You Bring the "Yam" and I'll Bring the "Yelly": Losing Steam...

OK OK, I acknowledge that I only managed to post a grand total of ONE blog entry for the month of October. Remember the good old days where I updated my blog once a week? It's not that I'm necessarily busy or anything, it's mostly the fact that I didn't travel anywhere special during this month, and I suppose I have gotten comfortable enough here that my daily experiences no longer seem worthy of writing about. The culture shock has more or less worn off... my body is adjusting to the cold little by little, cheese slicers no longer make me uncomfortable, and I can last an entire bus ride without laughing at the funny norwegian names that the conductor calls out for various stops. The latter particularly is quite an accomplishment for me. I have really settled in here and have far fewer of those moments where I think: "Holy s*&#, I'm in Norway".

I'm realizing now that 5 months is not nearly enough time to be abroad... now that I'm completely comfortable here it is getting closer to when I have to leave. I have less than 2 months left! I can't believe how quickly this entire experience is flying by. There is so much I still haven't done yet, but I don't have any regrets at this point, because I feel like I'm in this country for such a short amount of time that I would rather completely immerse myself in it than travel to different countries every weekend like many of the other americans here do. I am pretty jealous of them: a weekend in Paris or Greece-- I mean you can't really beat that. Nonetheless, regardless of what a small country Norway is, there is so much to see and do, and so many interesting people that I'm not willing to sacrifice my limited amount of time here to travel too much. The rest of Europe will still be there when I graduate, but I don't know that I will ever have the opportunity to LIVE in another country again. I intend to make the most of it!

This month I more or less stayed in Oslo (exceptions: a few trips to Sweden to buy food/drink, but crossing the border to smuggle cheap goods back doesn't really count as leaving the country, methinks). A lot of my friends had visitors from their home countries, so we did a lot of touristy stuff with them, which was nice because there were a few gaps I had missed somewhere along the way when I first arrived here. We checked out the Nobel Prize Peace museum (yes, I am going to go there in December when President Obama comes to visit me) which was a first for me. They had this really cool exhibit "From King to Obama", and it was pretty interesting to see the Norwegian perspective of our new President. I'm going back soon with another friend who hasn't seen it yet, so I'll post pictures later. Along with friends' visitors, I had my own American friend (and roommate of the past 3 years), Karen come visit me. She is studying abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland right now, and she and 2 of her English friends with fun accents moseyed on over to Oslo last weekend for a short but sweet visit. It was absolutely wonderful having her here: it was so strange to have a slice of home amidst my new life here, but it was such a comfort to have someone around that has known me for more than 3+ months, and who is culturally similar if not identical to me. It was definitely good to have her here, especially because I was starting to get anxiety about the prospect of returning to the United States. Seeing an old friend was a good reminder that as much as I love the people and my life here, the most important people in my life are still and always will be all of you back home-- so at least I can look forward to being with all of you again when I leave here.

When I'm not entertaining visitors or going out with friends, I am attempting to pass my classes here. Now that papers are due and exams are looming on the horizons, I am belatedly getting my rear into gear. I am just hoping to god that I will be able to pass all of my classes so that I can still graduate early from UCSD in March. Instead of reading that statement to mean that I am a giant slacker, you should think outside of the box and offer creative explanations that I can throw at my parents when they lecture me on skype. So far, all I've been able to come up with is: I'm studying abroad, it's more important that I get out there and EXPERIENCE the country than sit in a classroom and read about it. :/ Eh, it will be ok. I am glad I am sticking it out with my Norwegian language course. Unfortunately, the speaking and understanding it part is difficult, but I actually can read and write it with very little problem. It sounds useless, but as it turns out many of my Norwegian friends here can speak and understand English with little difficulty (thank you American TV/movies/music for dominating airwaves everywhere), but many of them cannot write or read it easily without google translate to help them out. So in general, we compromise by speaking in english and texting in Norwegian... which I think is fair because it benefits me the most. :)

Since I truly have no interesting stories to tell, let me just throw some fun facts at you to sum up the month.

- Season's changing is a weird concept to these Californian eyes... how did the leaves all fall off the trees that fast? They just changed colors, for Pete's sake!

- The temperature is at freezing point (literally 0 degrees Celsius) or lower every day. They are predicting snow early this winter. FML

- But it's OK because I bought a snowboard... only 200 crowns (like 35 bucks, and one of my roommates is going to buy it off of me when I leave). Bring on the snow, Norway!

-There is frost on the ground all the time now and I am slipping all over the damn place. Time to get some spikes on the bottom of my shoes so I can make it to and from class in one piece!

-I got bored of being one of 43985340939582 other blondes here, and in the spirit of disguising oneself for halloween... I dyed my hair red again!

Blondes really don't have more fun, I assure you.

The month of November should be RICH with blog posts, because it is jam packed with various weekend trips/activities. I am traveling to Bergen, Trondheim, and Stavanger (the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th biggest cities in Norway after Oslo, respectively). I am also heading over to Scotland to visit Karen for a weekend, and am hoping to squeeze in a weekend trip to Stockholm as well. Given that there are only so many weekends in one month, Stockholm might have to wait til December-- although I would rather not since all of my exams are that month and I plan to use up my last month here playing in snow and becoming an expert snowboarder :P . It should be a great month, and my goal is to return to weekly blog updates for November since I'm actually going to be doing things worth writing about. It will happen, you just wait and see!

Jeg elsker dere alle!

-Samantha

P.S. In the spirit of Halloween: bonus skype shots featuring the Hansen black (and white) cat! Oh, and Sonny too!