As I curled in a lonely corner of the media studies building this afternoon, fighting against projecting a rainbow of angry and tearful emotions into the balconied spaces above me, I remember wishing this were an anonymous blog. If only I could go home, I thought, and spit fiery passion all over cyberspace: paint Norway as a hideous communist cesspool, my peers as scheming half-wits, the universe as a bramble of poison-barbed misfortune. (My away message said “grumpy,” but I’m not sure that covered it.) Luckily the sun came out again and I can type up the whole day honestly, without gross hyperbole or false cheeriness, and I can put my name on it.

It all started when I checked my email at 7am and found out that my adviser is quitting the university. He another woman for me to get in touch with. This led to a string of emails rerouting me to other people. My new adviser is apparently a women who is on vacation for the week, so she wasn’t at the keyboard to turn me down.

So I started out grouchy. Next I tried to do my Norwegian homework, which was difficult. I didn’t understand the instructions, and it was tedious translating every word. I should have done it the night before, but I had already spent 3 hours in class and 3 hours catching up on the vocabulary I missed on Monday and I went to Kyle’s birthday instead. I’d already decided to try and switch to a 60-hour class (this one is 180 hours), but the Norwegian department wasn’t responding to me and I didn’t want to just blow the homework off. Class wasn’t until noon. I had 5 hours. I didn’t finish.

Norwegian wasn’t the worst it could have been — I did answer some questions correctly — but my brain is not wired for speaking. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that I scramble English around like delicious protein-rich eggs? Jeg kan skrive norsk, but I couldn’t decipher spoken Norwegian for a free bottle of whiskey. And whiskey is more precious than gold here. And my teacher speaks very fast, exclusively in Norwegian, without writing on the board. It seemed to my addled little brain that my speaking partners all let out little sighs of frustration at their crummy luck at being paired with me.

So that was bad. I wanted to duck into the language office to talk about the transfer, but I was 30 minutes late to my next class (my media course was rescheduled today to accommodate a guest lecturer). I ran to the media studies building only to be locked out. I ran all the way around to the back door, which somebody had wedged open with a chair. I ran downstairs, sweating and frantic, and through the byzantine hallways that lead to the classroom. I knock, open, and…empty room. There is a sticky note on the door, but it is written in Norwegian. I wander around lost for a while, checking some other rooms, but they’re all empty. I would head back to the language office, but it’s 3:18. They close at 3:15. I really wanted to hear that lecture.

That’s when I crumpled. Wallowing can be healthy if it’s short and controlled, like how little fires are good for forests, so I indulged myself for a bit before lurching back up and catching the T-bane just as it rolled up. See, things were improving already.

I splurged at the Kiwi on the way home and picked up a 6-pack of beer, a Cosmo (for practicing Norwegian), and some sugar. At home I made cinnamon sugar and rolled it up on lefse. Another improvement. Next I chatted with my parents as they got ready for work (9 hours is such a weird difference). After that my email dinged (3 times, actually, I need to consolidate my email addresses in the UiO system) with a note from the language department — there was a single opening in one 60-hour section that I could have! (Later I found out that this was the section that Kyle transfered out of…I think that boy saved my life.) Now I can start all over, as this new class meets for the first time next week.

So now I’m happy and am getting ready to go lose at trivia night again (those Europeans are absurdly good). I knew the whole time that things would brighten up, but it happened faster than I expected, which is welcome. So it was a fine day in the end, and now it’s the weekend.

I’m not sure this Norwegian class is such a good idea. Yesterday was my first attendance (missed Monday because of those Fulbright meetings) and I’ve been working frantically on Norwegian ever since then. That’s not technically true — tonight is Kyle’s 21st birthday, so we spent the past 3 hours filling him with booze down on floor 1 — but I did work on Norwegian class work most of last night, all of this morning, and much of this afternoon. It meets four days a week, three hours a day. It is not 15 credits (as was advertised during registration), but a whopping 30 credits. Which means I’m signed up for 50 credits, a double-overload. We’re not technically supposed to be taking any other classes besides this one.

To top it off, most of the other students have taken Norwegian classes already. Those that haven’t speak Swedish or Icelandic or have Norwegian boyfriends to do their homework for them. This isn’t everybody, of course, and I’m not so handicapped that I can’t buckle down and catch up, but it is going to be a significant and semester-long commitment. I will not be able to take this class, travel, perform quality Fulbright research, and study for the GRE. One or more of those activities will have to go. I am just a little worried remembering how French grammar nearly sunk last fall semester for me. We don’t need a repeat of that.

So I’ve really only been snakker norsking for the past 48 hours, not much exciting to report. I paid a deposit on the Vestgrensa room, so I’ve been annoying all my friends by fussing over that. It should be good, I’m just a little worried because those rooms are so intimately linked and I won’t know my roommate beforehand…I’ll just deal. I move on October 16th, so I have 2 more weeks of living out of a suitcase limbo to endure. Kyle’s birthday gathering was really fun. His kitchen is cozy, with some nice couches, and Leslie made a cake.

Now it’s time for a little Norwegian homework and a little sleep. I’m torn between my violent aversion to quitting things and the rational appreciation for the fact that this class isn’t worth getting super-depressed in the middle of dark wintertime or blowing the GRE. I’ll stick it out and see how it goes — maybe tomorrow I’ll explore other possibilities. I may be able to transfer to the 60-hour class (I believe this one is 115 hours). I do want to learn Norwegian, but…I just don’t know. We’ll see.

Last week I received a contract allowing me to transfer to Vestgrensa. I didn’t know much about this dorm, so yesterday morning I marched down to interrogate the housing office. The girl at the desk was very nice and gave me keys to preview a room that was only vacant for the day. Each room in Vestgrensa shares a kitchen and bathroom with only one other room, so when I unlocked the door I walked, not into a public hall (like I would have in Kringsjå), but into a tall man name Nils who was defrosting his fridge wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs.

Nils didn’t seem nearly as uncomfortable as I was, in fact he seemed very excited to be meeting his new roommate (I don’t think he ever quite understood what I meant by “this isn’t my key, I’m just looking”). The kitchen and bathroom were nice, if a little cramped coming from the big communal Kringsjå kitchens. The bedrooms were amazing. Brand new furniture, complimentary curtains, a stand-up lamp, huge closets. The student gym was just next door, and campus was a 5 minute walk. I liked what I saw.

After turning in the key I rushed down to the Fulbright office for a day full of meetings and receptions. All of this year’s Fulbrighters came down from all over Norway (there’s a record number stationed above the arctic circle), and I was totally overwhelmed by the variety of people with brilliant projects. People are: determining the ways that oil freezes and moves through ice, to help with oil spills in the arctic; interviewing Polish immigrants and juxtaposing the experience of European and 3rd World migrant groups; studying the impacts of the 2004 gender quotas in public and private exec boards; developing search and rescue bots on a distributed computing system; cataloging the impacts of climate change on Svalbard botany; researching the economies and value systems that shape stewardship practices; investigating the ways that tourism impacts the self-perception of indigenous cultures…the list goes on and on. I feel completely dwarfed by these significant issues and passionate people.

The day went something like:

• 11am . Free pizza, meet & greet, brief project presentations
• 12:30 . UiO Professor David Mauk talked about peculiarities of the Norwegian university system
• 1:30 . Practical & survival information presented by Tove
• 2:15 . US Embassy staff presented their services
• 2:45 . Victoria and Kiki, two Fulbrighters from last year who are still around, introduced themselves and answered questions
• 3:30 . Professor Ole Moen gave a great presentation on the US as seen from Norway (although he had to leave early because Gonzales resigned and he was called in to talk about it on the radio)
• 5:00 . Reception at the Nobel Institute

The Nobel Institute was beautiful. Ambassador Benson Whitney (a Vassar grad) and Geir Lundestad (Nobel Institute director) both gave welcoming speeches. Following Mr. Lundestad’s spunky and eloquent speech about the history and prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize and what it felt like to help decide who would win, we were each asked to step up to the podium and present our projects. It was a tough act to follow and a daunting crowd to address, but everybody survived more or less unscathed. We were rewarded with free wine and cheese and a tour of the facilities. I chatted with a few of the Fulbright board members, Ambassador Whitney, and a nice Norwegian man who studied in Berkeley on a Fulbright and lived in Poughkeepsie for a while…all very interesting conversations. I also chatted with a young woman who is in seminary at the American Lutheran church, and she gave me her email address.

A handful of us — Kevin, Kiki, Victoria, Morgana, and I — ended up at an Irish pub outside of Nationaltheatre where we drank viciously expensive Guinness and talked until around 11:30pm. It turns out that Victoria lives in my building, so when we came back home she showed me the 8th (top) floor. The kitchen was spotless and full of plants and mirrors and pretty things. Apparently the single room (private bathroom) is unoccupied at the moment (it’s on the west side of the building, with a beautiful view of mountains and sunsets) and her neighbors are really nice. Just what I needed…another housing option. I’d definitely move up there, except Victoria is leaving in November. Now I just don’t know where I should live!

It felt pretty nice not to have to be anywhere or do anything this morning, so I took full advantage and vegetated for a while. Just as I started to feel bored and a little embarrassed with myself, I received a text message — Morgana wanted to be touristy with me. With visions of Aker Brygge licorice dancing in my head I leapt from bed and set out for a day full of boats.

Down at the waterfront the licorices looked soooo good, but I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, so I opted for the healthier option: three scoops (pineapple, coconut, passion fruit) of sorbet in a waffle cone. I figured it had about the same nutritional content as a waffle with fruit syrup. Even if that turns out not to be the case, I’m not going to regret it. Both Morgana and I agreed, after crunching the last pokey bits of cone, that ice cream on a hot Oslo morning was the best idea we’d ever had.

We hopped boat #92 to Bygdøy, which is a peninsula full of museums and picture-perfect homes just west of the city. All these boat rides are covered by our student-rate month-long transit pass, which is great. On the way I kicked myself for neglecting to slip my new student card into my wallet. The Viking Ship Museum was our first stop, and it would have been 50 whole kroner without the student discount! University of Oslo students get in free, and University of Oslo staff can bring a friend for free. By sheer crazy luck Morgana’s student id says she’s staff (so she can access some buildings she needs for her Fulbright research) and I slipped in on her tab. Score.

The Viking Ship Museum was seriously cool. It held the remnants of viking burial ships from Tune, Gokstad, and Oseberg, as well as some nails from a fourth ship that totally disintegrated. The building was shaped like a cross, with 3 of the spokes containing reconstructed ships and the fourth (the spoke opposite the door) displaying the treasures salvaged from the ships. These were amazing — perfectly preserved boots, chairs, buckets, harnesses, fabrics, wagons, tools — literally hundreds of artifacts were buried with the ships and preserved in sod. One of the ladies was buried with something like 18 horses, with all their bridles and hairbrushes and things. One of the ships had the remains of a peacock, which I found utterly baffling. Those vikings got around.

We walked from the Viking Ship Museum to the Kon-Tiki Museum. It turns out that Morgana has the same infatuation with Thor Heyerdahl that I have with Shackleton, so she was all squeals of glee and frantic photographing. I have to admit, it was pretty inspiring. This man sailed across the Pacific on a balsa wood raft and then across the Atlantic on papyrus in order to demonstrate that cultural exchange could have taken place between the continents in ancient times. I love the image of this academic-type responding to skeptics with this wild, unprecedented action. It’s empowering, especially after reading so much academic theory and vague cloudy criticism, to hear one proactive person say: “ok, I’ll prove it.”

The displays were neat, too. It started out on the ground floor with a replica of the RA 2, the papyrus boat that they (successfully) piloted across the Atlantic. The first RA, which was designed differently, didn’t quite make it. From there the path wound upstairs, where you could see the Kon-tiki and displays about the crew and the Easter Islands, where Thor did a great deal of his research. Next the path goes down into a basement-type level where you can see the underside of the Kon-tiki (as well as some plastic sharks and fish, very classy) and crawl through some replicas of Easter Island caves.

That was pretty much the day, I’ve been home playing computer games and studying for the GRE (not simultaneously) ever since. I need to sleep early tonight because I want to make it to the housing office tomorrow before our day-long Fulbright orientation starts.

Today was another sunny blue-sky day, and I was able to take full advantage of it thanks to the wonderful generosity of my friend Lara. We worked together at the Media Cloisters back at Vassar, where she was a terribly efficient consultant. She grew up in Norway and is still living and working here, so she has all kinds of insider knowledge about little shops and cafes. Did I mention she is wonderful, and I’m wildly grateful to have her around?

We started out in Grunerløkke, where we indulged in some coffee made by Tim Wendelboe, the 2002 world barista championship champion. It was delicious. I had two shots of espresso on ice with cream and anise, a surprisingly delightful combination. We scoped out the Grunerløkke dorms — a hideous building in a really sweet location. Grunerløkke is like the West Village of Oslo, packed with sidewalk cafes and hip shops and expensive baby carriages. Lara pointed out a couple good restaurants and a sweet-smelling bakery that I will have to return to. We ducked into a Crate & Barrel-type Swedish shop and a little place where you can glaze your own pottery (I was intrigued and wanted to poke around, but it was full of a bachelorette party).

We walked down a pedestrian street called Market (except in Norwegian, which my stupid American brain is still having trouble sponging up) and then down Carl Johan’s Gate from the train station to the palace. On the way she gave me some helpful advice about getting jobs (I will query the university as well as the American Embassy) and acquiring furniture (massive flea markets will begin in a few weeks). We got a little lost looking for the Pilestredet dorms but found them in an even primer-than-Grunerløkke location a mere 5 minutes from the Nationaltheatre station and a 20-minute walk from campus AND Aker Brygge. I would love love love to live there, especially if I decide to stay through next summer, but I’m sure the wait list is impossibly long.

After gazing longingly at the perfect dorms we walked down to Aker Brygge, which is the super-hip waterfront area. We ducked into a decadent bakery called Pascal, which stocked a million flavors of luscious custardy cakes as well as bread and coffee and little tubs of ice cream. They had a seating area and served meals, too. It was far too expensive and mouthwatering to linger for long, but I’m keeping it in mind for a family-funded dinner…

We ended up grabbing lunch at a fancy-ish grocery store; I had a cheesy bacon and spinach quiche of wonderful. We ate on some steps outside in a spot where the cobblestoned ground was all artsy and bulged into little hills. Norwegian children provided great entertainment running up and down the bulges (especially the toddlers who crawled up and got stuck on the peaks) and dancing in fountain spray. The waterfront was packed with people, some of them sitting on the docks and listening to bands play on nearby boats, some of them touring the collection of old trikke (streetcar) cabs that were on display. Many of them were sitting at expensive cafes, brewpubs, and McDonald’s, eating and drinking and enjoying the sunshine. Norwegians really enjoy sunshine.

Lara pointed out a typical-looking ice cream stand that, apparently, peddles dreamy flavors. We also passed two different stands selling dozens of flavors of sugary and salty licorice, which I am definitely returning to sample. Finally our tour was over, and Lara had to return home for a dinner date. I thanked her profusely, and thank her again, and headed home. What an exciting, informative, lovely day.

I grabbed a zucchini at the Kiwi on my way back and chatted with Mom and Dad and Max on iChat video before cooking it up with pasta and garlic. I get the impression that Astoria is really enjoying hosting my cousins. Dad even made them waffles this morning! He didn’t make me any waffles when I was home! It’s hard to help it; they are pretty delightful people. I’m a little sorry I’m missing them. On the other hand, Oslo is pretty delightful, too.