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.