So I decided to write this a few days early because I doubt I'll get a chance to do it on time. Next week is my Språkkurs (Language Course) with all the other new exchange students in Norway. It's on fjord, basically in the middle of nowhere, in a place called Kinsarvik. Tomorrow morning I'm going to Kristiansand to hang out with Brock (an exchange student from Canada) and stay with his family for the night, so we can catch the bus out of Kristiansand to language camp on Sunday morning. Then we have about 6-8 hours on buses through the mountains to Kinsarvik, which is a little east of Bergen. Then I have 6 days of language camp, and then 2 or 3 for another Rotary Conference.
So this week nothing happened, well maybe something did but I don't remember. I went on a walk with my host sisters choir/club and it was very nice, and I went to another Rotary meeting, and I was very tired all week for whatever reason.
Since I have nothing to really report on, I'm going to talk about Norwegian school. School here is much more relaxed than American school. There's not many real rules, and if you don't show up to class they don't really mind. School is your responsibility here, kinda like college. Oh and we get to use computers during school "to take notes" (well that's actually what we use them for, but I don't take that many notes because 1. I can't read the handwriting and 2. I won't understand much of them and I'm never tested anyways). Like right now I'm in Norwegian class typing this while the rest of my class writes essay in Norwegian. I really don't have to do much in school here.
These are the classes that I'm taking:
Math 2P: This is the easiest kind of math in Norwegian school. The reason I was put in the easiest math when I was supposed to be in AP Calculus this year in Florida is because when they first asked me if I'd like to have Math I said "not particularly", but then they needed to have more hours in my original schedule so they just threw it in there and said "we'll just give you the easy one then". So now I'm seriously learning what I learned in 7th Grade Algebra. It's really easy even if I don't understand what the teacher is actually saying, I just lok at the number and know what to do. We had a test today in that class and I finished an hour early, and all the problems were in Norwegian (the way they right numbers is a bit different and their were word problems).
History and Philosophy: This is one of those classes that I don't understand most of the time, unless I listen really hard. But I basically just read my Norwegian book in class unless it's some rare occasion where we have a handout in English (and therefore I have to explain some phrases), or where we do group discussion and my group wants to speak in English.
International English: I like this class a lot because it's really interesting to me to learn about America and English speaking people and countries from a Norwegian point of view. The class is in English so I always know what's going on, and I can do the work really easily. I try to help sometimes, but it's getting more difficult to spot grammar mistakes and know what sounds right because of all the Norwegian I'm taking in. But I obviously still do pretty well in that class, and it's nice to understand something a few hours a week. This week we had a substitute and I decided to see if I could go the week without her figuring out I was an exchange student, and maybe get her to compliment my English or something. Yeah...it didn't work. I guess with my accent, being able to pronounce every word correctly, and answer almost every question is a give away. She figured out that I knew all the vocab after about 10 minutes and asked me what nationality was when someone else didn't know. When I answered she took the opportunity to ask me what my nationality was, which I answered with "me?" *nods* "I'm American." She didn't look surprised.
Photography and Printing: I also like this class because I it's one of those classes I can actually participate in. We take pictures of certain things and learn how to edit them. Right now it's not really a challenge because we're basically learning Photoshop, which I've been using for years both in class and at home. So far we've done a self portrait and now we're making labels for apple products.
Sociology: I just switched into this class from Spanish this week, and I've only been to one hour of it. The teacher doesn't even know I'm in the class yet or that I'm an exchange student. So really have no idea what this class is like yet.
Norwegian: I obviously can't participate in this class. I think we're learning about Nynorsk (the other writen form of Norwegian), or Icelandic, or Old Norse or something that confuses me so much when I try to understand. So I read my Norwegian books in this class.
History: I don't understand this class either so I read my Norwegian books some more. This class, gym, and Norwegian I have with my "real class" 2STTE, which I guess kind of relates to a homeroom class except for I don't see them everyday, only when I have one of those classes.
Gym: I prefer Gym here to the one I had to take back home. We play confusing games that I have to have my classmates explain to me in English after the teacher explains them in Norwegian, but it's kind of fun. The Gym I had in Florida was literally running around a track or practicing sit-ups for an hour everyday. Here I have an hour a week of playing a game or doing aerobic kind of things. Last week we played "a Danish ball game" that was basically every man for himself dodgeball in a small in-closed gym. You just ran after the ball and tried to hit as many people as possible with it, which was kind of scary because there are more boys in my class than girls and they hit hard. If you got hit then you go jump rope on the side until the person that hit you got out. We also did fitness testing. This consisted of: seeing how high you can reach when you jump, how far you could skip in three moves, sit-ups, and push-ups. Unlike American gym, I did pretty okay in this. On the Norwegian scale of 1-6 (1 basically being a 0%, and 6 a 100%) I got 3 5's and a 2 on push ups (of course...).
Other than these classes, I used to have Visual Art and Architecture but I switched out for my own reasons after about a week. I also had Spanish until this week, but I switched because it's extremely difficult to learn a language I don't remember anything of in Norwegian. I ended up getting the two confused a lot, and most of the time didn't even know what language the lesson was being taught in. Also the teacher was a little crazy and didn't understand that I couldn't understand the lessons and didn't remember any of the Spanish I had taken before, and he was one of those teachers that's gets angry when someone doesn't understand (not just me, but everyone else too). So I'm happy to be out of there, because by the time I did understand the Norwegian part, I would have been super behind in the Spanish part of the class.
So I guess that's it for this week, I'll probably update again after language camp unless I find the time during it.
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