mountain goats

A fellow Capricorn friend of mine likes to claim, when we go hiking together, that we climb like mountain goats. I can't say anything against her, but you would be hard pressed to find anything in the mountains less sure-footed than me. Unless it was a mountain goat with a broken leg and a stress disorder after having been attacked by a cougar I suppose. Not that I suffer these ailments. I have no excuse for my unstableness. I generally fall over at least once per trip. Not that I let this stop me. Nay, say I, I shall not be oppressed by this lack of coordination! So I'm going to blame my muscle stiffness this evening on having fallen down about 7 times while trudging through the snow, rather than admit it is probably because I haven't gone hiking in the month than I've been back in Norway until this morning.

I might also have benefited from a bit more planning. Like keeping my matpakke in my pocket instead of in my backpack. Not that a half frozen sandwich was all that bad, and my coffee was still hot, so I wasn't freezing my belly. But it would have been smart to either wear my waterproof socks or my gaiters. Bit of snow melted into my shoes, but I'd already walked enough by that point that my feet were not in danger of freezing. In fact, I took my down vest off shortly after reaching the woods and was just wearing my Taku rain jacket. Insulation? Who needs it when she has an incline and crusty snow that variously holds her weight or doesn't? Really, I wouldn't have had a problem with snow getting into the boots if I didn't also have my steps go down six inches further at unpredictable times. And I was pretty warm until I started walking back down the mountain.

I also should have brought my camera so that it could be made known that snowy mountains in Norway look like snowy pine-covered mountains anywhere. And that the lakes look something less impressive when they appear to be little more than flat, treeless planes of snow.

we are pleasure to be here

In the end I felt sorry about giggling, but his English really was very endearingly cute. I went to a modern (?) jazz show tonight with friends. Based on a broad sampling it would appear that folk music is much more popular in Bø than jazz.* And one of their tunes was titled "Bunny". It just makes one want to take the trio home as pets, little bunny-boys with floppy hair that one would feed carrots and lettuce. Of course, three grown (though young) Finnish men would probably not thrive on carrots. Finns, like Norwegians, are pretty good drinkers. So I really shouldn't tease them for their perfectly fine, though not quite perfect, English. I can't even remember all of the personal pronouns in Finnish. Fine result for a year's worth of study.

I was also a bit melancholy at the end of the show because they played a jazz arrangement of a very beautiful traditional Finnish tune that Ruth MacKenzie performs with English lyrics about one's lover being far away. And because the trumpet player from SUN was genuinely flustered by introducing this tune, and I don't like to make people uncomfortable about language issues. I've gotten rather sensitive to problems of communication, and find that it affects my social interactions. For example, I'm not very comfortable talking to the Kroa technical crew leaders when I'm not working a show. And I don't socialize with the very nice Danes that I have met, though that might be more because I am not a real friluftsliv person. It's like when I was a "bicycle groupie" before I learned how to really ride my own bike.

*Three concerts, leaving out the rock concerts at Kroa that have nothing to do with either genre.
**It took me a very long time to ride a bike. I learned when I was 21, and wasn't really comfortable riding until I was 25. By this time I think most non-riders would have given up, either ignoring the beauty of the bike, or becoming bitter and harassing cyclists.

Islands and Travel

The island at the center of the world.
Winter break travels saw the opposite of snow. My first visit to New York was dry and not especially cold. Indeed, it must have been close to 60º when I was catching my plane to Stink Town (as a friend so generously dubbed it). When I got to NYC, I was tired and soon to be sick, without a very strong idea of where I was or where I was meeting my cousin. I also didn't have a mobile phone (an experience limited to my having forgotten it, until I canceled my plan for time abroad), or any sort of clock (having forgotten my iPod on my desk back in my dorm). I did, however, manage to meet to find the correct corner in Manhattan and meet my cousin at the right time. This, I felt, was a very important accomplishment. The following day, the cousin generously showed me all the sights I wanted to see in Manhattan, from the big Christmas tree to the public library. I was not sufficiently impressed. I was impressed with my cousin, whom I hadn't seen in close to a decade. But I am possibly one of the few who is neither enraptured by, nor disturbed by the massive and culturally significant New York. I liked it. The subways were convenient and efficient. The buses seemed to be fine. The architecture was interesting and very tall. I am fully aware of the city's status as an economic centerpiece to the world. But my over all feeling was 'I'd like living here, but I don't see what the big deal is.'
Oh, and the American Natural History Museum displays their fossils nicely. Plenty of light, instead if half-hidden in mood lighting, as the Field Museum seems to like doing.

An island at the edge of the gulf.
Most of my vacation was spent in Charlotte. I don't necessarily think of the city as 'Stink Town', but my affection for it definitely waxes and wanes. I do love the friends that I have there, but they are increasingly fewer persons, as I just don't live there anymore. Charlotte couldn't even dream of a white Christmas, as the temperature neared even the 70ºs while I was there. So what do I do? Travel further south. The Florida panhandle is very nice for camping in January. Few insects (none that I would call pests), mild temperature, and while we were there, lots of rain. The first night we did sleep outside, but the second night we were rained into a sweet little B&B in Apalachicola and enjoyed hot showers and overly warm beds. I was a bit in the realm of unreasonably cranky for most of the trip, which generally manifested as sarcastic humor. I was, in fact, cranky for most of my entire break. Starting out the break with a cold that didn't get attended to immediately, and spending much of my time tired, or in transit, or tired while in transit, anticipating more time traveling and worrying about missing my various modes of transportation. This was not the best for a happy, relaxing vacation. And yet I wouldn't have wanted to give up any part of my travels.
Enumerating, I took a train, a plane, a short airport walk, a trans-Atlantic plane, a bus, several subways and much walking, another bus, another plane, several local car trips, one very long car trip, a few more local car rides, another plane, another bus, more subways and lots of walking, another train, another trans-Atlantic flight, another train, much walking, a return train, another plane, and one last train from the time that I walked down the hill from my dorm in December until I walked back up the (now snow covered) hill in January.
And I still haven't said much about St. George's Island in Florida. It was wet. It has lovely sand dunes, and pretty shells, and it was raining lightly. Until it was raining hard. But it was still nice, and I'm impressed with my sister's park scouting skills. But as she is the ekte friluftsliv person in the family, she's the best woman for the job. I went camping, hiking, sailing, fishing, and so on with my parents when I was younger. The sister and I both did. But it seems to have stuck better with her, and even seems to have worn off the parents with the passage of time. I could even see my sister going hunting, as one of her quotes on vegetarianism is "Sometimes Bambi's gotta take one for the team." Though I have not yet seen or known her to wield a gun, bow, or pointy stick.

Architecture of an archipelago.
Somewhere towards the end of all my traveling, I took a long layover in Copenhagen to see the islands that a friend had loved so well. Arriving at 07.00 and at probably the lowest point in the tourist season, there wasn't much open, but there was still plenty to see. I felt more dwarfed by the lower architecture of Denmark's head city than I had in New York. This is certainly because of language rather than the physical structure of the city. But I was also more enamored of the buildings in Copenhagen. The central train station in Helsinki is nicer I think, but the churches are lovely, especially the church with the big golden ball at the top of its spire. I learned the name of this church, but have forgotten it again. However, anyone looking for it just needs to look up frequently enough and they too will stumble upon it. It is my goal to return to Copenhagen toward the end of my studies and climb the spire to look out upon the lovely city of (I'm sorry, I love you Danes, you are all really great) homely language. All the water is very nice too. I could happily live in Copenhagen, something that I can't say for Oslo.

slem, slem, slem! snill, snill, snill!

I finally turned in my Hedda Gabler paper yesterday, so I'm taking a well deserved break from my required writing to do some non-required writing. Usually, when it takes me two weeks to write a paper, I mean that it took me two weeks of complaining about the paper while I thought through the ideas that I wanted to use and appeared to be doing nothing. Then I wrote the paper in one evening. No. I spent over two weeks staring at the computer screen, tired and frustrated, trying to type anything that made sense about the play. Because I had to write it in Norwegian. And my norwegian textbooks don't have that much information relating to Hedda.

I also had a traumatic experience recently, when my computer decided to freeze up while I was writing my first journal entry in several days. Not that it wasn't also traumatic when it has frozen up on my paper writing or my e-mails, but Word and Gmail have auto-save features, where as Blogger just disappears with all my clever turns of phrase. But a lot of things have happened since I last made any updates, so here are the last two weeks in review and reverse:

One of my dorm mates has a twin who, while not identical, looks enough like her that when I'm not paying attention I can confuse the two. So for the Halloween party at Kroa this Saturday it was only appropriate that they dressed as an angel and a devil. Every time they saw me they would chant "bad, bad, bad" and "good, good, good" at me. I also met another guy from Wisconsin, who I got to dance with us to Ghostbusters. Bravery points all around, because he danced despite being tanked, and we danced with him while he was tanked. I also saw another of my dorm mate's boyfriend again for the first time since the beginning of the semester. He lived in the dorm building (in fact, my room at one point) the last couple years before he graduated. Apparently all the buildings cluttering my kitchen view have gone in over the past couple years. Bø might be a rural college town, but it is growing.

While Bø is building, you can get a nice house in Tinn for a song. Since Norsk Hydro has gone inside the mountains and mostly automated, the towns around the hydroelectric plants have lost their major employer. Tinn still looks nice though, with a pretty little downtown. We drove through it on the way home from a field trip two Wednesdays ago to a stavkirke in Eidsborg and the Norsk Industriarbeiders Museum in Rjukan. Luther-girl and I were having an extra-cranky day. Being cold and rained on in Eidsborg didn't help. The tower was off the church and on the ground, and everything was wrapped in plastic, because it's no longer tourist season so it's time for repairs.* It was cool to get a mini-lecture on the structural changes to the stavkirke while sitting in the pews, but I didn't start feeling better until we got to Rjukan and were fed a nice paprika chicken lunch. The Industrial Worker's Museum is located in the old Norsk Hydro power plant in Vermork. I have had an affection for this power plant since I wrote a paper on Norwegian resistance fighters for my second college history class.

This was one of the field trips from a very evil week for we American students. Two major papers due, and three field trips. Granted, the trip to Eidsborg and Rjukan was optional, but our class that day was cancelled so that we could go. Then when we got back, I ran up to my dorm to grab a quick snack and my rain clothes, because then I was going to look for beavers as part of my friluftsliv class. We saw some beavers. Fall is not the best time to go beaver hunting. The long days of summer are better for this, because one can sneak up on the beavers while they are on land and get a good look at them. All of our beavers were in the water, and quick to disappear if we tried to get close to them. We also saw five swans. Two adults and two juvies. We got a lot closer to the swans than the beavers, and disturbed their attempts at sleep. The beaver safari was pretty cool. We got pølse. Norwegian and their sausages. Oh my. What wasn't so cool was the trip to Lifjell on Friday. At least, not for some of us. The friluftsliv class is large enough that with the Spanish alpine ecology students along, they divided us into two groups. My group got the Danish department employee. The first thing he said to us was that we were going to stick together. We stopped frequently to consult the map. He had us discuss the articles for class that day as best we could, see as we had not read any of them. He talked to us about hiker safety rules in Norway. They are pretty standard, but with the addition of avalanche awareness, not so important in flat Wisconsin. Then he gave us compasses and had us start learning how to navigate our way back with the maps on the smaller, sometimes indistinct trails. We got back right about on time. The other group, with the friluftsliv department head, they got lost. They didn't have compasses. At least, not other than the instructor. Heavy off-trail walking finally brought the two Americans in the group, far ahead of the other students, to a different parking lot than the one we started from. They got back an hour and a half after the rest of us. Fortunately, our taxi-bus wouldn't wait that long, so we all got to leave only slightly late, while our Dane stood around waiting for everyone else to arrive. Granting that we have only a select group of Danes here in Bø, they make a very good impression of the country.**
*as the church in Eidsborg is wrapped in plastic, it is obviously not the one in the picture. I took the picture on Bygdøya in the Folkemuseum.
**All of the Danes I have met are here in relation to the friluftsliv program. The are all very competent, friendly, and generally attractive. Denmark is obviously populated by some strange and wonderful race of fairytale people rather than humans.

It's not Norway until you get rained on in an open boat at sea

This weekend we had our big friluftsliv field trip. Camping, sailing, and rowing off a southern coast of Norway for two days and one night. After paddling river kayaks with the Danes and this trip I really wonder that I have managed so long without being in a boat. It's been a few years since I was last in a water craft. And I really missed having my own life vest. It's bright yellow, and doesn't make me feel like I'm being strangled. It's not that I don't like having things around my neck. I wear necklaces and chokers. But I don't like tight-collared shirts, and I don't like stiff floatation foam around my neck either. But I love boats.
Despite having spent a lot of time on water as a kid (thanks Mum and Pop!), I was feeling unnaturally skittish about the boats to begin with. It took me a day to feel comfortable hopping on and off. Probably because I'm also lacking in coordination frequently, and didn't want to slip on the rain-slicked granite rocks. But I did a good job of rowing for the most part. My oars slipped up on me frequently, and then I'd break rhythm trying to get them back where I wanted. I also figured out being steersman before too long. I really didn't get to spend enough time on the boats, despite the extra trip I got to make in the early morning to pull in the fish nets. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to go along to set the nets in the evening. Our Danish teacher (the primary teacher was Swedish, with a super-awesome 'amish' beard) went out on his own to set the nets. But we caught two cod, and one other fish that we got to eat. We also caught an other fish that got eaten by the 10-15 crabs in the net, and several jellyfish. I got a slight sting from one jelly, or rather, the remains of the jelly after it was pounded against the side on the boat to get it out. And I de-netted one of the cod. I was very pleased with myself for not being squeemish. Really, I shouldn't be grossed out by handling a fish. I worked in a pet store and handled fish regularly. But I hadn't handled an ocean (or lake or river for that matter) fish that I was in part responsible for killing and intent on eat afterward. It was a handsome cod, and felt oddly nice to hold, but as my sister says, "Sometimes Bambi's gotta take one for the team." It was not the most impressive fish soup I've ever had that night. Cod are not the most flavorful fish after all. And there were only three fish for 20 people, so there were some supplimental fiskeboller in there, but it was still fish I was involved in pulling from the sea, so there was a personal satisfaction in eating it.

Baptism

I have spent rather more time in churches than I am accustomed to, so today I went to a "house" of worship I'm more comfortable in. I went to Bø Elva with the Bergen dorm mate and the school paddling club. When Bergen and I decided to join the trip we thought it would be a pleasant paddle down the river in canoes. Instead, I got baptised in Norway learning to do eskimo rolls. The club only had one spare wetsuit, so I did it in my black pants and a t-shirt. Consider, that in Gvarv (the closest city to Bø that I could find on weatherunderground) the high today was 13 (55 F). The river was COLD! I loved it anyway. Bergen had a harder time of it. She's afraid of being submerged in water. I, however, have a fear of down. This was a problem for me when I was younger, and would happily climb up the lighthouses on the Outer Banks and look out over the ocean and straight down to the beach, but then couldn't get back down the narrow stairs.
Yes, I certainly did have my moments of panic, but that just meant bailing from the kayak. I only hit my head on the boat, and that was just once. I certainly didn't perfect my technique for righting my boat today, perhaps in part because I was slowly freezing, but I did get comfortable keeping my head underwater. Cold, cold water. But very clean. So are my sinuses now. Not that I inhaled any water, I just didn't have a nose clip to keep the river out. I also appreciated having short hair.

norway botanical

Yesterday was the first field trip for friluftsliv, aka, hiking for credit. Today is wimpering about the pain in my legs. I've gone all sissified, which is embarrassing to me, because I walked a lot in Madison. It's just that I didn't walk up many mountains there, seeing as it is so very flat. So today is a little wimpy, but the hiking yesterday was pretty awesome. Blueberries were picked and consumed in short order, and several people gathered mushrooms. Not the redcaps featured in this picture obviously, but ones such as the more humble brown fellow in the back. Note the spungy underside, gills are apparently bad in this instance, though why I'm not quite certain. I don't think it was death mushrooms, but maybe they don't taste as good. In the way of edibles, there was also an herb that makes terrible tasting tea, but helps one sleep. I've forgotten it's name, which I only heard in Norwegian, as our fabulous trip leader did not know the English name. Other than that, there was lots of pine, and and a tree with red berries said to predict the snow. I don't know whether it predicted lots of snow, as I didn't have any previous years to compare the current berry count to.

Common roadside plants include yellow yarrow, red and white clover, and simple magenta roses. There are rosehips everywhere right now.

playing chess

I can't play chess. I really suck at it. I'm also bad at running, catching people, and remembering where things are. I can't find my keys (singular while here, I have only one key), I can't find numbered cones on a tennis court quickly. But I can play logic games. Which is part of why my team won both the logic games today in friluftsliv. The other, possibly more important reason, is that my team didn't have as strong a language barrier. Israel and Argentina both speak really good english, and the two Italians were the ones that translate for the the third. And there was one of the Americans with me. The opposing team was three Americans, plus the Apostle, the third Italian, and Miss Spain. Other than the Americans, the english was a lot more shaky over there. I'm still proud like a five year old.

This helped when I sat in on a Norwegian literature lecture today. Eventually, I started to understand things, but we (St Olaf and I) were asked a question på norsk. I answered it, kind of, dispite not knowing what exactly was being asked. I think the question was What was America called during the Middle Ages (1000 to 1500), and I answered with a very doubtful Vinland. This was either the answer, or not too far off, because he did write Vinland on the board before saying something about Amerigo Vespucci. Still, I suspect I looked rather terrified through out the class. I did get better, and I even took some notes during the second half of the period, because (thank you Mike and Vikings class!) I am actually familiar with what the prof was saying about the sagas.