Week 5 : Oslo

Well this is the first time that I've sat down to write one of these and had no idea where to start. It's hard to have to write this on Monday because since it is a new week, it feels like last week is over and at the back of mind. Sunday afternoons are perfect because I'm writing about that week, but it's so close to being over that I don't feel like the post will be missing anything. But I didn't have the choice to do it yesterday because I didn't get back from Oslo until 10 at night. Now I feel like I have to dig back to remember what last week was like. It was a busy week last week, or at least it feels that way.

The week actually started off with me writing my last post on Monday night (duh if your someone like my parents who I know reads this every week you probably already knew that) ANYWAYS I'm mentioning this because something significant happened when I finished writing that. I went downstairs because I was hungry and I felt like I had been isolating myself in my room (writing that journal) for too long. So I cut myself a piece of bread and brown cheese with the special cheese cutter thing that looks like a shovel, and went to go eat it at the kitchen table. While I was eating my smørbrød (pretty sure that's what it's called...), ignoring the loud Norwegian coming from the other room, and looking out the window at the little red and yellow houses across the fjord (that's what I call it, I don't actually know what it is) as the sun began to go down, I realized that I now live in Norway and my life has become pretty Norwegian. Yes, it took me almost a full month of living here to realize that. And I can't explain what I mean when I say "my life has become Norwegian". Trust me I just tried to type it out 3 times but it just won't come out the right way. All I can really say is that I feel like I've adapted to the Norwegian ways of doing things, and do a lot of them now without a second thought.

Moving on, three things stick out in my mind when I think about last week. 1. I was very tired, probably from barely sleeping at the Conference that weekend. 2. All the classes in the Barbu building of my school were moved to the other one. This made me late for some classes, and "accidently" miss some others because the only teacher that said anything about it, said it in Norwegian. Also I had to walk up the steepest hill ever more times in one day than anyone should ever have to. 3. I studied A LOT of Norwegian. I reached a point where I realized I knew more than I thought I did, and that I could understand a lot of written Norwegian and some spoken. Then I figured out I could write in Norwegian and I was so excited I just wanted to learn more and practice all the time. So I started having small Norwegian conversations at school, spending all my classes hardcore studying my Norwegian books because suddenly they were so much easier to get through since Norwegian was becoming more familiar to me, and spending all my free hours in the library reading and translating Norwegian books. I've started translating my thoughts into Norwegian sometimes, and even automatically think some things in Norwegian now.

However I've sadly backpedaled a bit in the last few days with Norwegian because I was in Oslo. I practiced some whenever I spoke to Aase because I have to speak Norwegian (and she just realized I can understand her and speak the other day) but that's really it because I was so tired. Learning a language takes a lot of focus and effort, it can be very exhausting. For instance today I am so tired I didn't even try to study my books, I made it a "trying to understand spoken Norwegian day" a.k.a. listen to my teachers for 10 minutes and then spend the next 20 zoning out and so on. 

ANYWAYS, I went to Oslo this weekend with my host family because Ole had a sailing competition in Oslofjorden. We stayed at my host mom's brothers house (though she didn't come because she is in Scotland) because he lives right outside the city. We spent most of Friday afternoon driving to Oslo and dropping Ole's sailboat off at the place where the competition is held. On Saturday and Sunday, my host dad, Aase, my host mom's brother's family, and I toured through Oslo. We saw almost everything, from the roof of the Opera House to the main street to the new castle and the old fortress. Oslo is very unique. The city has so much variety. Every area of the city is different, it's a nice mixture of very old buildings, and very new, modern ones. Other than saying that I can't even begin to describe it. Oslo is just so different from any city I have ever been too.

There's actually a lot more I'd like to say, but I think I'll wrap this up here. I really want to comment on things such as Norwegian food and restaurants, school, prices, ect. but I think I'll save that for another time when I haven't already written so much.