Life in Trondheim.

Hey All!

So the past two weeks have been very busy, but unfortunatly not with any exciting trips. I almost went hiking 2 weeks ago, but I got a little bit of a cold so I decided to stay home. I've spent the past 2 weekends hanging out in Trondheim, mostly with my flatemates. I love my flat! There are four of us living there. We've each got our own room and then we share a kitchen and bathroom. There's 2 guys (Lorenzo and Kai) and 2 girls (Agata and myself). Lorenzo is a petroleum engineering student from Mexico. He's been here since January and will most likely be here till June. Kai is an Engligh major from Norway. Agata is an architeture student from Poland, and she arrived here this summer as well. She was born in Australia so her english is practically perfect! Anyways, it's a very well mixed group and we all get along really well. So far it's been a blast hanging out and going out on the town with all of them.

School has kept me very busy! It's kind of hard to believe though considering my Kinetics homework took 30 minutes and one sheet of paper last week. Two weeks ago, I had a 10 hour lab determining the kinetics of a reaction carried out in a CSTR. Then last week, I spent 9 hours distilling ethanol from water. To bad nasty solvents are used in the columns, otherwise I could have gotten some cheap alcohol. You have to take what you can get in this country because everything is so expensive!! (Don't worry I didn't come up with that idea. My supervisor actually brought it up when I asked where we should dump the solutions at the end of the day.)

Yesterday (Sunday) was a big day for me. I went rowing with a club here in Trondheim!! It was the first time I had been in a real boat since the last time I rowed for U. of Colorado. Not only that, but it was also my first time sculling. All the teams I had been on before did 'sweep' rowing. This means that each person has only one oar. But sculling is where you have 2 oars. I went out in a double with another girl, and it was quite the adventure! Let me tell you! We both weren't that good so the boat was rarely set. We were both catching crabs left and right. Then at one point we managed to flip the boat and go for a little swim. It was brisk. We'll leave it at that! It's so nice to get back into rowing again, and I especially love how the atmosphere isn't all competitive here. (Note: Picture is from Colorado, not Norway).

Hope all is well!
Julie

Two Weeks Down.....

Hey All!

Sorry, I know it's been awhile since the last post, but life has been super busy. I'm in my 3rd week of school now and time is flying! I'm taking 3 engineering classes and a language course this semester. Statistics and Kinetics are both in Norwegian, Separations is in English, and of course Norwegian is in Norwegian. Luckily, all the textbooks here are in English, so it hasn't been a problem to learn the material. Some of my homework assignments are in Norwegian, but I'm picking up the vocabulary pretty fast because many of the words are similar to the English words. The Norwegian lectures are getting easier to understand by the day, and luckily none of my teachers have a thick dialect.

The school system and philosophy is very different here. Lectures are optional. Only some of the short homework assignments are obligatory, and none of them count towards the final grade. In most cases, you have to turn in so much homework 'to be allowed to' take the final exam. Then the final exam is worth 75-100% of your final grade. The homework assignments are very short and simple compared to the ones back home. For most of my engineering courses at CU, we were assigned a problem set a week that normally took 6-15 hours to complete. These assignments also made up 30-40 % of your final grade. Here, we get one assignment a week, but they only take 1-2 hours. I have a lab course this semester that is shared by both the Kinetics and Separations classes. The projects are rather open ended and the lab reports will definitely take some time.

Now for the fun stuff! Two weekends ago I drove down to Geiranger fjord with some friends and camped right along the water. It's a 8 hour drive from Trondheim, so we left at noon on Friday. Along the way we drove over Trollstigen (troll path), which is this a really steep mountain pass. The road going up has tons of hairpin (pinpoint jk) turns and a waterfall. At the fjord we went for a hike up into the mountains and swam in the fjord a bunch. On the way back, we took a little bit longer route so that we could enjoy some ferry rides. FYI: ferries and tunnels are an integral part of the transportation system here. You usually can't get from one place to another with out them. There are simply no roads that go around.

Anyways, last weekend I rented a koie with some friends. A koie is a small hut in the middle of nowhere that has bunks, some cooking equipment, and a wood burning stove. It's like one step up from step camping. The sports organization here owns several of these, which can be rented for very cheap. This one was about a 30 minute walk from our car, was along a lake, and had a row boat. We saw a phenomenal rainbow the first afternoon (look closely at the picture to the left). Saturday was spent hiking and of course eating blueberries. A group of us came back on Saturday night, because we all had school work to do on Sunday.

Hope all is Well!
Julie