Day 102

I don't know which day it is anymore. I think it's probably 102, but I'm too lazy to do the proper math. 102 is as good as any number.

I've been very busy recently, with loads of things happening. We've had the test collection for our Charity thing (the money goes to a rehabilitation centre for drug abusing children in Bangalore), so we went into Bergen one day to bother people with collection tins. We've also had a visit from troubled kids where the China class (which very often means me) arranged some activities for them. That was pretty tiring. This week, we've been preparing for the China class' student evening. I decided it'd be fun to do a dance performance, so Bendy Girl, Red Cross and I have been finishing some dresses which Mum had the patience and kindness to make for us the weekend I was home. Tensions ran high as we tried to figure out the sewing machine, but we managed somehow in the end, and we're all very happy with the dresses.

Today, we went out to town to buy some supplies for the evening, that is, me, Sheep, Bendy Girl and Red Cross. I'd barely gotten in the door to the dorm after a tiring day before the people in the living room yell at me "You're the dorm assistant, we don't have toilet paper!"
The weather has been pretty bad today, very windy and raining and/or snowing, but I went out regardless to find the toilet paper.

The storage room is beneath the kitchen. The school was mostly quiet except for two guys playing cards in the TV area. It was dark in the staircase and hall to the storage room, and it felt a bit like I was in a horror movie, what with me walking around the deserted school corridors on my own on a dark, stormy evening. When I reached the door, I realized it was locked. I have no idea who has the key, but I remember there's a storage room in the classroom building as well.

I walk over and look around. I even snoop around the teachers' bathrooms for extra rolls. Nothing.
The teacher on duty isn't in her office and I'm starting to think my dorm mates will have to be creative until tomorrow when I try the door between the two bathrooms on the first floor. There were no toilet rolls for the dorms there, but I did see three massive rolls meant for public toilets. I hid one under my jacket and headed back to the dorm.

Now, I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to be taking stuff from that closet. It's the washing peoples' closet after all. But if they do ask us about the missing roll of toilet paper during tomorrow's morning assembly, I'm sure they'll understand the need.

5.12.2013

Day 85

Nothing much is happening here at school, but I figured I'd do a little update regardless.

We're back to regular schedules again, which means only 3 periods of exercise/training a week.The winter is also getting closer, so the nights are longer. It's pretty dark when I wake up, and darkens early in the evening. Life has been revolving around studying Chinese, exercising, playing video games and watching movies. To boost my speaking ability, I'm trying my best to respond to LH when she asks me something, as well as talking to my friend in Hong Kong via the internet once a week. It seems to be helping, as the words are easier to find and say than they were two weeks ago.

Perhaps because I'm suddenly exercising less again, I've been feeling very low on energy lately. Last week, I didn't manage to do any extracurricular exercise at all, and it made me feel very bad. Thus, I decided I'd make a change today. After finishing the morning and afternoon classes (sanda and Chinese culture, we're decorating porcelain), I joined the football P.E. group for 45 minutes, then joined the floorball group for another 45 minutes straight after. I then did some weapons practice. After a shower and supper, I helped Bendy Girl with Chinese, then returned to my room to do 20 minutes of stretching. Now I'm all done and pretty tired, but luckily I can sleep soon!

Also, I've managed to upload some pictures of my postcard wall. I do receive some postcards, and I appreciate it a lot. I hang them up on my wall over my desk where I'll see them every day, and feel happy. I've got stamps to send some cards back to return the favour, but sadly I live in the middle of nowhere and have been unable to find any actual postcards. I'll probably be able to find some the next time I'm going into Bergen though, so then I'll be mailing some out!

My postcard wall

Closeup of the cards!

18.11.2013

Day 73

Though I was quite hyped for a week of all tea-drinking and exercising, we were asked Wednesday morning if we wanted to perform at a Chinese culture day arranged by the Bergen Confucius Institute. We'd be given free Chinese food, so we all said yes straight away. Since the performance would be that Saturday, we suddenly only had that day, Thursday and Friday to learn the choreography and then manage to do it well, all our tea lessons were replaced with more practises. I volunteered to do the staff part, as well as a "jump" (a butterfly kick) as well as participate in the forms. There was also a nunchuk group as well as a basic movement group (kicks, some spinny things and such).

We somehow managed to get through it, and come Saturday we were all on the bus to Bergen for our performance (save one person who had a slightly wild Friday night). We met LH in town (well, first we missed our stop and waved at her as she disappeared in the distance, then we ran back to her), and then walked to the place, with our staffs and nunchuks waving, sometimes talking Chinese. We must've been quite the sight!

We arrived to find loads of Chinese people everywhere. I felt like I was constantly pushed in front of the group to talk to people and was quite uncomfortable straight away. About half an hour before the entire programme of performances started, LH told us that her friend, a wushu professor visiting from China, wanted us to perform with him in a lion and tiger dance. This meant four people grouping up to wear two very red and shiny lion suits and jumping around like crazy, and the rest of us (save for one person who injured himself the evening before) being the dragon. We had maybe five minutes of practice before the professor was... semi-happy.

We had some free time to try some of the Chinese booths, like tea-drinking, calligraphy, kicking shuttlecock (much harder than it looks) before we were sent into the fray in our lion and dragon costumes. Apparently we looked like "an old dragon". Then, our wushu performance was nearly at the very end. We were suddenly pushed together with the wushu professor and his students' performance as well, but it went fine, all things considered. The food was good too, and all in all it was a very good day.

The next day, Red Cross and I enjoyed our day off by thoroughly by staying in bed, eating sweets and trash food and watching movies an series. Whii!

Day 65

The internet has been pretty bad lately, so I've been waiting with posting in hopes that it'd get better, but no luck. Thus, I'll just post now, using my phone as a router, though it is pretty bad as well.

I've gotten a new roommate since last. Red Cross needed to switch rooms, and though I've said I preferred a single room on my application, I've valiantly offered to be her roommate for the rest of the year. It's not really much of a loss for me. I'll pay about 1000 NOK less every month, and she probably spent more time in my room than in hers before (apart from sleeping and changing), so it's all good for me really. The only negative is I suddenly have less space, but I didn't use that much to begin with so I'm happy with this arrangement.

The course weeks continue, and last week was super fun. We got to try quite a few weapons, a double-edged sword (jian) for taichi, nunchuks for sanda and a staff for taolu. Personally I don't like nunchuks much, they're very.. all over the place. I've always liked swords, but the movements we're learning in taichi are mostly pretty and slow, but not so impressive when I do it. The staff is pretty cool though! Strong Handshake and Mr Prepare have "been running around with the woods with sticks since they were kids" so they're pretty good at staffs already, but I try to practise extra with the staff (also the other weapons) so I can handle them well too.

In the meantime, Red Cross fell for the nunchuks at first whirl and decided she was going to become the Nunchuk Queen (new nickname??), so she's been practising a lot. She's getting pretty good too! E managed to sprain his leg pretty bad and was out of commission for most of last week and decided that nunchuks were awesome too. He's been practising like crazy, and at breakfast one day, upon hearing Red Cross was going to be the Nunchuk Queen, decided he was going to be the Nunchuk Emperor. Of course, Red Cross wouldn't be beaten and decided that she'd be the Nunchuk Pharaoh instead ("since Pharaohs are obviously more awesome than Emperors"). They've got this little nunchuk rivalry going on now, which I'm happy not to take any part in.

We finished our presentations successfully last week, and this week we started the next culture part of our course week - tea and philosophy. This means sitting in pairs of two on blankets in the classroom with special equipment, learning to prepare tea a fancy Chinese way while we talk about Buddhism and Daoism and so on. It's very relaxing and good, apart from the fact that my legs keep falling asleep, and we've all gotten to taste some of FT's awesome Chinese tea.

Completely unrelated to my course, it is a fact that Game of Thrones often has a hard time getting up in the morning. If you miss the morning meeting you get loads of absence noted down, which is bad, but it's his responsibility so I usually don't mind it. Doll Girl, however, does get up and we usually go to breakfast together. It so happened that this Monday, the entire art class (Doll Girl and Game of Thrones included) we're going on an overnight field trip, so they needed to get up early to prepare mattresses and such. Doll Girl felt responsible and decided it was her job to make sure all the art class people in our dorm were up and ready. Since I was with her, I decided to help. Game of Thrones likes Game of Thrones. I also like Game of Thrones. Doll Girl has seen some, and so we're making her like it as well. We have a small game going (kind of a role play, I guess?) related to this, where we've got our own House with a banner and everything. I'm a Knight, Doll Girl is the resident Scholar-type ("Maester") in our castle and Game of Thrones is the Lord. Sometimes we sit and chat in our roles in English and, for some reason, Doll Girl and I decided that we should wake him up "In character". Thus, I started banging at his door quite loudly going "MILORD! MILORD!", yelling about our castle being under siege and that he needed to wake up fast. I stood there for quite a long time actually, and attracted a small audience, including E. Eventually I realized his door was unlocked, and so Doll Girl and I opened it softly, asking "Milord, are you awake?", to which he quite grouchily answered "Get out!".

Usually that'd end there, but it turns out that I hadn't only woken up Game of Thrones, I had woken up everybody still sleeping as well, including the theatre people who get to sleep in because of evening performances. They had apparently been quite scared, shocked then somewhat annoyed and told E about it, so he told me during dinner later. Of course I apologized to them (though, to be fair, it was already 8 am!), but now I randomly have Mr Prepared and E yelling "Milord, Milord!" after me. Well I don't mind, I think it's funny actually. The more playing along, the merrier!

29.10.2013

Day 59

Hello again!

Time sure flies when you're having fun~ I'd like to skip straight to talking about this week, but I should talk about the weekend too...

Last Saturday, we had a seminar arranged by the equestrian class. That meant that we listened to three hours of talk about stables and racing and horses in general, and watched loads of Youtube clips. Apparently the equestrian class is sick of people saying that riding a horse is easy and not a sport, so we had to sit through two very similar ones that reprimanded us all for looking down on them. I felt somewhat insulted since I've never tried to tell them that riding a horse isn't difficult or tiring, but I'm sure it wasn't really a personal attack on any of the students. We're all nice, I think!

After the presentations, we all went to the racecourse. There were ten races set up for the day and we were to watch them all. To make us feel more involved, the horse class had taken the programme and cut out the horse information for all the races and given every person in school a horse or two. If your horse won a race, you won a secret prize which you'd get at supper later! It did work, somewhat. I got a horse called "The Sheik's Gold", and it was, as far as I could tell, the only horse owned by a Sheik from Dubai that had entered that day. I took it as a good sign and sat in the cold to watch.

As it turns out, it was a good sign, and my horse did win. As a prize, I got a large bar of chocolate, which I was going to eat later that evening. The evening before, we had started watching the X-men movies, since Doll Girl and Game of Thrones were feeling keen on an X-men marathon. Doll Girl had bought a nice fancy screen that she and Game of Thrones use for playing the Playstation, so we used that to watch movies on Friday. On Saturday, however, one of our other dorm mates (my neighbour, in fact) had fixed us up with a projector, so we watched two more X-men movies on the wall of the living room, this time joined by even more people. I shared my chocolate, and we all had a good time.

This movie watching continued, with a progressively better canvas for the projector, and more and more people coming to watch it. On Monday, we had the living room full of people as we watched Les Miserables. It's nice to have a proper place to watch movies in the dorm!

This week, then, is special. Usually, my week is filled with course subjects (i.e. China or martial arts subjects), plus electives and some common courses. This week, however, is the "Course Week", which means that, apart from PE, all my non-China subjects are changed out with course subjects. Thus, every day this week, we have one two-hour period of history, then one two-hour period of martial arts. It's very tiring, but very fun!

The history is basically the entire class working in groups of one to three on one Chinese history topic. I'm working together with Very Bendy and Red Cross, and we've chosen the Tang Dynasty. So far, us working is basically just us sitting in Very Bendy's dormitory listening to relaxing music and reading, but we'll get to making the actual presentation tomorrow. After that, since FT likes non-technological, more classical things in a presentation, like a poster, we're going to make one of those. With glitter. Very Bendy was very keen on glitter, and luckily for her, FT had some in his office (??). We'll make an absolutely fabulous poster!

Now, I should probably stop writing. We agreed to have written the main points for our parts of the presentation by tomorrow, and I'm running out of time, since I'm probably watching a Chinese series with Strong Handshake, maybe also Sheep and Mr. Prepared. No time!

23.10.2013

Day 50

Wow it's been a while since my last post.. already 18 days! Since the last time, I've continued as usual, and also gone home for a week's holiday. It was really nice to go home for a bit and just eat loads of food and relax. I tried to exercise too, but in the end found I had pains in my legs and knee that didn't go away, so I relaxed completely on Saturday and Sunday before I left.

I'm not too fond of travelling, well the actual travelling part of it. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. It didn't help that when I arrived at the airport with my parents, the airline had overbooked my flight and suddenly told me I might not be able to go. I stood by the boarding queue until all the normally boarded people had been registered, and then checked to see if I could go or not. Luckily, they did have room for me. I even almost got to sit in the cockpit!

The bus ride to the school was more tiring. I waited for a while because I met Very Bendy at the airport, and she was waiting for someone to arrive on a slightly later flight. In the end, we were 10 people or so from the school crowding up a bus, first to Bergen, and then onwards to Hylkje. The school was pretty quiet by the time I got in, but that was all right, since I was pretty tired at that point. When I got in, only Game of Thrones, Doll Girl and Mr. Prepared were there and still awake. We all hugged and laughed and said hello - it seems most people have been really missing the atmosphere here at school, which I can understand.

After packing out, I went to bed and had a terrible night's sleep. I kept waking up for some reason, and woke up feeling completely unrefreshed. Still, I dragged myself to breakfast. The first lesson was sanda, and it was fun. Well, fun I say. We did some light kicking and punching practise, and some wrestling, and I am really bad at restraining myself. One of my classmates who grew up on a farm and knows all sorts of cool stuff about catching sheep and other farm stuff said jokingly said he wanted to hit me, so we paired up for the activities. He was much kinder to me than I was to him, he's probably used to it since I'm a girl or whatever. I ended up kicking him full of bruises and hurting his knee, as well as strangling him into submission during the wrestling. I was so ashamed afterwards. I spoke with Red Cross about it after, and she suggested I think more about the technique the next time so I don't get carried away. Hopefully I'll be able to be a better sparring partner in the future.

The school has a yearly "Stoltzen race". This is the mountain I climbed in my first week here. What happens in it is pretty self-explanatory, and whoever wants to can join. They'll get driven up to the Stoltzen for practise, and because I absolutely hated it the first time and hate being tired, I naturally signed up. I'm hoping the training will improve my shape a bit, because I'm always wheezing after warm-ups. I always thought that you should only be warm after warm-ups, and not wheezing. In any case, I don't want to run up Stoltzen like some crazies, so I'm for now just trying to walk up without taking any breaks. Red Cross also decided to join my walking, and, in fact, many China class students did as well, including Mr. Prepared, E and Strong Handshake. Mr. Prepared and E had done Stoltzen before in the first week, so they sped up, while Strong Handshake had come late and so missed it. He went up with Red Cross and me at our pace today, and it was pretty tiring but quite all right.

Now I'm pretty tired after all the exercise, and I'm pretty ready for bed. Good night!

14.10.2013

Day 32

Yesterday was another Wednesday. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, and it went very slowly. Until horse riding. I have horse riding lessons every Wednesday after dinner. It was a very popular elective, loads of people on the waiting list. They all came the first time, then the second time, then we started becoming fewer and fewer. I'm not sure why people were put off - probably because we divide ourselves into newbies and non-newbies, and each group gets 45 minutes of riding while the other has to sit and watch (or run next to someone, depending on what we're doing). It's boring to wait. Since we were going to a play later that evening and wouldn't have more than 30 minutes for preparation after getting back from riding lessons, more people decided not to go. In the end, we were only 5 people, 4 who were supposed to be there and one who just tagged along for fun.

Well, I'm happy I went in the end - just having 5 people meant we could all ride for the entire lesson. The teacher gave us a choice of some horses, I picked the one I rode last time. She wasn't very.. hmm energetic that time, maybe I was doing it wrong, but at the very least she was nice to me. A young girl came along to help me to get her ready, and I managed to take her to the riding place all by my lonesome.

I could feel she was more energetic this time - she kept wanting to go faster than the other horses, and I had to keep slowing her down. Previously I've had trouble getting her to turn, but yesterday it was pretty easy. Then we were going to practice trotting. The girl who helped me put on the reins came up to me and thrust a whip into my hands. No explanation. Just gave me the whip. I just took it and wondered to myself what I was supposed to use it for, or rather when. We haven't been whipping the horses before. In any case, I continued trotting.

At one point, the girl realized I wasn't using the whip at all. Well why would I, nobody told me what for. She showed me I was holding it wrong, then let me ride on. We ride in circles in a big indoor riding hall. As I came back to where the girl was, my horse randomly slowed down, and I hear the girl yelling "Use the whip!"
I dutifully give my horse a light tap and she speeds up to a trot. Then the girl continues "Use the whip again!"
I feel confused. I mean, we were supposed to be trotting, and my horse certainly was trotting, but I figure she probably knows what she's talking about. I tap my horse again.
ZOOOOOOOOOOOM
My horse starts going really fast, faster than a trot. I'm quite surprised, and my right foot slips out of the stirrup. As we're racing onwards, I'm trying to figure out how to slow down. Nobody really taught me. Pulling the reins seemed like a good idea though, so there I sit, trying to keep my balance with one foot loose and pulling the reins. The whole thing only lasted for a few seconds, but they were some very exciting seconds! I'm happy I managed to stay on.

Later in the practice we got to try going fast (again, for me). Yet again nobody told me what to do. I'm just sitting there on my horse with the whip. Just try to stay on her, they say. I'm not sure if I actually managed, but hopefully I'll get to try again next week! When we were done, I jumped off my horse.. well, slid off (though I'm getting better at that too) and gave her a few good pats, since I felt like she'd been really nice to me. I'll try to ride her again next week, it feels like we're getting along somewhat!

26.09.2013

Day 25

Happy mid-autumn festival! I woke up today to a Facebook-feed full of people talking about their moon cakes and barbecues. I didn't think too much of it, only that it is a Chinese holiday and my friends are all celebrating, but then I remembered something from Monday's lesson. FT had said, when we asked when we were going to have tea in class, that we might get to eat something good this Thursday. That is today. I suddenly realized that he might be talking about mooncakes, and so I looked forward to today's lesson more.

Before I go on, what's mid-autumn festival? According to Wikipedia, it's a "harvest festival", but according to the people in my Facebook feed, it's all about family, friends and food. It's also connected to a story about a woman who became immortal and went to the moon, which I don't know much about because when I was in Hong Kong, it was all about the food. You also eat mooncakes, and watch the moon, which is full on mid-autumn festival.

Now moon cakes are very special. They look very appetizing, nice and golden-coloured:

Then you take a bite, and in the sweet paste you taste something salty. Inside them, you see, is usually a sweet paste - and a duck's egg. 

It's an acquired taste, one I haven't acquired yet, but still I was excited at the thought of mooncakes. Not because I thought it'd taste amazing, but just because it'd be nice to do something Chinese, feeling like I was doing it with all my friends abroad who were enjoying their mooncakes.

When the teacher came in, I somehow managed to squeeze out a "will we eat mooncakes today?" in Chinese for her. I had to think about it for a while before I found the right words. She said we would, and I high-fived Red Cross, whom I had told about the festival during lunch and thought mooncakes sounded great (I hadn't told her what was in them, maybe that's why?). But that wasn't all! We were not only eating mooncakes, but also making spring rolls! Cheers from the class! Before we could do that however, we had to sort out the China class' student council representative. Everybody was keen to get started, so we quickly passed a paper around with all the names written on it so people could vote on it. Somehow I won, probably because I fixed the paper with names and they figured, hey, she can fix this voting, she can probably do whatever a student council rep does. 

We scurried down to the kitchen and divided into groups, and started chopping vegetables and frying meat. I got to fry the assembled spring rolls for my group, which consisted of me, Red Cross, Strong Handshake and a Very Bendy girl. I even had to do it with chopsticks, since doing it with anything else was impossible. I don't really like eating spring rolls with chopsticks, they're too smooth and hard so it's tough for me to get a grip, but I did my best. I was pretty full after the lesson, and could only eat a little bit of the dinner, even though it was delicious - meat, rice and sauce!

Since it's mid-autumn festival and all, I'd kind of like to watch the moon, but I live in Bergen so it's raining. I guess I'll just go to bed instead!

19.09.2013

Day 22

The weekend came and went. I had grand plans of studying and training and reading, but of course did none of it. Since most everybody was out, the few of us who remained practically had the dorm to ourselves. Instead of being productive, I spent Friday evening and Saturday playing games and watching Harry Potter movies with Doll Girl, Game of Thrones guy and a few others.

On Sunday, Red Cross and I sat on my bed all day watching a Chinese soap opera and drinking frighteningly large amounts of tea. I had mentioned to her the first week, when we were talking about "embarrassing hobbies" that I enjoyed Chinese soap operas, and she insisted that we watch some later that year. Her brother knows everything, she says, and so she had him suggest a series. He suggested one which I have already watched, but it's a good one so I didn't mind at all. At first Red Cross had been completely ready to watch the most horrible, cheesy soap we could find, so I'm very pleased we didn't in the end!

Since Doll Girl and I finished Hannibal, we didn't really feel like we could write names from that series on our next lunches. Instead, since we watched Harry Potter, she suggested we take names from there. Today I remembered, and wrote N. Longbottom on mine, but she forgot, of course. Luckily, my lunch wasn't completely alone in the basket. There was a "Harry Potter" and "Cinderella" there too.

Speaking of lunch, today the China class was done first and was first to the lunch area. They usually set out fruits and some drinks, plus the packed lunches, and today there was finally enough fruit for us too. Often, there won't be any left by the time we're done with our training. While I was collecting some slices of watermelon, Anime pointed out some boxes in the hall. They were filled with shoes and clothes, and labelled with "If you find something of interest, feel free to help yourself!"
This isn't the first time they've done this - two weeks back or so, several boxes with the same label appeared in the hall filled with CDs. The school was founded in the late 60s, I think, so it's only natural that they have many things left behind, clothes, CDs, equipment.. that they don't know what to do with. I couldn't resist when they put the CDs out, and collected a whole bunch of different music. Today was no different, but I tried to restrain myself. I found some sturdy-looking mountain shoes that fit me nicely, which means I have something to wear for horse riding lessons now that isn't my running shoes. Woo! I resisted trying to find a pair of wellies, and going through the box with jackets and sweaters.. A pair of mountain shoes is more than good enough.

16.09.2013

Day 19

Well, I did get sick. It grew worse and worse on Wednesday, and by the end of my horse riding lesson I was ready to go lie in bed and not do anything the rest of the day, which is exactly what I did. The next day, I skipped the first lesson so I would have the energy to go to my Chinese lesson after lunch. It was a pretty relaxing lesson. The teacher handed me back and explained to me that I'd passed it with loads to spare. I didn't really feel it was easy, I had to guess a lot, but I suppose educated guesses are good guesses. Thus, my teacher suggested that next time I'll try the HSK 4 instead of the HSK 3 in case that's better for me. I'll have to not only learn the characters and words for 3 now, but for 4 instead. That's at least 600 more words and 400 new characters... Woo! Loads of work to do...

Today in martial arts, each person performed one form (wu bu quan, 五步拳). LH said that if we couldn't do it, we wouldn't get our performance clothes. LH is pretty nice, so she probably would've given it to everybody anyway, but everybody managed more or less. Speaking of martial arts, the China class has a kind of unofficial motto - mabu (马步). It's one of our stances, the horse stance, and it looks something like this:

马步

I'm not sure if you can imagine it, but it's pretty painful to stay there for a long time. Regardless, people started suggesting activities to do in mabu. FT suggests we use one of our stances while massaging so we don't hurt our bags - MABU! Waiting in line for food - MABU! It's come to the point where the mere mention of mabu will cause laughter, and if you yell it out, any China class people who hear it will jump down in mabu with a loud STOMP. It's an inside joke, it's a cheer, a motivational yell, and today in the ball games elective class, Mr. Prepared found out it's good to do volleyball serves in mabu. Seems to distract the opposing team, because they kept returning the balls into the wall. It all ended with the China class people who were there stood in a circle in mabu doing the beat from "We Will Rock You" before floor ball, jumping up and down like that for the two stomps and hitting the end of our floor ball sticks in the ground for the claps. Someone entered the circle and did the vocals, and thus we had an impromptu performance for the rest of the group. My legs are a bit tired, but I guess this is good training for all of us?

For the past week I've been joining someone in my dorm to watch TV series, Hannibal, to be more exact, and occasionally a movie. We finished the first season yesterday, and it's left a hole inside. Everyday when we make our lunch in the morning, we wrap it in Norwegian food paper and write our names on it so we can find it again later. Today, the girl and I decided we'd reference the series we were currently watching with the names we write on our paper. Result:

Delicious bread.

She picked Hannibal, and I'm tempted to give that to her as her code name but I had a thought I should try to avoid it. She's not similar to the fictional character at all. No, I'll call her Doll Girl, since one of her main hobbies is ... ball jointed dolls. They look pretty fancy! So Doll Girl and I finished Hannibal. I'm trying to have her watch Game of Thrones, but for some reason she refuses to. We'll probably end up watching something else instead.

This week is a free weekend, so half the dorm is out. It feels very empty here, but more than that I really really want something to snack on. Biscuits, or crisps, cakes, sweets.. I don't care. Well I don't have money to spend, so I'll just sit dreaming. I'll try to relax this weekend and hopefully get over this sickness!

13.09.2013

PS. I got a letter yesterday. Thanks B! I really love getting letters here, so I was very happy to find it in my mail slot!

PPS. I never uploaded pictures from our trip to Bergen last weekend, so I'll give you some here. We were divided into groups and sent around Bergen answering questions like "what are these art galleries called?" and "what do Bergeners call this lake?" In the end, everybody met up in the Aquarium where we had a look at the fish, and penguins.

Lillelungen

Just a street

What DOES the fox say?

Fishies!

I love this guy's smile

Day 16

My third week here is well under way. Things are going as usual. I'm covered in bruises from all sorts of activity. Blocking kicks with Mr. Prepared, crashing into walls during football, climbing on the ground and so on. Also, there's a new guy in our class. Red Cross and I first greeted him in the queue for food, and he's pretty tall, almost as tall as Mr. Prepared. He also had an accompanying firm handshake which had me focusing so I wouldn't show my discomfort. That aside, he's very cheerful and nice, and gets along very well with Mr. Prepared and E. The other day when I went into Mr. Prepared and E's room to ask E something, I found the three of them pluss a gaggle of girls lying in the beds doing... well I'm not sure, nothing too risqué since the door was wide open, but still he fits right in. Folk high school, people.

In today's Chinese lesson, I got my own thing to do, mainly doing a past language exam. I didn't expect it, and it was very tiring, which is a good thing. The level of the test was probably right for me as well, not easy, but still doable. My brain was mush after though, so I didn't even want to think during the rest of the lesson.

I also got to do the warm-up for the martial arts training. It wasn't entirely prepared, but I think I managed fine. Everybody was pretty tired in the end, which must be a good sign. We did some pretty acrobatic moves in the lesson which I must admit I'm not good at. Give me choreography, just leave acrobatics out of it. Well I don't REALLY mind acrobatics, but I definitely need to work on them still! I hope I'll be able to do them by the end of the year.

On an unrelated note, most of the school seems to have caught a cold. Me included, though I'm deep in denial. So long as I can drag myself out of bed to practise, I'm not sick.

10.09.2013

Day 14

It's already Saturday! Time sure flies quickly when you're having fun, and fun I've had. We started learning a form in martial arts class. I can't remember what it's called but I always love having a choreography to practice. We also started to learn how to do some impressive spinny flying kick, but I must admit I'm not completely there yet with it. I can spin, I can kick, I can wave my arm, but doing them all at the same time while keeping my posture is pretty tricky. At least my stretching is starting to pay off. I can actually hold my left foot now if I sit on the floor and stretch my legs out to the side.

We've also had more Chines lessons, which I've thoroughly enjoyed. We're still doing the first chapter in our book, which is about greetings and asking people if they're well. During Thursday's lesson we were asked to "perform" in front of the class in 2s, but only 3 people did it. The first pair was Mr. Prepared and his room mate E, and the other was me... well nobody wanted to go with me, so E went again. It was nice of him!
At some point during Thursday's lesson we started assembling Chinese decorations for the classroom. When Red Cross and I were done with ours, the teacher came up to me and launched into a long, quick ... somewhat one-sided conversation which just nodded and said yes to. I'm pretty sure she was talking about giving me extra work sheets so I could study for the HSK (a Chinese language test), so I smiled, nodded and said xiexie (thanks). She gave me some work sheets which I promptly finished, and the next day FT said I did them well and that they would see if it could be possible for me to take the HSK 3 when we go to China so I have something to work towards.

Speaking of the China class, there are 4 other China class members living in my dorm. There's Red Cross, Mr. Prepared and E, and also Anime, which, as Red Cross says, looks like he's come straight out of a Japanese animation. I'm getting along fairly well with Red Cross, Mr. Prepared and E since the day of the hike when we all walked together, but Anime moved into our dorm later and is pretty quiet. I'm quiet too, when I don't know someone, but I've been making an effort to get to know him more. I have horse-riding with him and Red Cross on Wednesdays, so we talked a bit then, and today we were both early for breakfast so I sat down with him and talked for a bit.

Ah yes we started electives. Guitar lessons was fun, and I've gotten a hold of Red Cross' room mate's guitar. She'll let me borrow it and play and she'll teach me as well, so I'm very happy. The horse riding was fun too, but very difficult. They brought horses out for everyone, I got a helmet, I stood next to the horse. Then the teacher tells us all to get on the horse and start walking. No instructions as to how you climb onto a horse, or how to start one. It went well in the end, I got up and my assistant got him going. After the newbies had tried a bit, the more experienced got their turn to practice, so Red Cross, Anime and myself took pictures. Many pictures.
My final elective is "ball games" which is just what you'd think. So after two hours of martial arts on Fridays, I have two hours of ball games. I enjoy it though, even if I'm horrible at volleyball. I manage in Norwegian dodge ball though!

Well, today we're going to Bergen. I can't recall what we're doing  but I'm sure it'll be fun. I'll see if I can take some good pictures!

07.09.2013

Day 9

Today, it was incredibly difficult to get up. I'm not sure why - I'm not getting up before 7, but it may have something to do with my dreams. I vaguely remember dreaming of training in the PE hall. Endless push-ups and running. That'll make anyone tired, even if it's just a dream.

First thing up was the much awaited second Chinese lesson! I had fun and I'm very happy that the teacher, today FT's Chinese wife LH, kept trying to ask me questions in Chinese. I'm just disappointed that they still catch me so off guard I can't answer much more than "mhm" and "yes". Well, at one point I was desperately trying to explain to her about why Red Cross wasn't feeling good today, but saying that she slept horribly because she had a spinal tap some time back and that area had been painful recently isn't something I know very well in Chinese. It was mostly me jumping up and down, pointing and going "She has pain here!!!!!"
Speaking of Red Cross, she wasn't feeling well today so she left the lesson early to go to see the doctor. She had meningitis before (see spinal tap) and understandably is now careful when she feels ill. She also had some random bruises, and red spots where she had her spinal tap. Luckily it wasn't anything too serious - a fever and some sort of inflammation somewhere, but she was absent the rest of the day regardless.

We also started thinking about our Chinese names today. LH gave us pieces of paper and asked us to write down any words or things we'd like to have in our names, and she'd make them for us later. I wrote up my first name which I had in Hong Kong, Jia Wen, and asked if I could use that to which she said yes. Later I figured maybe I should've written the family name too... Now, instead of being family name Wu, first name Jia Wen, I'll be family name Jia, first name Wen. I guess it doesn't matter in the long run since I can still call myself Wen Wen for giggles, and I'll still be called Jia Wen by anyone else, because nobody uses just the first name if it's a two character name, unless you're watching a really sappy soap opera. Well that's me, but the rest of my class had a tougher time. In the end they started having fun with it, and I'm not sure if I really am going to spend the rest of my school year with Raging Fist and Wet Noodle, or if they wrote down something else in the end...

I managed to.. well I don't know the English word, but I over-stretched my right leg during the training after lunch. I wanted to stretch out some after, but could only do it on my left leg, because although my right leg (thigh in particular) doesn't HURT yet, I can still feel it was over-stretched and I don't want to make it bad. I'd rather just give it some rest and non-stretching until it's better so I can go all out again later. Dinner today was pretty amazing. Since we were just released from training when it started, I sat down all sweaty on a table with 3 other martial arts students and one more. Stinky table, though I didn't really smell anything~
We had sausage (in a tomato stew) with rice (that contained vegetables) and some crunchy salad. I would've had so much more than I did, but I couldn't possibly eat more. They can make it again any day!

Now, I'm going to relax for a while. Just sit in bed and half-sleep. I'm tired, and luckily I have no more physical exercise until Thursday afternoon, when I start with horse riding lessons. Woo!

3.9.2013

Day 8

I'm pretty sure I won't be able to keep on posting one new thing a day eventually, but there are still new things happening so I should enjoy it while it last!

Today was my first proper day here, following the timetable as it's written. After the daily morning meeting we had our first lesson with the male teacher FT, and we had something called "sanda" (散打), which my dictionary translates to "Chinese mixed martial arts". It was pretty fun, and we mostly learnt basics like a stance, a kick, two types of punches and so on, plus doing loads of exercises and training. I was quite tired and sweaty by the end of it, and had a quick shower after lunch, but only a quick one.

After lunch we had another lesson with FT. First we submitted some pieces of paper with things we'd like to learn about this year, then we started learning "tuina" (推拿), seemingly some type of massaging where you also stimulate acupressure points. FT gave us a very short, simplified introduction to the basics behind traditional Chinese medicine, and said that tuina was the predecessor to acupuncture. It was quite interesting, and relaxing as well. We divided into two groups, where one sat on chairs in a circle and the other stood behind and did whatever FT told them to do. We learnt how to find two pressure points today. Though their names passed me by, they were somewhere on the back of your head, and slightly above your shoulder blades. I've never had my pressure points massaged before, but it was an interesting experience. First it made me feel slightly sick, then uncomfortable (but bearably so), and after they stopped I felt very... light, in a way. I had trouble finding the one on the back of the head, but the one over the shoulder blades was simple.

Eventually we had to break for dinner, today salmon burgers. They weren't much to my liking, but I was starving so I ate one anyway.

FT is not only our course's teacher, but also in charge of getting the school exercises, so he's the PE teacher in a way. Every student had to pick either football, floor ball, strength exercises, morning jogs or individual training. I ended up picking football, so after dinner, I had 45 minutes of that. I'm not much of a football player but it was fun anyway. FT said he refused to sit and watch and joined in, but didn't come well out of it. First I accidentally tripped him into a wall so he bruised his leg and arm, and then Mr. Prepared accidentally kicked him in the nuts. Poor FT.

After football, I, Red Cross, Mr. Prepared and another guy from our course (who apparently was a forward for 8 years and so predictably chose football for PE) went down to the gym for some stretching. It seems everyone is intent on being able to do the splits by the end of the year. It feels like I'm already getting more flexible. At the very least, I'm dealing with the pain much better now.

We also got our elective subjects today - well, we were told what we ended up with, at any rate. I ended up with my first choices for everything, guitar lessons on Wednesdays, horse riding on Thursdays and ballgames on Fridays. Game of Thrones guy had gotten the course where you make teddy bears from scratch, and by the time I got back from lunch there was a full-on betting war between Red Cross and Towels about who would get the first teddy bear. It probably started out pretty innocent with something like.. I'll buy you a drink, or I'll give you massages, but when I got there they were offering up some pretty racy stuff. In the end, Towels won and cheered, but Game of Thrones guy looked slightly worried thinking about all the things and services he'd been promised.

In the evening, Red Cross and I massaged each other again to get some more practice, and she taught me how to find the pressure points behind the head which I could not find before. Loads of people in our dorm has offered their bodies for our practice (I can't imagine why), so I'm thinking when I get better at this, the massaging is a good way of earning some points with the other people here.

Finally, I had to practice some piano. I started out on the grand piano in the music room, but was kicked out because some people wanted to play a game there. I headed out to search for another piano. The one I usually pick was free, but there were people watching a movie in the room next to it, so I decided not to disturb them and used the white one in the Chinese classroom. I hadn't tried it before, but it was pretty okay - probably my 4th or 3rd pick here. I was expecting to be left alone in that room at least, but suddenly one of the art teachers pops her head in and asks if I'm playing Debussy. Sure, I said. She wanted to listen, so I had an impromptu performance for her. You don't say no to people who want to listen, even if you dislike playing for others. It went pretty well - it's a good thing I was playing a piece I'd had a lot of practice with!

And now, I am here. Technically, it's half an hour until I want to go to bed, but I haven't studied Chinese yet today, apart from vocabulary practice.. I'm not sure whether to try to rush in a little session or just take it slow and go to bed in good time. Probably the latter - I could do with one day break from the book, since I've already studied vocabulary and learnt some sentences from my friends in Hong Kong. Speaking of Chinese, tomorrow is our next Chinese lesson. I'm really looking forward to it, but I hope I don't get asked anything I don't know!

2.9.2013

Day 7

I think I have to reconsider my budget. As it is, I planned on using no more than 250 kr every month but.. it's very difficult to stay under that unless you do virtually nothing all month. Anyway, I'm well into October's 250 now. I'll just have to not spend anything for a while. Yes, it's a deal, from now on I'll say no to all pizzas and trips to the city! The internet will be my witness.

The weather has stabilised somewhat, with clouds and rain and even some wind. I regret not bringing an umbrella, though for the most part I only do need to go from my dorm to the school building, which takes about one minute. I also did bring my "cagoule" which keeps me nice and dry when I remember to wear it.

After one of my dormmates, Red Cross, the northerner who convinced me to bathe on the hike and who is also on the China/martial arts course, gave me some porridge for breakfast since we missed the school one. It didn't taste bad at all, so I might invest in a bag once my budget is back on track. We had a little chat, then she left and I was alone with the guy who is always reading Game of Thrones. Everyone else was sleeping, and Game of Thrones guy had his nose deep in "A Clash of Kings", so I decided to do the mass of dishes that had gathered in the kitchen sink and tidy a bit.

By the time I was done, more people had gotten up, so I decided to be semi-social and do some Chinese in the sitting room where everyone else was. I finished another chapter and am officially halfway through the book. It feels like I'm kind of stuck and not learning more, but I'm sure I am anyway.

At 2, we had dinner, some sort of ham with roast potatoes, veggies and sauce. I thought it was quite all right. I figured that Sunday while people were still eating was a great time to go practise some more piano without people going back and forth in the hall, so I went and started playing. I was alone for a bit, but eventually people started appearing and moving couches and more. I didn't find out until after that they were watching a movie in the school building. If I'd have known, I would've stopped playing so they could watch their movie in peace. It's one thing to distract one person while playing, but an entirely different one to distract a room full of people watching movies on a big screen.

I was going to do some more Chinese when I got back, but Red Cross was going to the gym to do some exercise. Another girl, who has a very sweet and soft voice, was also going. I didn't really feel like going but I figured since our teacher had told us that we needed to train by ourselves as well, take some responsibility, as it is, I might as well tag along as well.

While Cotton with the sweet voice and Red Cross were lifting weights and doing typical gym stuff, I tried doing exercises that I know (because the only gym equipment I know how to use is a treadmill!)
I ended up doing things like jog, sit-ups, push-ups and other exercises for 45 minutes, then 15 minutes of stretching later. I'm determined that I'll be able to do the splits at the end of this year!

I went back to the dorm and had a shower, and then tidied my room. Then, I made tea in one of my new clay tea cups which I drank while finishing my Chinese for the day. When supper was nearing, someone in the house came up with the bright idea to order pizza, and it sounded pretty brilliant considering it's been a hard week and today has been a good and slow day. Thus, my will broke and I pitched in on it as well. We're still waiting for the pizza at this very moment. I hope it'll be worth it. And my budget... Well, I'll do my best to make it work out to less than 250 per month by the end of the year!

1.9.2013

Day 6

The weather has been difficult all day and not decided whether it wants to rain or be sunny, and as such it'll be pouring down one second then the sky will be blue and cloudless the next. I guess this must be the crazy Bergen weather I've been told about!

On Saturdays, breakfast is later than usual, but the same things are still served. Though my timetable has Saturdays as a free day, I assume it's the day for various happenings. This Saturday, we're doing a "Welcome to school" show. The school has 7 dorms of various sizes. Mine, dorm 2, is one of the bigger ones. Each dorm was told on Monday to prepare a 2-10 minute performance which we'll perform in front of the entire school. All the dorms are keeping their plans secret, so I don't know much about what's going to be performed yet, but from what I heard through the closed doors of the PE hall during rehearsals, there are definitely some music/dancing, as well as skits and other things.

Our dorm decided to do a small collection of skits about people meeting their roommates for the first time. The point was to show how different the things people say and think are, and to show how people may not like eachother at first but will find they have a lot in common after all. I'm doing one of the voiceovers, so I get to stand backstage with a microphone.

We had our rehearsal at 11 AM, which went pretty well. After that, I snuck off to one of the better pianos with sheet music I received from home yesterday to practice for a bit. That particular piano is in the schoolbuilding where the classrooms and offices are. Usually, it's pretty deserted which means I can play uninterrupted without having to worry about disturbing anything. Today, however, because of the rehearsals, there were a lot of people going back and forth from the theatre room where the props and costumes are kept. I decided to just ignore them all and keep on playing, and had fun sitting there for one and a half hours.

By the time I was finished, it was nearly time for a meal. Today, instead of having regular lunch, dinner and supper, we have breakfast, late lunch and late dinner. The late lunch was Norwegian rice pudding, which I haven't had in quite a while. I took a huge portion and added sugar, cinnamon and butter, but forgot that I don't really like rice pudding. I couldn't finish mine :(

A lot of people are out and about, in town, or at other dorms, so dorm 2 is pretty quiet today. After lunch, I decided to do some studying. It made me pretty sleepy, because I practised telling the time and doing the maths in my head for the numbers is difficult enough for me in English, let alone Chinese. Thankfully, because it's Saturday, they served cake and coffee at 4, which woke me up a bit so I could continue.

Later, we had the shellfish meal, crabs and shrimp. I tried both but didn't like them much, and stuck to bread with ham and cheese for the rest of it. The performances were good, and ours went well, and by the time everything was over and we'd cleared out the performance hall (mainly the PE hall) it was already ten. Now usually, I'd go back to the dorm and study or relax until bedtime (eleven), but today a bunch of people from my dorm were going out. I decided to tag along for a change so hopefully my dorm mates would feel more comfortable with me and vice versa, and spent my budgeted amount of pocket money for September all in one go.

My school is pretty far away from any clubs or pubs or those sorts of places, so you have to take the bus in to Bergen - which is what we did. The bus takes about 40 minutes, depending on traffic and how much traffic there is. In Bergen, we were assaulted by sudden rain, and hurried to some club somebody had heard about from someone's friend. Since our school has banned alcohol, more precisely being intoxicated, on school grounds, most people couldn't drink much. I'm not too fond of alcohol, so I mainly sat and tried to speak with people over the loud music, danced a bit or watched peoples' bags on our table.

Because it's been a tiring week for everybody, the group thankfully elected to take the last buss home rather than staying in Bergen until morning. After the people who still had pocket money (i.e. everyone but me) had bought a late night snack, we finally found the bus stop. Eventually the bus arrived. Nobody had really taken this bus before, so we didn't know where to get off. We kept asking and double checking with the driver, so in the end, when our stop did arrive, he announced it on the speakers for us, even if he hadn't announced any of the other stops. By the time I was in bed, it was already 4 am...

I slept very well, but woke up at around 10.30. I could've had more sleep, of course, but I figure it'll be easier for me to readjust to a proper sleeping schedule if I sleep less now and try to go to bed early again tonight. Nothing is happening today, so I'll hopefully just study and relax all day. Hmm maybe I'll watch a movie later...

31.08.2013

Day 5

Today was a good day. Although it was raining a bit when I got up, it didn't matter much because everything happens inside anyway. We have four meals a day, during weekdays that means breakfast at 7.45, lunch at 11.15, dinner at 14.45 and supper at 19.00. Mostly we're given a choice of bread and cereal for breakfast and supper, with various meats and spreads to put on top. For lunch, you eat bread which you packed yourself from breakfast in white paper with your name written on it. They gather them all up in a basket and place it out at lunchtime. There's also fruit served then, which I'm very happy for. Dinner is always a warm meal. Apparently, the four students with kitchen service can help decide the menu at the start of  the week, but so far it seems like mostly hot dishes with potatoes, and seafood three times a week. Fridays seems to be leftover day, where they make one small dish plus serve leftovers.

In any case, I usually have bread with ham and cheese and some sliced peppers on top, with a glass of milk or apple juice - today was no different. After attending the daily morning meeting, where teachers and eventually students talk for 20 minutes about a topic of their choice, I changed my clothes and headed to the PE hall for my lesson. It was just as fun as last time, and our teacher even showed us a little bit of... martial arts I guess, with a spear and a staff. She has hurt one of her knees, she told us, so she can't really jump or go all out, but she still jumped around in a pretty amazing way.

During the lessons, as a rule, the two teachers (though we only have one at a time because they are married, so whoever isn't teaching us stays at home to take care of their kids) try to use Chinese as much as possible. I've got a slight advantage because I've learnt some before, so I more or less understand what she wants us to do. This also puts me in a slightly awkward position, because the teachers know this and that I lived a little while in Hong Kong. Sometimes, they'll say something difficult to the class, then they'll look at me and go "Can't you tell them what this means?" Sometimes, this works out very well and I can tell the class what it is they said, but then sometimes I have no idea what it means and I stand there looking blank and embarrassed. I guess this is good motivation to learn even more!

Because of my.. somewhat unique position in a class filled with relative beginners, our male teacher had a talk with me after the lesson yesterday. After telling him that I've studied for a year before, but have forgotten quite a bit and probably have a fair deal of holes, he told me to use the textbook and work with the chapters I felt I needed. I could also do exercises or write for practice and hand it in to either him or the female teacher for corrections, and he would print out some resources from other books for me to use. I wouldn't have minded following the lessons the same way as the others and just studying whatever I felt like individually, but it's really nice of them to give me the help and resources to do it. I guess they really want everyone to learn as much as they can this year. Maybe I should try to write letters or short, simple essays or something for practice?

Later in the day, after dinner (meatballs and leftovers with rice!), I sat down with one of my friends from the Chinese class for some studying. It was fun going through the first chapter very thoroughly and talking about the different Chinese characters (called hanzi) and some grammar. We also worked some on pronunciation, though I don't feel all that confident in correcting her since I'm sure I've got a bit of an accent too. We didn't have time to go through any of the dialogue, but we've agreed to at least start with greeting each other in Chinese. It's a start! Hopefully I'll feel more confident speaking Chinese after this year.

Well, things are always happening here. I'll finish this post with some pictures I couldn't post before.

-30.08.2013

View of the Fjord

My room, or at least my bed. You can barely see the beautiful gravel road outside. Actually, my curtains don't completely cover the windows, so people can always look in. Thinking about it makes me feel uncomfortable, so I try not to. 

The common room. Usually filled with students playing games, laughing, reading and so on.

Day 4

Things are slowly falling into place here. The teachers and stuff are running out of information to feed us with, thankfully. Today we received information about our elective subjects, which we also picked later.

In the school, the main lessons we have are related to our main chosen course, so Chinese lessons and training for me, music-y lessons for the music people and so on. In addition to those we have some lessons that are the same for the entire school; one session of PE, a discussion period for current events, a short culture lesson and one hour of the entire school singing together every wednesday. In addition to that then, we have our electives, minimum one lesson a week, maximum.. four I guess? The school offers a range of alternatives which change once in a while. To make it easier on the teachers, today we put up our preferences, but also backup choices on a piece of paper.

I signed up for, on Wednesdays, guitar lessons (1), the show/revue group (2) or archery (3). Archery might've been further up if I didn't have to pay extra for it. On Fridays, the choice was slimmer, but I signed up for ball games (1) or drawing and painting (2). I also signed up for horse riding lessons. We'll see which ones I end up with!

We also started lightly with Chinese lessons today. The first part of the lesson was spent running around the school grounds doing a quiz about the class (which two students should you go to for first aid? this man has a kingly viking name, who is it?). The questions were spread around the school in sometimes awkard places, like under a table outside, on the back of a parked caravan, behind a sign and so on. After that was done, we got our textbooks and started learning, practising on each other going "how are you?" "I'm super good".

As I sat having dinner later (fish and potatoes), it hit me that when you learn a language, you mostly start with positive, kind expressions and don't learn more negative ones until later. Sure, we can say we're super good, but what if we feel absolutely horrible? Dinner was good, but what if it wasn't and I wanted to describe it to someone who wouldn't feel offended by it? I guess they don't really expect you to have very deep (or honest) conversations until you're further along with your studies.

The internet at my dorm is a bit unstable, so I find myself without internet quite often. In a way it's a good thing, because it means internet troglodytes like myself are forced to get out and do different things, talk to people. I guess that should have been the case today, and in a way it was, because I ended up playing some strategy game with relative strangers before supper. I gave in after supper though, and after a short session of playing the piano I returned to my room and studied and revised while people were playing games and watching movies elsewhere. I don't mind though, I had a great time. There's nothing more exciting than new textbooks and new things to write in, especially when the topic of the book is interesting to you!

Day 3 - Going for a hike

Today we went for a hike. Normally, I'd take the least tiring and most scenic route, but my class is kind of the "athletic class" of the school somehow, so I feel I have an image to keep up. Actually I think the horse riding class is probably fit too, but for some reason many people seem to not think riding a horse is tiring. I'm pretty sure it is. Anyway, having to keep up my image, I chose to try out the toughest hike. It was a pretty steep staircase, apparently climbing 300-something meters up to a spot with a pretty view. By the end of it I was ... very tired. Embarrassingly so. I don't think anyone was fooled into thinking I'm in good shape, but at least I made it to the top and took some pictures.

View of Bergen from the top of the steep steep staircase

Continuing along a path we reached a lake where we were supposed to have lunch. I just had a banana before I was talked into taking a dip in the water. I hadn't really planned on swimming, but someone from my class was well prepared and at least had towels to spare. I waded out, slowly at first, but then jumped in after the others had done it (such a wimp). Personally, I thought the water was really really cold, but the northerner who had convinced me to do this and has a proclivity for ice bathing assured me it was pretty hot. Brr.

The totally not cold lake

By the time we were done swimming about, the rest of the steep hike group had split up into the people taking the long hike to the next top, or the ones taking the quick route down to the tram. Remaining was us four ice bathers and Mr. Prepared, who didn't jump in but lent us towels. We had planned on going to the next top, but everyone going had already left. Luckily our teacher was still around, and walked with us up. Though it wasn't as steep as the staircase, it was steep enough for me to be wheezing by the end of it.

Further up the mountain

At the top, I finished my lunch and sat around for a bit until we were continuing down. In contrast to the mountain path on the way up, the way down was a wide gravel road which Miss Northerner and I walked down together. Well, we started off walking, but when we realized Mr. Prepared and the two others were taking shortcuts and getting ahead of us, we started jogging down instead. Sometimes we slowed down to a walk if the road levelled out or if we needed to figure out the way, but mostly we just let gravity take us quickly down the windy path down the mountain. Eventually we did reach the bus stop, and didn't really feel how tired we were until we were sitting down and on our way home.

Day 1

I was sensible and went to breakfast early at 7.45. Then I was rather insensible, and had too much for breakfast and packed too much for lunch. The day started off properly after breakfast with an information thing in the auditorium. There was so much information, everything from when things happened to fire drills and our timetable. It looks pretty good, everybody has to do PE and there is plenty of time allotted for our actual course lessons.

The information continued with short breaks for 2 and a half hours, when we had lunch. I ended up chatting with a girl who's attending the Latin-America course, and after lunch I hitched a ride with her to the "nearby" shop, which isn't really THAT close and you have to go up loads of hills to reach it. I bought some bananas and carrots for snacks in the evening, and also washing powder (since I forgot to get it before). By the time we got back, lunch was nearly over.

At 12.15, we all met in the auditorium again. This time, the teacher for each of the courses fetched their 10-20 students and went to their respective classrooms. The music group went, the writing group went, the theatre group went, the art group went, the horse riding group went, the Latin America group went and mine went - all our separate ways.

When we arrived in the classrooms, more information awaited us, though this was course-specific and far more interesting. We introduced ourselves (something we've been doing a lot here). Though most classes here has a majority of girls, my class (China and martial arts) has something like 11 guys and 3 girls. One of the girls lives in my dorm, so remembering her name is easy, though I'm having a hard time with the others.. After hearing about our course and the structure, we received a tour of the school building(s). As we walked around, I made a mental note of all the pianos here (9 in total apparently) so I can find the most hidden and remote one to play once in a while. Though the pianos are all free to play by whomever, I don't want to bother anyone with it -w-

For dinner that day we had some sort of fish with potatoes, salad and sauce. I'm not too fond of fish, but this was nice, even if I found bones in my otherwise boneless fillet.

Thinking maybe I'd get a little time to relax, I went to my room after dinner, though not fast enough. At 15.15, two teachers came to talk to our dorm and give us, yes, more information. But before they could do that, we needed to introduce ourselves.

Apparently, we have to make a small skit or performance for Saturday - every dorm does. We decided on some sketch with stereotypes - geeks, blondes, creeps etc... I'm not entirely sure what I ended up doing, because people were talking very quickly and I didn't really mind doing anything, but I'm sure it will be fun :P

Well that's that... I should take more pictures. Right now, most of my dorm is out doing something - testing out the gym, going to the shop. I'm thinking I'll search for a piano somewhere to use before they decide to shut everything down. Toodles!

Still breathing

... somehow

I've had my first full day at school now, not that we've done anything very school-like. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's see..

I left home yesterday morning to drive to the airport. The weekend before, I'd been tidying furiously, but somehow manage to switch rooms with my brother and pack my stuff by Sunday. The plane ride was fairly comfortable, and the drive to school was comfortable as well.

At school, I was shown to my room, which I am not sharing with anyone (whoo for private space). Although the school is right next to a fjord, my room has a lovely view of the gravel road up to the school. That in itself isn't so bad, but during the afternoon, the sun is right outside my window, heating up my room like a greenhouse. Yay for curtains!

After I was all moved in, it was nearly time for the "opening party", but first, I took the time to take some pictures of the fjord. Sadly, the internet here isn't entirely good for uploading, so I can't post them here :o

The opening party, it seems, included sandwiches, performances by the teachers (including a barbershop quartet) and each class being presented name by name on a small stage. After a while of eating and singing, it was time for escorting parents and siblings to leave, and I headed back to my dorm. There're 16 other people in my dorm, and most of them decided to sit down in the common room to get to know each other. One girl had brought an instant camera and took pictures of all dorm 2's tenants with silly faces. We wrote names on every picture and displayed them in the hall.

Later that day, it was time for dinner. Being here gives me a kind of camp feeling, and when I think of camps I remember evenings with my tummy growling of hunger because I didn't eat enough at mealtime and didn't have anything in my room, so I ate a lot at lunch. However, it seems I don't really need to force myself because the meals are pretty nicely spaced.

In any case, that day at dinner we sang more and were treated to "ox steak" with a lovely cream sauce and potatoes and veggies... Ahh I love the food here -w- We even got ice cream and strawberries for dessert. I ate my fill at a big table with people from my dorm, whose names I was slowly starting to remember.

When we were all filled up and the tables were cleared out from the PE hall, I went back to the dorm. At this point I was pretty tired, but I stayed up regardless to get to know my neighbours more. Some of us ended up trying to play some sort of role-playing board game, but nobody really understood the rules. Still, it was fun. By the time we were done with the game it was already 11 PM and I was ready to sleep - and so I did.