Lots of Goodbyes

Hey all,

This will probably be my last post from Norwegian soil. Tonight is my last night in my bed here before I hit the road to head south towards Germany. I'll be traveling with 5 other people all heading for Germany or Austria. We'll make our way south to Kristiansand taking time to hike and sightsee along the way. The weather's wonderful, so we're all looking forward to pulling out tents out after a long winter.

The last week or so has been packed. I spent most days taking care of final tasks before traveling home. This included buying things to bring back to my family, meeting friends for one final cup of coffee again, going to Hell, and meeting new people as well.

Yes, I did go to Hell and back. It's about a 20 minute drive each way and it wasn't so hot. In fact, it rained. I've driven by this town many times, but a friend and I decided to go there just to take some funny pictures. A once in a lifetime opportunity.

Many of my regular friends traveled north for a week while I stayed in Trondheim to take my last exam. Oliver and I both had exams on the last day possible, so we had to celebrate summer with a big BBQ! I met a group of interns that had just arrived and ended up hanging out with them a lot during the following week. It's a shame that our stays didn't end up overlapping more. I learned how to play Truco, a Brazilian card game that is very addictive. We went out for a night on the town one more time and took a trip to the Dragvoll lakes.

My plans for leaving Trondheim have changed several times. I'm traveling with Anne down to Berlin. She dislocated her patella, so our plans to do some climbing were canceled because neither of us can climb. This gave us a few more days in Trondheim. Then the Bavarian boys had car trouble, and now we will not attempt to make it up to a cabin tomorrow night. Instead we'll meet up and camp by a lake together before heading south.

I'd have to admit the whole thing feels really surreal. I'm looking forward to going home, but it doesn't feel like being home is only 14 days away. I don't think this will be my last trip to Norway. At least I hope not.

Ha det bra alle!
Julie

Exams vs. Summer

Point Taken. An update is more than overdue. Since my trip to Sweden and Finland, a lot has been happening.

After getting back from 9 days of traveling, I had 4 days in town before heading off to Bergen for the weekend. The NTNUI Rowing club competed in the 2nd Annual Student Regatta against 3 other schools from Bergen. College Rowing is just getting started here in Norway. Private club rowing is quite strong here along the coast, but the universities are just starting to build up their teams. We took a girls boat and a guys boat. In the girls boat, only 4 of us had competitive rowing experience. The law school entered 2 women's boat, but only 2 of them (total) had rowed before. Despite the lack of experience, the boats were still rather competitive. The caliber can't compare to the what I was used to in the rowing for New Trier or Colorado, but we pulled things together rather well for only practicing once together before racing. Although this was NTNUI's first time competing in this competition, we won both races!! The weekend was mostly social with BBQs and going out at night. I made it almost the weekend only using Norwegian, which was quite difficult. There's a big difference between academic language and a bunch of girls doing what girls do best: talk really really fast using all sorts of slang and dialects. Below is a link of publicity that the race got: a video... fast forward to about 3 minutes into it. It's in Norwegian but the footage and pictures are still nice.

Video: http://bstv.no/streaming2/uke18/bstv-01_nyheter&sport.wmv (starts 3:10 into it)


After I got back it was time to hit the books. Exams are over the course of 4 weeks, but I was unlucky and got 3 tests in 3 days. For almost 3 weeks straight, I did nothing but study... and hurt my shoulder. I pushed myself a little too hard that left me in constant pain for about 1.5 weeks. I could barely lift my shoulder past parallel to the ground and it hurt to sit up. This made sitting at a desk studying all day rather unpleasant. Let's just say I wasn't in the best mood... This made me determine when I'm coming home: July 2nd. I'll be in Wilmette most of the summer to take care of this ongoing injury and get back to my old self again.

Well the 3 exams in 3 days were exhausting and stressful but went well. I had a 2 week break before my last exam, so I had plenty of time to relax and enjoy the long summer days. I went on a short 2 day cabin trip with 5 other people. 2 friends from Germany that were here last semester came back to visit, so it was like a little reunion. It was actually the 2nd time I've visited that cabin (Iglbu), but the first time was in the winter. This time we had to navigate through streams that were running fast. We sat outside almost the entire night around the fire and it never got dark enough to need a headlamp. The rest of the week included BBQs down by the fjord and hanging out with people before they left. There was also a big end of the year international student BBQ here in Moholt.

Now it's back to the books for my final exam coming up. I went up to Studenterhytta with a friend to study for a day. The big cabin is reserved for people studying during the exam period, so it's a really nice distraction-free environment to study. Instead of listening to cars and being distracted by the internet, I listened to sheep grazing. That night we went trail running to get the blood moving.

Well, that's all she wrote.

Sunrise: 3:16 AM
Sunset: 11:19PM