Jeg ikke snakke Norsk

I spelled that wrong, I'm pretty sure. It means "I do not speak Norwegian", which was my first thought on getting to Oslo. It seems like everybody in Norway can speak English, but everything is in Norwegian anyway. Go figure. It made life a little bit frantic when we got into the airport in Oslo, and then just kind of confusing when we rode the train. But the train ride was really beautiful, right along Lake Mjosa (it's supposed to have a slash through the O but I can't find that one). Then we arrived at the train station in Hamar, and we were ushered around rather awkwardly by students to our dorms. It turns out that Curt and I are sharing a room that's actually quite nice (pictures attached) while Kelley is in a dorm twenty minutes away living with another American from North Dakota State named Breanne. We were basically dumped into our rooms with no instructions except for that we would start school (kind of) on Monday. It was Friday when we got here, so we were left with a little time. We used this to do absolutely nothing. On Sunday we met our international coordinators, Stian and Knut, and we took a tour through Hamar and the university and such. Knut Haugen is an ex-military man and he walks very fast. He is also probably insane. He led us on a great tour along Lake Mjosa, as we saw a castle and lots of water and greenery. This was also the day when I got to meet the other international students, who are all really cool people. The international program at Hedmark University includes students from Nepal, Hungary, Palestine, Kosovo, Tanzania, Namibia, Russia, Czech Republic, Indonesia, USA, and possibly another country or two that I forgot right now. It's an interesting group, and over the last week or so I've gotten to know pretty much all of them. As much as I love PLU, I've never really had the chance to talk to people from so many diverse backgrounds, and even though I've really spent most of my time with Americans the conversations that I've had with people from other countries have been awesome. Monday through Friday was an orientation week, as we would call it back at PLU, but it had an emphasis on drinking that I don't think PLU could legally condone. Personally, I think this is not a terrible thing, as it helps people come out of their shells a little bit more. The activities surrounding the drinking, however, were top-notch as well. There was a party at Hydranten (the pub 10 seconds from our room) on Monday night, karaoke night Tuesday at Hydranten, a barbecue out at the agricultural campus about 15 minutes away on Wednesday, a concert featuring a crazy band called Surferosa on Thursday, and then another party at Hydranten on Friday. I think the reason that so much of this went on in the pub was that Norwegians are naturally slightly awkward or shy, except when they are drinking alcohol. Karaoke night, especially, illustrated this fact. At 9 o'clock when we showed up, there was no one there. From 10:30 on it was nonstop drunk butchering of American pop songs and Norwegian traditional anthems. That night certainly was interesting, and the entire week has been a really fun time. I've definitely met more people this week than I thought I would have, and I've had the chance to check out the city and start to appreciate it a bit. I've been writing for long enough now that I think I can stop detailing the week and attach pictures. I have pictures of our room and of a bit of the town. There's a lot of streets and some beach photos to check out. I'm just going to link to my facebook albums so anybody can look at these pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036317&id=44903424&saved#/album.php?aid=2036317&id=44903424 AND http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036317&id=44903424&saved#/album.php?aid=2036315&id=44903424