Forests and Fine Dining

Today I haven’t really done much. On Friday, my first first day off for the weekend, I packed up my laptop with the intention of going down to the school and working on my thesis for most of the day. Instead, the other instructor from UND who came to ACN for the semester, Burt, called. He mentioned during the week that he wanted to see if an old walking path was still there on the island, so we set out to find it at about 10:00 A.M. On the way to the canal, we stopped quickly at the mall for water to take with us, and then we began our hike.

We walked from the mall down to the canal, across the bridge, and along the shoreline until we ran out of walking path. Knowing that it was there somewhere, we checked a roadside map, backtracked up near some apartment complexes, and eventually found the path.

Now, from what he’d said earlier, I thought this was going to be a walking path that was sandy and beach-like, since he did say that it followed the shoreline. Where we went instead was far more exciting to me. As a flat-lander from North Dakota, I’ve never really been in a dense forest before, the kind of forest where the sun is blocked out from the tree canopy overhead. This was that forest. It was incredible to walk through, to look at all the undergrowth, to even look at the roots sticking out of the path, itself. I need to find more hiking spots when I get back home (preferably in the forest somewhere).

During our trek, we went to two small towns, Alby and Rød (though I don’t know that many people even lived in either one—for Williston people, think of Epping/Springbrook, just outside of Williston with very few people living there). Alby had a teeny little museum, but we didn’t go through it—walking was the main goal of the day. We did go through the Naturhus in Alby, just to see what it was. There was also a café in there, as well—you could get a full meal, then sit in the normal seating area or take a blanket from inside the café and sit on the lawn to have your snack! I thought that was a neat idea.

By the time we got to Rød, it was already almost 1:00 P.M. Also by the time we got to Rød, we were starting to feel very tired and a little hungry. There wasn’t a whole lot to see there, except that we stumbled across what looked like an artist community where there was a ceramic shop and a guitar-maker shop (which I may have to find again to take pictures for Kellen). Again, we were both pretty fatigued after walking for three solid hours, so we headed back for Moss.

Once we got to the top of the big hill on the island, we made our way back down to the canal where we stopped and had a quick bite in a café Burt said was good and reasonably priced. I had a cup of coffee and a croissant sandwich, and I was good to go again. I think we made it back to ACN around 2:00 or 2:30, and then it was time for a shower and a nap.

Friday night, I met two Norwegians who are from Moss at a new Italian place just south of ACN. We had a great conversation about education, as one of them studied education and pedagogy in the U.K. I ordered a half-calzone half-pizza (so they basically made a pizza and flipped one side over onto itself). First off, one can never go wrong with pizza. Second, this pizza was very, very good—the Norwegians said that this was authentic Italian food. I responded with a prayer to God in thanks for Italy (and pizza).

For the rest of the weekend, I haven’t done much, although I did take a hike up into the hills above ACN on Saturday evening. There’s a path that leads back into some of the hills, and I was immediately enthralled with the promise of another forest hike. Nay, this wasn’t as good as the Alby/Rød adventure, simply because much of the forest above the school has been cut down to pave the way for a half-dozen apartment buildings. Ah, progress. Still, it was a neat trip, and I even went up there again today to take some pictures.

In all, I’d say that’s a successful weekend: explore the countryside, dine with the locals, and explore the countryside even more. 

My First Weekend in Moss

It was a busy weekend in Moss—lots to do, and lots to see.

I don’t have a stable internet connection in my apartment, since this unit is only temporary until the ACN people move me into a different unit because of scheduling conflicts. Because of the temporary locale, they gave me a little wi-fi hotspot to use in this apartment, but it has a data-plan attached to it, and I’d hate to go over the data-plan and get overage charges, so I keep sneaking down into the school and into my office to use that stable wi-fi connection.

On Saturday morning, I went to my office at the school and played video games on my laptop for a while. There was a festival going in the downtown area of Moss, and there was also a 10K race—I know what you’re thinking, NO, I didn’t run the 10K race. I wouldn’t be sitting here typing if I had run that race (I would be dead), but one of the ACN staff ran it, so a few other members of the ACN staff went outside to the street with Norwegian flags and a sign to cheer her on as she finished the race.

After we stood outside for all of a minute as our colleague ran past us, we decided to walk downtown to the festival. When we got there, I was struck at how much it reminded me of home. There’s one street that someone told me was the “walking street,” and there are shops on either side. It was almost like a sidewalk sale, as the different shops had pulled racks out into the walking area. There were also plenty of food stands, as well—someone mentioned that I should get a “pølse med vaffle,” a hotdog wrapped in a waffle instead of a hotdog. It was an odd mix between the sweetness of the waffle and the saltiness of the hotdog. (Burt, to my right, said that we were getting funny looks from the Norwegians as to why a waffle-wrapped hotdog was picture-worthy.)

We went into the fenced-off concert area at the festival, and a big banner said that it was “Frederiks-Dagene,” the Frederiks-Days. I’m not entirely sure what the story is behind Frederiks-Days, but there was a festival involved! My group watched a couple of bands play, and we started shutting down after that. We walked the few minutes back to ACN and adjourned for the day.

Sunday, we went to an activity center outside the city of Moss. We took the highway out a few miles, and it was really beautiful countryside to look at—huge boulders were sticking out of the cliffs by the highway, and the trees were thick (and as a flat-lander from North Dakota who’s never really seen a forest, the verticality of the forest was something to behold).

The activity center also reminded me of home, particularly Upper Missouri Ministries where I worked for a summer. At Upper Missouri Ministries, there’s a small area cordoned off called the “Co-op Course,” and it’s meant for team-building. There are all these different little obstacles to cross, but you can only do so with a group of people working together.

In the same way, the people at ACN wanted to welcome the students to the school and show them that, as students, they were something like a team. It was meant more so as a fun “welcome weekend” type event. The students played paintball in big teams on a full-fledged paintball course complete with rugged terrain and places to take cover—one student went loping across the field at the enemy, tripped on a root, and broke his glasses in the process! (I learned a new word, but I’m not sure of its spelling: “stakkar,” meaning “poor, pitiable.”) The students also rode a mechanical bull and went down a 300’ zip-line over the barbecue grills that were cooking lunch. Once they were all tuckered out from running and riding and zipping, they got onto a bus and headed back for the dorms.

In all, it was a long weekend, but it was a lot of fun. (Of course, I’m not thinking of my frustrations with the washing machine in my apartment—“stakkar.”)

Lost in Translation: Learning to be Risky

I had lunch with the staff at ACN today, and they asked me about how I liked my apartment, how I slept, and how good I felt after taking a shower. I told them that I was feeling very well after being unconscious for nearly eleven hours solid, and I felt like I was going to fit in quite nicely at the college. They looked at each other and grinned, and one of them told me that my adjustment period was only beginning. Now that I think about it, it really is only beginning.

I took an hour-long walk on Tuesday morning through the city as far as I dared go, and I ended up at Moss Kirke, a large church in the city center. As soon as I got there, I felt lost—not in the mental or emotional turmoil of a lost soul, but physically, spatially lost. I stood there a few minutes, and because I was standing in  front of a beautiful brick church from the early nineteenth century, I sat down on a nearby bench. I had this feeling of being lost for a few minutes as I sat there, but the weird thing was that I didn’t feel worried about being lost. I was just lost, and that was okay, because I knew I’d find my way back in time.

I stood up and started walking again, thinking I’d backtrack my steps until I found something familiar. I took pictures along the way, because again, I was lost but wasn’t worried about it. It was just something that was happening to me at the time. Because I was lost, I started looking at the signs posted on buildings and on street corners—but, strangely enough, I couldn’t read most of them, because they were in Norwegian. I was the goon downtown looking like this because he couldn’t read. In all, I made it back home without any problems.

Later in the day, one of the ACN staff took me and a group of students into the shopping area of Moss to go to the grocery store. I was only exploring this morning, looking at buildings and what not, so I didn’t even try to find the grocery store (and the food in my apartment could have lasted me a couple more days anyway). Our group leader walked us into the grocery store and told us that if we needed help translating labels, we should come talk to her. She recalled a story of another student a few years back.

The student went into a grocery store in Moss to buy makeup remover wipes, as she’d forgotten to pack hers for the trip. She found a carton of wipes packaged in Norwegian writing, and she took them back to her dorm. As she used the wipes on her face, the student felt a sudden stinging in her eyes. It turns out that she hadn’t bought makeup remover wipes, but vaginal wipes. Her eyes were fine afterward, but it just goes to show that she learned from her mistake.

If anyone ever watched The Magic Schoolbus as a child, we should all take heed of Ms. Frizzle’s catch-phrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

The Hobbit: A Quite-Expected Journey

After spending about six days in Pittsburgh, it was time to fly to Norway. To get there, I had to bounce from Pittsburgh to Boston to Reykjavik to Oslo, then take a bus from Oslo down to my city, Moss. After hard goodbyes, I got through the security checkpoint in the Pittsburgh airport and sat down at my gate, nervous and scared until I actually got on the plane and started making progress.

For the record, Boston’s airport is screwed. I mean, just screwed. I had to be the squeaky wheel and ask three airport people how to even get to my terminal (let alone, my gate). I had to go down an escalator, through the JetBlue terminal, then outside, then back inside, then through another security checkpoint that took nearly half an hour to pass. By the end of it, I found my gate with about ten minutes to spare before the pre-boarding started for the flight. I threw out a few quick texts and made one more phone call home before I couldn’t use my cell phone again.

The flight was okay for the first hour, then unbearable for the next three hours. I feel like a goddamn board now that I’m off, and I just paced through the Reykjavik terminal a few times taking pictures. I started thinking about how awesome our technology is that every single passenger on that airplane had a television screen to watch during the flight. There were tiny screens in the back of every headrest, so I could play music, watch documentary-style videos about Iceland, check and see how far along the flight was, even check how far you were from home (but the closest city to home I could pick was Bismarck), or watch some of the newest blockbuster movies. I ended up watching Les Miserables, since I’ve seen it a dozen times by now—I didn’t really have to pay attention, and it frequently puts me to sleep. Aaah, the soothing voice of Russell Crowe.

I started getting antsy about hitting the Reykjavik airport after the pile that was Boston. I think I had a shorter layover in Iceland than I did in Boston, and being the busiest airport in Iceland (I presume), I figured the place would be packed and have a layout as terrible as Boston, and I’d barely make my flight (again).

Nay, worrisome subconscious—this is the best airport I’ve been in all day. It’s just quiet. You look out the windows, and there’s hardly anything around, hardly any cars moving (but that might be because it was barely 7am). It’s really not a huge airport, either. It has something like 40 gates, but it just feels quiet and nice. I walked into the terminal and knew exactly where I was going. It feels oddly like home, and I can’t really figure out why. In any case, it’s quiet—there aren’t overhead speakers blaring commands for passengers every 20 seconds, and there isn’t even any music. Lord, it’s heavenly after being in Pittsburgh and Boston last night.

I even made a friend! His name is Dominic, and he was on the Boston-to-Reykjavik flight with me. I went to the little convenience store in the airport, since I didn’t really eat much yesterday at lunch because I felt nervous and sick. I found a sandwich and a Coke (yessssss), but there was this little kid in front of me trying to pay for a sandwich with massive Norwegian bill. The cashier said she couldn’t make change, so I just picked up his breakfast with mine (which turned out to be $20 for the two of us: two sandwiches, and my Coke). He sat and ate breakfast with me and listed off some things near Oslo I could do.

I hit Oslo and waited patiently (okay, panicked) for my checked bag to circle onto the baggage claim carousel. I grabbed it, hit pavement outside toward the bus to Moss, and barely made it. I was literally the last one on the bus before it pulled out of the Gardermoen-Oslo airport. After about an hour-long bus ride, a guy from the American College of Norway (ACN) drove me from the bus stop to my apartment. We dropped off my bags and headed to the college, and I got the tour from one of the administrators. We talked about goings-on around the college, but we circled back to my apartment.

I’ll probably do another, more in-depth post showing off my current apartment (as I’ll only be in this unit for two weeks until they move me into a different one a couple houses down and across the street from my current unit). For the time being, though, I’ll leave you with this:

I went to take a shower and wash all the traveling stink off of me, since I took a quick shower on Sunday afternoon, knowing I would be able to take a shower again for a while after running through airports and such. I stepped into the shower and turned the cold water on to wash off the jet-lag, and it felt awesome, so I took a mildly-cold shower. I stepped out of the shower and into a quarter-inch of standing water. I’ve been in this place for maybe two hours, and I flooded the bathroom. Go, me!