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
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