Money- That's What I Want!

“You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.” - Tennessee Williams

Life has been pretty interesting lately, well mainly just Thursday evening/Friday morning. On Thursday evening I was all ready to be really productive- had my grocery list in hand, train tickets figured out, and my Ecophilosophy homework all laid out awaiting my return home. All I needed to do first was stop by an ATM after class and take some money out… and then my card got EATEN BY THE MACHINE!!! So I started to panic…’But wait!’ I thought to myself, ‘I’ll just go and ask the bank to get it out for me. Jeeze, Marissa, you are so smart to use an ATM directly attached to a bank and not a free standing one!’ Wrong-o… it was 4.15 and the bank was already closed, in fact it closed at 3.00. So I start to panic. I have no money, I have practically no food left, and I have no way of talking to anyone at the bank! I come home and luckily was able to get in touch with my wonderful Momma, who had got my bank back home to cancel my card and rush order me a new one! Thanks again Momma! I was very happy to remember that I have an emergency credit card and then tried to proceed about my life and go ahead to buy the train tickets so they don’t jack up in price. Again, how wrong I was...Did you know that at many places in Norway that in order to use your credit card, you also need to have a 4 digit pin number for that said card? No, well I didn’t either until I tried to buy my tickets. Apparently most European credit cards have a pin number like our debit cards do. So this is going to make life pretty difficult until I get my new debit card in the mail.

Yesterday (Friday) I took a class field trip to the museum here in Bø. We were able to look around at some of the historic homes and see inside the old general store. In one of the old houses, we had some tea and cookies and learned a little about the music culture here in Bø and we also got to hear someone play a few songs on the hardanger fiddle. On Bø’s coat of arms there are 3 hardanger fiddles (1 for the fiddle makers, 1 for the fiddle players and 1 for the audience) and it claims to be the home of inventing the modern hardanger fiddle. Here’s what the coat of arms looks like.

Last night, some other Americans and I got together to spread a little USA Halloween love to Norway and we carved some pumpkins, ate pumpkin seeds and watched Hocus Pocus.

Cinnamon pumpkin seeds

My happy pumpkin :)

All four of ours- 2 smiling pumpkins, a platypus and vote 'yes' on ref. 74 in Washington

Well, I’m having a pretty boring weekend and just doing a bunch of research and homework before I leave for 5 days in Prague on Wednesday! But I hope you all have a wonderful (and SAFE!) Halloween weekend and Halloween! Eat some extra candy for me! I love and miss you all!

We are family!

'Family is not an important thing, it's everything.' -Michael J. Fox

This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to meet some of my distant relatives here in Norway. Jonas Haugersveen contacted me on Facebook in early September. He had been told by his grandmother that I was studying in Norway. I think we determined that Jonas's grandmother is my Grandma's cousin (Is that right, Grandma?). He lives with his parents in Risør, a smaller town right on the coast south of Bø. My family (Grandparents, Uncle and Mom) have met his mother, Torhild, a few year back. 

Friday early evening I took about an hour train ride and then met Jonas at the train station. We drove back to his home about a half an hour away. There I met his mother and father, Bjørn. Soon afterwards his younger sister, Juliana, came home from her folk school with a friend. We had dinner- homemade pizza. Afterwards, I spent the evening talking with their family. I learned that Juliana goes to the same folk school that Jonas went to for 2 years. At the school, they take classes for the first part of the year and then travel doing some mission work. Jonas had gone to Mali a couple of years back and Juliana leaves for Uganda this coming Saturday for 5 months. Jonas starts university in Australia this January, where he'll be going for a bachelors in Psychology and Social Work (just like me!). They have an older sister, Helena, who got married this past summer and now lives in Oslo with her husband where she's finishing her undergrad in Physical Therapy. 

On Saturday morning after a light breakfast, Jonas took me on a hike down to the coast. Here he showed me something that directly translates to "Guessing pot". It is a giant cylinder hole in the rock which was created when a glacier came through and put pressure on a rock causing it to spin and dig a whole in the ground after many years. They actually have the largest one in all of Europe in their town. Afterwards, we went up to an outlook above the city. Risør is known as the "White City" because mostly all of the buildings around the coast are all white. It was really beautiful. We then hiked around some old WWII trenches are bunkers behind the outlook. We then headed back home to shower off and dry out- it was a pretty rainy day. 

We then had some dinner- stroganoff with reindeer meat. It was so delicious! After dinner I went onto Facebook to show some pictures of my family and school to Torhild. I was then quizzed by Jonas in how much Norwegian I know, which wasn't too bad, but I'm still a long way off of speaking enough to carry a conversation. We then ate some waffles and had some tea as a snack and watched a movie. The movie was in English with Norwegian subtitles, which is how they watch most of their movies. 

The next morning, my train left at 10.50 so it was an early breakfast and then Torhild drove me to the train station. It was such a wonderful weekend- delicious food, great conversation, beautiful Norwegian home, and warm-hearted family! I feel so blessed!

Well, nothing too exciting this next week- lots and lots of research and studying to write some midterm papers. I have to get a lot of extra work done this week, so I'm all ready for my adventure to Prague next week/weekend! So wonderful!

I love and miss you all back home so much!
-Marissa

Northward Bound

“The stars are putting on their glittering belts. They throw around their shoulders cloaks that flash like a great shadow’s last embellishment.” –Wallace Stevens

A few days ago I got back from my journey to northern Norway and due to a very busy past couple of days, I’m finally ready to tell you all about it!

So last Saturday morning (Oct. 6^th) we got up nice and early and caught a train to Oslo at 5 am and then got to the airport to hang out a bit and catch a plane at 10.30 to Bodø. We arrived to Bodø at about 12.30. Here’s our view flying in. It was a little scary seeing we were going to be landing by so much water. 

From there we walked quite a ways to the town center and to find our ferry. After securing the location and times of our ferry, we hiked to the nearest grocery stores to stock up for the next few days. We got on the ferry at about 4 o’clock and had about a 4 hour ride to the Lofoton Islands. It was a little gray and cloudy outside, but it was a beautiful ride across the open ocean. I definitely got rocked to sleep a couple of time by the ocean waves. On board we met a guy named Tyler from Minnesota. He was traveling around Norway in a camper for a few weeks. He offered us a ride to our cabin, saving us an 8 km walk, which was so nice because we were all exhausted by this time. We stayed in an old fisherman’s cabin on the island Hamnøy. It was such a wonderful and warm change from our typical cold camping experiences. There were 5 beds, a bathroom, a good size kitchen stocked with dishes, and a little living room. The best was though the view of the mountains outside our cabins. Instead of trying to describe how wonderful it was, I’ll just post some pictures.

On Sunday, we took about a 45 minute ride bus to Ramberg, a neighboring island. Here we spent the afternoon exploring one of the many white sand beaches up here in the Islands. The view was incredible from all directions. We hiked out to tip of a point and sat and ate our lunch there. I couldn’t figure out how to do a panoramic photo with my camera, so instead I just took a video to share my wonderful lunch view.

After lunch we hiked back down to the beach and relaxed for a while, built some sandcastles, slept a little. And then we got the idea to go a little crazy and go swimming! That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I now can say I’ve been swimming in the Arctic Circle!

Due to a misreading of the bus schedule, half of us ended up taking a taxi back and the other half hitch-hiked back home to our cabin. We spent the night making dinner, reading, playing cards and listening to some music.

On Monday, we got up and hiked around some of the surrounding islands. All of the islands are connected by bridges that look like this.

We ended up on Risør at a beautiful little café. We saw so many cute little shops, museums and art displays along the way, but unfortunately mostly everything was closed for the season, except this one café. It was a beautiful and relaxing way to spend the afternoon. 

On the way back we stopped at the only grocery store and the islands and stocked up for our last few days there. We got back and had hoped to take out a rowboat that came along with our cabin, but that too had been taken in for the season. So, instead, we played some cards and cooked up some dinner. That night around 9.30 we were able to see the Northern Lights right from our own deck. At first they were a little dim because of the all the clouds, but soon they were so bright and took up the whole sky. They rippled and danced in greens and purples. They lasted for about an hour and were so spectacular! Cameras couldn’t really capture them, but here’s a few attempts.

On Tuesday we went to a town called Å. Å is the last letter in the Norwegian Alphabet and Å is the last island in the chain of the Lofoton Islands. It was a pretty cloudy and gray day out and rained a few times, but it was still nice to walk around the old fishing town. We ate lunch right by an old boat and then hiked up to a mini light house. 

That night we had reindeer stew for dinner- so delicious. Then we spent the night watching a movie and cleaning the cabin. We had to get up nice and early- 4 am- to hike to where our ferry would take off to take us back to Bodø. It was about an 8k walk and took us a little under 2 hours to get there. We were very excited to get on the ferry and get warm and sleep a little. Once we got back to Bodø, we stored our packs at the train station and spent the day café hopping in Bodø. That night we boarded the train for a nice 21 hour train ride back home to Bø. We had two transfers along the way and the ride home was so beautiful. I felt like I was on Hogwarts Express in the winter time. There hadn’t been any snow and it hadn’t been that cold in the Lofoton Islands (They are the biggest warm weather anomaly in the world, in fact one of the days we were there it was about 50 degrees F), but on the train ride we went through so much snow. It was beautiful. 

We finally got back home at 7 at night on Thursday. I highly recommend anyone who wants to travel to Norway to be sure to go to the Lofoton Islands- seriously one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been!

This past Friday, for my Individuals, Environs and Society class, we took a hike up to Høyslass, a mountain right behind the school and talked a little about Norwegian fairytales. 

That night I visited my Norwegian friend Christine at the bookstore she works at and talked with her for a while. After that, I went with a couple others to a man named Gordie’s house to make applesauce. Gordie is in the international program and taking classes at our university to stay busy while his wife teaches at another university and travels around Norway performing for the year. His wife is a pretty famous fiddle/violin player. Gordie is originally from Canada, but now lives in Scotland with his wife.

Yesterday I had a day excursion for my class. We went down to Kragerø to visit an old maritime museum and then take an hour ferry ride out to an island known as ‘Spinster’s Island’.  It was very VERY cold on the ferry, so we were all happy there was a lower level we could huddle in out of the wind. On the island we hiked up a lighthouse and then took a walk down to the sea. Finally, we took the ferry back and had a delicious dinner of fish soup at local restaurant in Kragerø. The bus ride back made me realize how quickly it’s starting to get dark here. By 7 o’clock it was already completely dark and I was told every day its gets darker 7 minutes earlier! That’s so crazy!

Anyways, I’ve got an Introducing Norwegian Language midterm this week, so I’m actually going to go spend some time studying. Lots of love to you all! Jeg er glad i dere og jeg savner dere!

-Marissa

'I've got to get busy writing...Busy! Busy! Busy!'

‘Get busy living, or get busy dying.’ –Stephen King

So I know it’s been a while since my last post- Sorry! So I’ll give a short update about what I’ve been up to since my weekend in Stavanger. On Saturday of this past weekend, we took a nice walk to Gvarv, the next closest city to Bø, for Applefest. There was delicious apple everything- apple cakes, ciders, artwork, etc. I bought a nice big bag of apples and I still haven’t eaten them all. 

Eplekake med is! (apple cake with ice cream)

That night there was a ‘Cowboys and Indians’ party at Kroa, the student pub. It was kind of shocking for us American students for them to have this as a theme and it interesting trying to explain to all of the other international students why it was so offensive and never would happen in the US. Sunday I bought a plane ticket for a trip to Prague Oct. 31^st till Nov. 4^th. I’m going to meet my high school friend Angela Pappas, who is studying abroad in Spain for the semester, and spend a nice long weekend in the city. On Tuesday night, my friend Katie and I learned how to make ginger beer from one of our Norwegian friends. It is quite popular here for students to brew their own beer as a hobby. So our first batch is in the process and won’t be done for three weeks or so. That night a bunch of us American students got together to make some apple pie from our Applefest apples for Coffee Hour. Coffee Hour is a weekly Wednesday get-together in the school cafeteria with free food, tea and coffee. On Wednesday, I also had my first midterm in my Norwegian Film and Fiction class. (Yes, everyone, I AM in school right now and I AM taking classes- surprise!) It was an essay exam about a novel and film we read/watched call Kristin Lavransdatter. I probably should have studied some more, but I hopefully didn’t do horribly. That night, there was ‘Open Scene’ at Kroa, which is basically open mic night. There was some standup comedy, a couple of dancers, a really great band and then few people played the hardanger fiddle. Bø claims to be the home of the modern hardanger fiddle, which is why on their shield they have three of them. Last night I had the most amazing time. My Norwegian friend Christine had my friend Katie and I over to her house. Her roommates and she made us traditional Norwegian meatballs, potatoes, mashed peas and an amazing apple cake.  The food was so delicious and it was so great to be in a real home.

 Today, I went on a field trip for one of my class to several different locations in West Telemark. Our first stop was at Vesås farm, which is the birth place of the famous Norwegian author- Tarjei Vesaas. We spent some time looking around the farm and were even invited inside for a tour. The part of the building we were in was built in the early 1600’s. 

Next stop was Grimdalstunet, the home of Anne Grimdal, the artist who created most of the decorations on Oslo City Hall. There were a lot of her sculptures placed throughout the yard. Many of them involved animals, and my favorite were all with bears. 

After eating lunch here we headed to the Hotell Dalen which is the largest wooden building in West Telemark and hosts many important guests, like the royals. 

Finally we stopped at the Eidsborg stave church and the West Telemark museum. The church was established in the 1300’s and was beautiful. Unfortunately it was all locked up so were couldn’t go in. The museum was pretty interesting, just your basic history museum.

 Tomorrow, bright and early, at 5 a.m. we leave for our journey into the Arctic Circle and we’ll be spending 4 days or so in the Lofoten Islands. Here's a map with the Islands circled. 

Keep your fingers crossed for me that we get to see the Northern Lights! 

Sending my love back home to you all!