, which was exciting. On the last Friday we had a party where everyone dressed up. The choir sang, followed by the entire school singing Norwegian Christmas carols and dancing around the Christmas tree. We had a special Christmas (or preChristmas) dinner and our student president made a speech about all the things he's learned this semester. Basically it was a bunch of inside jokes from our school, where every student was mentioned or referred to in some way. After dinner we had a bunch of activities in our big lecture room upstairs, followed by a dance.

On Sunday after school ended I met Sven in Amsterdam. We were there for three days, then took a plane to Cardiff in Wales. We stayed in a hostel there one night, then we took a train from Cardiff to Salisbury. We got to see Stonehenge and the Salisbury Cathedral that day before taking a train to London. London was by far the best city we visited. We saw so many art museums during our trip, I'd guess around 6 (in 8 days).

After our vacation we went to Grace's house and spent Christmas with her and her family. It was really nice and relaxing, which we needed after having such a jampacked vacation. We were there for a few days then stayed with Astri in Oslo for a few days. We spent New Years with Karl and his friends who I had met at the Bare Egil Band concert in October.

On the third of January we came back to Lillehammer. Sven came to some classes with me. I showed him Maihaugen and the Olympic Stadium. We had a little birthday party for him on the 9th, and the day before he left we went out for pizza with some friends (it was the first time I'd been to a restaurant in Lillehammer, Norway is really REALLY expensive).

Since Sven left I've mostly been working on my art. I finally got my Christmas presents from my parents when Grace was here on Thursday for a teacher's institute thing, and since then I've been practicing violin a lot.

And yesterday Silje took me out skiing for the first time. Grace loaned me a pair of cross-country skis, but they're really old apparently and don't work too well. It was kinda cool though because since there's so much snow here and they don't plow their streets here we literally skied all the way up to Maihaugen from our dorm and then back. I fell down a lot. At the top at Maihaugen we had to switch skis because Silje's are a lot better than mine and she could manage on mine because she was more experienced, but they were way too difficult for me to handle.

Anyway here are some pictures from our vacation:
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003799&l=8c274&id=1156350124
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003864&l=4b195&id=1156350124
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003865&l=d5e66&id=1156350124
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003866&l=36a20&id=1156350124

The view from my dorm window

One of my electives at school is drama, which is in the form of four weekend workshops throughout the year. The first weekend was a few weeks ago and we worked with improvisation. It was a lot of fun! We spent all weekend playing improvisation games and on Sunday we had a little presentation for anyone at the school who was interested. We had a little audience and just did some more of the exercises we had been working with during the weekend, all on the spot. It was exciting to try something so different from anything I'd ever done before, I'm looking forward to our next drama weekend.

Since I last wrote, we had open day at the school when lots of relatives and guests came. The whole day was an informational program combined with a fundraiser for an integrational school in Vukovar in eastern Croatia. We ended up making a LOT of money to contribute to the school, by selling books, artwork, hats and scarves that students here made and donated, food, raffle tickets, etc. Onkel Johan and Tante Jorun came, and so did Grace and Inger-Johanne. It was really nice to see them all again. Johan bought my still life painting, and I also sold several prints from our printmaking week.

We went on a day trip to Oslo a few weeks ago to visit three art galleries (I put pictures up on one of the links from the earlier entry). We got to see many different kinds of exhibits. The first museum (Steiners Museet) had Norwegian photography on display, as well as a special exhibit called "Equatorial Rhythms" with lots of film and music, plus some installation art. After the first museum we had an hour break to eat lunch. Silje and I didn't really feel like spending an insane amount of money on food in Oslo so we had made a packed lunch that we ate in the park behind the royal palace. We then met at Kunstnernes Hus on the other side of the palace and got to see an exhibit by a Swedish performance artist. It mainly consisted of pictures of his performances (balancing colored blocks on his head, covering himself in tar and feathers, filling an entire cathedral with glasses of river water, etc.). Upstairs in the gallery there were two moving installations that looked like something from a weird sci fi horror flick. They were mechanical structures that moved back and forth, one resembled a giant spider moving his legs up and down. There was creepy music in the background. It was huge, it must've taken forever to assemble. The last gallery we went to had a special exhibit of various Chinese artists. I took two pictures and then some lady yelled at me... I missed the sign saying there was no photography allowed. I kept the pictures though. Ha.

The week after our Oslo trip we started working with woodcutting. I had never tried woodcutting before. I am really glad we did though, there's a lot you can do with that technique. Since we began I have cut four different boards and printed dozens of pictures from them.

Every year at Nansenskolen the principal chooses a specific region or country which we study more in depth, and this year it was Turkey. We had two weeks in which we had guest speakers from Turkey or who had great knowledge of the country come and present different topics related to the nation. I enjoyed getting more concrete and in depth information about the country, because it was exactly the kind of education I never had at home. We never devoted an entire two weeks to a specific region or nation unless it had some profound connection to the United States or the overall topic of what we were studying in class. Anyway, I feel like I got a lot out of the lectures from that period.

Thanksgiving here was nice. We got our first REAL snowfall on Thanksgiving day. (I put pictures up.) My friend from camp who is studying in Oslo this year came to visit from Wednesday til Saturday. I showed him around Lillehammer, we walked around Maihaugen and I took him up to the Olympic Stadium, even though it wasn't open so we couldn't go inside. We made a few things to eat for dinner on Thursday and just set it out in addition to what we normally eat. We ended up just making mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry bread, but it was really good anyway. I kind of wanted to make more but we just didn't have the time.

My friend Katya left very early on Friday morning. She's the girl I painted the portrait of several weeks ago. She had to return home to take exams at her university in Moscow. Another Russian student from her school will come next semester. We miss her though! It was really sad to have to say goodbye already. Must be very strange for her roommate.

Last week and this week I've been working on my semesteroppgave, which is basically my final project of the semester. We were given a packet of suggestions for what the project could entail, but basically the two main things that are stressed for this assignment are showing the process of development (sketches to finished pieces) and that using many different media is favorable. Instead of choosing the free-choice assignment, which I kind of expected myself to choose, I opted for one of the teacher's suggestions. My project is to illustrate my dreams. I still have until next Monday to be completely done, but I'd say I'm over halfway done already. So far I have created over 11 pieces to display together as a concentration in the student's lounge. I planned out the project as using the entire wall as a timeline, showing the entire process of falling asleep, encountering many strange events and situations in one's dreams, to waking up in the morning and being influenced by what is left in one's mind of the illogical stories they dreamt up. I'm using many different techniques to make the pictures. So far I have woodcuts, acrylic paintings, drawings in marker and pen, a collage, and I have been using watercolor with other techniques as well.

The last two weeks we had been working on digital photography and photoshop, but this week we started working with printmaking. We have a guest teacher, Knut Tiberg. It's very fun, I'm learning a lot. So far I've finished four different pictures and I'm working on a fifth. I'm also in the middle of a painting of Katja, my friend from Russia. The ink from the printmaking stains your hands, though, so I feel so dirty all the time. We use this gel stuff and coffee grinds to wash it off, but it doesn't clean it entirely.

I'll put up pictures of my printmaking soon.

Trondheim
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002972&l=011d5&id=1156350124
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002982&l=4ca48&id=1156350124

Høstferie
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003102&l=9984f&id=1156350124
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003103&l=a2b3a&id=1156350124

Random pictures from school after høstferie and my artwork
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003210&l=83fcd&id=1156350124

Enjoy. :)

This was yesterday:


And this morning:

Pictures from Trondheimstur
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002972&l=011d5&id=1156350124
http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002982&l=4ca48&id=1156350124

So our trip to Trondheim was entertaining. I was pretty sick for most of it though, which kind of put a damper on things. On the first night we had pizza at a restaurant with the whole school and then went to a concert by the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. That was exciting. After the concert I set off with a group of friends to find a cafe to meet up with some other kids from school. Apparently no one in Trondheim has any sense of direction at all though because we asked like 7 people the way to Choco Boco, the cafe, and every single person told us a different way. Later on we found out that there were several cafes called Choco Boco, and that we had walked past two of them at least two or three times before we finally found the one we were looking for. And by that time it was 15 minutes until closing time and our friends had already left without letting us know. So it was kind of a pointless quest. My friends walked me back to the hotel I was staying at (there wasn't enough room at the hostel the first night so me a about 8 others stayed at a cheap hotel on the other side of the city). The next day I completely lost my voice. It was pretty pitiful.

We spent the rest of the Trondheim trip doing scheduled activities. Honestly I think it would've been more fun if we had had more free time, but I know that that's mostly because I was so sick and just needed a break sometimes. We took a trip to the police station (we actually divided into three groups, one went to the police station, one to the prison, and one to a homeless shelter--our headmaster said that if you are to study a culture, you have to visit such places) which was actually kind of boring. After that we visited the NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. By that time I had developed a fever and just wanted to go to sleep so I pretty much forgot everything that they said there. I took the bus back to the hostel afterwards at like 4ish and slept more or less until the next morning. I was so ridiculously exhausted, but it was nice because my roommate brought me back some yogurt and water, and my other friend brought me a big cup of tea.

I still had no voice the next day. We visited Nidarosdomen that day, the cathedral in Trondheim. That was really cool, I have always wanted to go there. We even got to go upstairs to this little room where most tour groups don't get the chance to see.

Of course as soon as we got back to Lillehammer I was healthy again. That's just how life works.

The week before høstferie (fall break) my billedkunst linje was working on installation art out in the woods. We spent all of our billedkunst hours working out in the forest with our installations, and at the end of the week we presented to the rest of the school. I thought it was a really fun week, I got to work with something I had never done before.

On Friday break began, so I left for Oslo and met up with two girls from Skogfjorden. We ate pizza at Peppe's Pizza with another Skogfjorden person and then us girls went to a DeLillos concert. It was pretty weird being there because I learned a lot of the language just by listening to that band's songs. Exciting though. We spent the night with the other Skog friend in his apartment and the next day took a trip to IKEA. I met Astri at the train station after we got done shopping and she took me back to her apartment after we bought groceries. Karl invited me to a concert that night as well, and since it was a band I had heard of I decided it would be fun. So we hung out with some of his friends beforehand and then saw Bare Egil Band at the same theater I had been to the night before.

On Sunday Per Kristian took me to this art exhibit in Oslo. As I was looking around the gallery I heard someone say my name so I turned around and it was my friend from Nansenskolen! I had no idea he would be in Oslo, since he lives in Bodø, but he explained that he was visiting his father in Oslo for the week since it's too far away to travel all the way to Bodø just for a week. It turns out he was at the Bare Egil Band concert too.

I met up with two other friends from Nansenskolen and another Skogfjorden friend during the next few days. When I was with my Skogfjorden friend the king was present at Storting, so there were guards lining Karl Johan and people were gathering around to see. We actually saw the king and queen drive past us! They waved! It was pretty ridiculous.

I moved to Asker with Harald on Thursday and hung out with their family for a few days before I came back to Lillehammer. It was a fun break but I was really happy to come back to school.

So I got a cold a few days ago and this morning I was feeling especially icky. I had a fever and a really sore throat, I had lost my voice and felt kind of dizzy. I asked Haleh, a girl on my floor, if she would pack me a snack from breakfast so that I could eat something when I was feeling well enough to get up. At 10:00 someone came and knocked on my door so I figured it was Haleh with my food, but I opened the door and it was three of my friends. They brought me tea and ibuprofen. They also gave me Castro's phone number in case I needed anything else. My friend Cecilie went out later and bought me cough drops. It's nice to know that if I'm not feeling well there are nice people here to take care of me.

This afternoon I was starting to feel better so I went for a walk with Nevena. I left my money at home so I wouldn't have to worry about spending too much. She lent me money to buy shampoo, but that's all I got. We found another second hand store, in addition to the one we already shop at, Fretex. The second one was closed when we got there though. It's right by the movie theater, library, and art museum, so we'll surely visit there again soon. Nevena saw some shoes in the window that she really wants.

Tomorrow we are going on a school trip to Trondheim until Saturday. I'm planning on leaving my laptop at home, so don't expect any news before Sunday.

We just got back from a walk to the art museum downtown. It's about 10 minutes walking distance from here and Nansenskolen students get free entrance anytime. We went as a class trip, but we are welcome to visit on our own time whenever we feel like it. We saw an exhibit of Norwegian and Swedish students of Matisse, which was pretty interesting. Mom would've liked it, I think.

My friend Silje from Bergen just switched what she wants to study, so instead of doing the writing course she will be in billedkunst with me. She started yesterday and we made brownies to celebrate. In class yesterday was the first day it actually felt like we got an assignment. We painted a still life with a teapot and two lemons but were only allowed black, white, and one other color. I chose red, and I guess it turned out ok but I thought it was kind of boring to spend 5 whole hours on a painting like that.

So far I have 3 finished paintings and four in progress. It's nice having lots of free time when I can just go in and work for as long as I want in the studio. We have big easles and big boards for drawings and paintings. Our desks have 4 drawers and a shelf underneath to store sketches and stuff. I like being able to spread out when I work.

So every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we have "fellestimer," which are obligatory for all students. On Monday we have Rektors time, where two students present something current and relevant. This week it was Nevena from Bulgaria and Dastan from Iraq. Nevena played a song and Dastan showed a short film on the history of Kurdistan. After that we had a discussion about musikkhistorie, but it was more about what music is and the math behind and such. It was interesting but the professor repeated himself a lot.

On Wednesdays we have filisofihistorie. I really enjoy that lesson, but sometimes it's hard to keep up. I end up taking a lot of notes on words I don't know rather than on the actual topic of the lesson.

On Fridays we have kulturhistorie. Today the topic is "ancient and middleage visual expression--between the objective and the subjective."

So I was hoping I would be able to take Russian language while I'm here, but apparently the art students and writing students can't do that because we have art class during that time. Also, the students studying Russian language and/or culture go on a trip to Russia, and the students studying the Balkans (another class I wanted to take but couldn't) will take a trip there. Art and writing students go on a trip to Oslo. The Norwegians are PISSED. I don't care that much, Oslo's cool. I'm disappointed I can't take those classes though.

Anyway the electives I chose were drama and choir. Choir is every Saturday for four hours, but it went by surprisingly fast last week. It was a lot of fun. We sang two songs in English, one in Latin, one in French, and one or two in Norwegian. We actually sang in front of a group of guests last Saturday, which we didn't know we would do until 15 minutes beforehand. Our professor just said "ok well... the principal asked if we could present for these people in about 15 minutes..." Whatever, it wasn't too bad, it was actually pretty entertaining.

Every Tuesday and Saturday we have a "peiskveld," fireplace evening. We gather in the main room with a fireplace and eat cake there is usually a presentation of some sort. The cake is exciting. Last week we had a poet from Lillehammer come read poetry to us. One of the poems was about Chicago. I didn't understand most of his work though because he wrote some in his dialect, which was apparently difficult for even some of the Norwegians to understand. He was entertaining though. On Tuesday we had a visit from the Balkans, a lot of people who work for the Nansen Dialogue Project in their home countries were here for a seminar or something. They left yesterday. Anyway for peiskveld on Tuesday one of the guests played guitar and sang. He was very talented.

So I'm getting things organized for our autumn break. On the 28th after we're done with kulturhistorie and lunch (12:15) I'm gonna get ready to head out by train for Oslo. I'm going to meet with two friends from Skogfjorden who are studying in Bø. We'll probably have dinner and then at 9:00 we're going to a DeLillos concert. I'm almost embarrassed to tell the Norwegians that. They're kind of an old, classic Norwegian band, but they're really popular at Skogfjorden so I really like them. It seems like all Norwegians think they're cheesy or something, I don't know. Anyway we're going to a concert and will probably spend the night in Oslo with another friend from Skogfjorden. The next day I would hope to take the train to Drammen and I'll be staying with Morten. Sylvia will be with her Mormor so her room is available. Anyway I bought my train ticket from Lillahmmer to Oslo yesterday. I doublechecked the date and time. And called Elise to confirm.

This week in class we've been figure painting. I finished mine yesterday. Or at least I think I'm finished. My teacher keeps telling us that we're never finished. Anyway I have all these big pictures in my studio space right now. I have two finished paintings, two in progress, and one large charcoal drawing (I used that picture as a resource when painting since we didn't have a model at the time). I also have a ton of charcoal and ink figuresketches under my desk, and have the first few pages of my sketchbook filled out. I'm glad I'm getting so much done already. I really want to buy some canvas though! It is nice however to be able to paint on paper and not worry about making it perfect.

I bought a shirt and a coat yesterday. Castro, Eva from Trondheim, Nevena and I went in to the sentrum yesterday because I wanted to buy stamps. They took me to Vero Moda, a clothing shop, and the three of us girls tried on trenchcoats that were on sale for 100 kr ($17.75). Eva and I bought one, they're actually pretty cute. I also bought a shirt for 20 kr ($3.59)!

We had laughter yoga yesterday. It sounded pretty eccentric and ridiculous so I figured I'd give it a shot. There really is no other way to explain it. Basically we stood in a circle, laughed, and did breathing excercises. It was awesome.

Well I'm going to go eat breakfast now. And then I'm going to go learn about culture. And then I'll probably go to a cafe so I can get off campus for awhile.

So school has begun and I actually have quite a bit of freedom. The first day of class we were given 15 colors of paint, several brushes of different sizes and told to get to work. No assignment or anything, the teacher just instructed us to start experimenting with different colors and blending, getting to know how the paint works. So basically last monday was spent painting from like 9:00 until 6:30pm, with several breaks for food and such. It was fantastic.

Tuesday and Thursday we had a model come pose for us. Today we have her again and we're working on figure painting this week. Last week was just figure sketching, very short poses. Today we're developing a drawing from one pose.

Pausen er ferdig, I'll add more later.

http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002851&l=a74b6&id=1156350124

Yesterday was fairly unstructured. We had a late breakfast and walked to Maihaugen, the open air museum in Lillehammer. It sounded kind of boring but I actually had a really good time! It was basically a collection of 27 buildings from earlier periods in Norwegian history, there was even a stavkirke. I found a cheap Norwegian sweater in the gift shop as well, it was on 35% sale for 455 kroner.

After we got back to the school it had really warmed up so everyone was sitting outside on the front lawn. It was nice to be able to enjoy one of the last days of warm weather out in the sun. I have been doing a lot of crocheting since I got here. So far I've made a hat and a scarf. A bunch of the girls at the school are actually planning on starting a sewing/crocheting/knitting/embroidering, etc club. There are a few yarn shops in town so we'll actually have something to do during the winter!

A bunch of us went to the sauna in the basement of the school last night. It was actually very nice, I don't usually like saunas. Our school rocks, basically.

Fjelltur! We climbed to the top of a nearby mountain yesterday. I took a ton of pictures, the view was absolutely incredible. One of my classmates told me that you could see almost to Trøndelag. We had snacks at the top and chilled there for awhile, then started our way back down again. For the most part it wasn't very steep, though, which was nice. We returned to school at 15.30 and had lunch. After lunch I was so tired I just chilled in my room for awhile trying to take a nap but didn't really get any rest. After dinner we walked to a nearby art gallery and one of my art teachers showed us her exhibit there. I really liked it, but some other people in my class didn't, they said it was "too simple." We chilled at the art gallery for awhile and I got to know some of my classmates even better. Everyone here is so nice, which surprised me kind of, since I had heard from several people that Norwegians tend to be very introverted and reserved. All of the people I've met here though are friendlier than most Americans.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2002810&l=d2ba0&id=1156350124

Pictures from yesterday and today

The program started yesterday, but for the first few days we're just doing a kind of orientation to get acquainted with the area and each other. Everyone is soooo nice here and there are quite a few international students, and even more students some have lived in Norway for a few years but are of international backgrounds as well. There are students here from Poland, Russia, Somalia, Ukraine, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Bulgaria, the USA, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, and more that I don't remember right now. Students range in age from 18 (I'm definitely the youngest here since I just turned 18 a few weeks ago) til 76 or something like that. I believe there are 12 students over the age of 50. There is a 60 yr old man from Massachusetts that I met about an hour ago who was a student here 40 years ago and wanted to come back to get a new insight and live in Norway again. There are also many hjemmeboere, people who live at home and commute to the school. I've met people from all parts of Norway as well, and the guy in my art line from Stavanger has definitely the most difficult dialect to understand. He speaks nynorsk, which is almost like a different language. At least it seems like that for me.

I met a faculty member who is from Hitra today! That's where my grandmother is from, in Trøndelag. It was pretty weird because I didn't think it was that well known of an island, and then as I was discussing this with him the man from Sri Lanka who has lived in Norway for several years came up and told us that his girlfriend has family on Hitra as well. Small world, it's weird because I recognized his dialect before he said he was from Hitra.

Yesterday I was in Lillehammer twice, once in the morning before the most of the students got here. I went with Viktoriya, Nemanja, and Nevena, the Serbian students and the Bulgarian student, to the Lillehammer police station to check in with our residence permits. We get our passports back next Tuesday with a stamp for permission to live in Norway this year. I also bought a mug at Fretex while we were downtown because you're supposed to have your own personal mug/cup for coffee and tea and stuff so that the school's mugs don't disappear. They're rather strict about it, I guess. I bought a yellow one (of course) for 10kr. Fretex is comparable to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, it's all donated items.

Yesterday we had a little introduction to the school and the students and faculty in the evening after dinner. We had to stand up and introduce ourselves, say where we're from, what we are studying, and something we like to do in our spare time. There are a lot of politically engaged people here, which I expected, but after having talked to them more I don't find it as intimidating as I did initially. Last night when we were all getting to know each other, wandering from group to group, I met the man from Iraq. The conversation was like this:
"So where are you from?"
"Iraq. And you?"
"Um... The USA."
"Ahaaaa. Then we have to talk!"

Oh my god it was so uncomfortable at first. He's really nice though. He's lived in Norway for the past 7 years with his family and he's 22 now. He is working a lot with the Norwegian Peace Center that is located here at Nansenskolen to discuss the war in Iraq and creating peace in other areas of the world as well. He is very friendly, not nearly as intimidating as he was when we first met. Yesterday.

There are 62 students here and room in the dorms for guests. The facilities here are fantastic. The school is almost 70 years old, it was created as a reaction to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe in 1937. It was closed for a while during the Second World War while the Nazis occupied Norway, but was opened again in 1946. In 1987 they had a really tragic fire in the old school building, there was a student with a mental sickness or something who tried to commit suicide in the building by setting it on fire. They lost circa 70 paintings, hundreds of books, everything in the teachers' offices and in the principal's office as well. Since then the building has been rebuilt and added onto, so everything looks fairly new and clean. There are huge windows in most of the classrooms, especially in the art room. It overlooks Mjøsa, Norway's largest lake, and the mountains on the opposite side. My room has a great view of the school building and the mountains across the lake as well, and gets a little bit of the wireless internet signal from the school building, since it's one of the closest rooms to that part of the school.

So... det var det. I'll write more later.