Half Way There...

As of 1pm today, I am officially done with my first semester. The last few weeks have been hectic, that's for sure. I've experienced the Norwegian school system first hand, by taking 4 very different final exams. First of all, finals here make up 60-100% of the final grade. So naturally, they're a lot longer than the exams back home. The shorter ones were 4 hours long, and my Norwegian final was 6 hours long. The exams are given at a convention center, and the elderly members of the community are the proctors. Taking an exam with a couple hundred other people reminded me of AP tests all over again. The only nice thing is that there isn't a time constraint like the tests back home. I never felt rushed, so I actually had time to stop and think. There's also time to eat lunch and use the little girls room (but the old people follow you when you leave).

The testing philosophy here is very different from the American philosophy. Personally, I hate it and found studying very stressful. The tests tend to test one's ability to memorize formulas and derivations more than one's ability to problem solve. All of my exams were closed book, except for statistics. The stats test was very similar to the math tests at CU. I could bring this school published book of formulas and a small sheet of paper. Otherwise, I had to memorize everything. Since the engineering tests were closed book, the problems themselves were a lot simpler. They were also more theoretical than practical. Rather than testing my ability to take what I read and apply it to a new situation, I pretty much had to spit out derivations from the book. Annoying. I definitely think the US school system does a better job of teaching people how to think, not just how to use formulas.

Another nice thing about the system here is that finals are spread out over the course of 3 weeks. Luckily, all of my tests were in the first 2 weeks, so I get an extra week of vacation. In between tests, there was still time to have some fun.

On the 2nd, I celebrated a belated Thanksgiving with some other Americans here in Trondheim. There's an international school here that is staffed by mainly Americans, and one of them was in my language course. So, she hosted a pot-luck thanksgiving dinner at her new townhouse. It was very nice to have a traditional meal and hang out with some fellow Yankees. It's amazing how the little things really make a difference. It was a big deal that we had real cheddar cheese and ranch dressing that night. For many people, it had been years since they had any. I also noticed that my English has gotten progressively worse. I'm almost never with native speakers, so I've definitely dumbed down my language. If I use to much slang, big words, or talk too fast then people can't understand me. So I think I've subconsciously simplified my daily talk. Plus I tend to speak a hybrid of English and Norwegian with many people. So trying to have an intelligent conversation with other English speakers turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

On Wednesday, some friends and I decided to go camping up on top of a hill so that we could watch the sunrise the next morning. Here, watching the sunrise does not imply waking up early by any means. It only means getting out of bed by 9:15am. So we set up camp next to a frozen lake and hung out around the campfire. Despite the below freezing temperature, it was very relaxing to get away from the city life. Unfortunately I only made it until about 11:30pm. One of my teeth split in half, so I had to go home. The tooth was brittle to begin with after having a root canal this summer, so it wasn't too surprising. The annoying thing was I had to wait until Friday to see a dentist, so I couldn't bite down until then.

My timing is always terrible The following day, I hosted a "Traditional American Holiday Dinner" at my flat. This was planned before the tooth incident, so I cooked a meal I could barely eat. I cooked the stereotypical dishes for everyone here (mostly Germans). Many of them had never eaten real turkey before (i.e. not lunch meat). And surprisingly I didn't royally mess anything up. Trying to find vegetable shortening and corn syrup at the grocery store was an adventure though. No one had heard of it before except for a chef working in the back, who finally found some.

Finally, I have a picture with all of my flatmates. From left to right: Agata, Kay, Me, and Lorenzo. Unfortunately, Agata has already left to go home. So we'll have to wait and see who our new flatmate is. Well, tonight my adventure continues. I'll be catching an overnight train to Oslo, and then I'll fly to Paris tomorrow afternoon. I'll be spending a week on my own in Paris, and then I'll meet my parents and sister in Madrid. All in all, I'll have about 3 weeks to enjoy the sun and warm weather before returning to Norway.

Happy Holidays!

Sunrise: 9:47am
Sunset: 2:35pm