Week 6 : A Turn Around

Since I didn't really do anything worth writing about this week, I'm just going to focus most of this on things about Norway that I want to talk about. But I am going to say that I started off the week in a bad mood; I was tired but I couldn't sleep, and just basically annoyed by everything. But around Wednesday night, I got sick of being in a bad mood and constantly mentally complaining to myself about dumb things. So I guess I decided I was going to do something to turn my mood around, and start off the next day as a good day. When I woke up on Thursday morning I saw that I had made a list on my computer about what I can do to be a better exchange student. So I made that day a good day, and I made the next day a better day. And even though I didn't do much this weekend, it was still a good weekend.

But anyways, time to talk about some aspects of Norwegian culture I find interesting or different.

Language: Norwegian is a very...interesting language. It looks very strange to someone like me, who really only knows English, and a little Spanish. It's a whole bunch of K's and J's and V's, and Ø's and Æ's and Å's of course. I would say pronunciation is the hardest part, and it's taken me until about last week to get a good grip on it. This has become confusing because I now I can look at an English word and almost immediately think of the Norwegian pronunciation. Sometimes I can hear a word in Norwegian be able to work out the spelling, which you would know is very difficult to do if you've ever seen a Norwegian word and then heard it. But the cool thing about Norwegian is that it is closely related to Swedish and Danish, and Icelandic (kind of, Icelandic is techinically Old Norse). So closely related in fact, I can understand some Danish and Swedish already. 

The other day my family and I were watching this show, and they were speaking something that sounded like a very strange dialect with regular Bokmål Norwegian subtitles. I could understand all the subtitles, but understanding the spoken part was difficult. Just as I was getting ready to mentally complain about how I can read Norwegian perfectly hard but listening to it so hard, my host mom told me it was actually Danish. Then I got excited because I was understanding some Danish. It sounds funny though, Norwegians describe it as 'it sounds like they are speaking with a potato in their mouth'. 

Also, this week my Norwegian class watched a movie in Icelandic with Swedish subtitles. That's what I mean about the languages being so interchangable. I could understand some of the Swedish, and a tiny bit of the Icelandic was familiar, but I gave up after 5 minutes because I didn't want to confuse Swedish with Norwegian.

Although this week I was kinda lazy with my Norwegian (I'm not really sure why...) I'm going to be asking my host family to stop speaking English with me soon. I know enough that I think I'll be able to manage. I'll probably still speak a good bit of English at school though. Right now all my friends speak Norwegian to me and to each other at lunch or during class, because generally I can understand. I'm free to join in and speak in English or Norwegian, and they'll answer me in Norwegian. Like the other day I sat outside with some girls from my class and they had a 30 minute conversation in Norwegian, and I could tell you at almost every point in the conversation what they were talking about. I call that progress!

Food: A month and a half in and I'm still confused by Norwegian food. It's very different from American food but I can't exactly explain how. They don't have snacks like we have, if you're hungry you have a sandwich. The food is healthy in general though. I'm not sure how to explain this, so I'm just going to go through the day describing how we eat. 

For breakfast I have yogurt, but you can also have smørbrød. Smørbrød literally translates to 'butter bread', and is basically a piece of bread with butter and a topping. The toppings range from liverpaste, cheese, jam, shrimp, fish, salami, ham, nutella, peanut butter, ect. 

This is also what you have for lunch in your matpakke. I usually have 2 smørbrød's with cheese, wrapped up in greaseproof paper. My school cafeteria also has sandwiches you can buy, 'pizza' (it doesn't really look like pizza), fruit, and yogurt. My favorite kind of yogurt here is called Go' Morgen, and it's some kind of yogurt with a topping on the side that you dunk in.

If I get hungry during the day sometimes I'll go get a yogurt at the grocery store, and every once in a while chocolate. Norwegian chocolate is amazing, so good in fact, I don't think I'll ever be able to eat American chocolate again. In comparison, American chocolate sucks.

Within an hour of when I get home we eat dinner. This is different every night, but it usually is fish and potatoes. I think I eat potatoes at least 6 out of 7 nights a week. I am not exaggerating.

Other 'typical' Norwegian foods include: brunost, knekkebrød, Norwegian cheese, and some others that I don't remember. Brunost is brown cheese, but somehow isn't technically cheese at all. It doesn't taste like cheese at all though. I can't describe the taste, but some people say it is like caramel and peanut butter. Brunost is a hit or miss with both exchange students and Norwegians, you either love it or hate it. I have decided I like it. knekkebrød is dried bread that you put butter and a topping on like smørbrød. It's loud and hard, and also healthy, but I like it. And then there is ACTUAL cheese, which I have been told is called Norwegian cheese. It tastes exactly like Swiss cheese and even has holes. Either the Swiss or Norwegians are confused.

Also I have to mention that milk is a really big deal here. I think my family buys more milk than bread, and that's saying something. And school people go buy these tall milk cartons in the cafeteria and take it back to class and drink it like it's the coolest thing in the world to do. I explained it to Emma over Skype today as "people carry cartons of milk around here like it's their swag or something". I think that was the perfect description. 

One more thing, before I came here I read that Norway is largest consumer of frozen pizza in the world. After having been here for a month and a half I would like to confirm that. I was also not surprised when I found out that the average Norwegian consumes more pizza than any other those of any other country in the world.

There are way more, but these are the ones that have been on my mind the most lately. If I can next week I'll write about prices and school and such. It's late here and I'm going to bed. Or maybe I'll come back and add more to this tomorrow during my free period. We'll see how it goes.