Norwegian social life

After going out the last four nights now, I can say without a doubt that Americans have nothing on Europeans party 'legs,' if you will. I imagine, and Dan you can fill me in, but after so much practicing drinking so much, you begin to develop the proper stamina? I have already had the stereotype confirmed that the otherwise shy and reserved Norwegian opens right up when they get a drop of alcohol in them.

Yesterday August 22 was Chelsea's birthday, the youngest Lute in our program. She turned 19 and was ready to celebrate her second European birthday. She had her 16th birthday while living in Germany for a year. To celebrate we went to the barn party at Blæstad, the farm campus and facility associated with out university. We had one our now many, orientation week events. It began with a BBQ, like Monday which is always, BYOB/M. So we brought dogs and lompe. Lompe (pronounced like Umpa Lompe!) is a thin potato bread that is great for rolling up your dog. Quite tasty, I wish we had it in the states. After the dinner we had an activities course, which the Norwegians referred to as a scavenger hunt, although it was not in our traditional sense. It was more like a relay race with 9 different stations. My team was comprised of four Norwegian girls and six Americans. Our tasks included a tractor pull, milk barrel toss, stacking soda crates and taking apart and putting a chainsaw back together.

I represented my team in the final two events. In the first, I was on belay and stacked, rather quickly 16 soda crates as they were passed up to me. At the attempt of the 17th, the tower swayed and plummeted to the ground. It was fun, I hadn't been climbing in quite a while and it was reassuring to know that I could still climb efficiently. After that, we made our way to the chainsaw. I was asked to take off the guard, turn the sword, tighten the chain, put it back together and start it. I had the second fastest time of all ten teams participating and was pretty impressed considering I have never had any reason to take apart a chainsaw in the past.

We went to the bar, inside the barn, after that and enjoyed 30 kroner ($5 USD) imperial pints (20 oz. instead of 16) of Ringnes pilsner. Definitely the cheapest beer I will drink in Norway. Joe, Chelsea and Kristin and I were the last of the American when the bus picked us up at 1. I must say the bus full of drunk Norwegians singing back to the student apartments was one of the most experiences thus far.

Class has been interesting this week. We are only taking the crash course in Norwegian and I think some people in our group enjoy it and others seems to really dislike it. I am hoping come Monday, when our normal lecture/seminar begins that people will start to show a bit more interest.

Tonight we saw a great ska band at Hydranten that was most of the members of Hop Along Knut and another three man underground hip-hop group. It was a fun show with about 80 people there. I didn't drink tonight because I have been so exhausted, so I didn't quite have all the energy that most of the concert goers had. But the show was fantastic nonetheless.

I am planning on staying in this weekend and getting the apartment up to speed and functioning as my home for the next four months. Therefore, I intend on diving into a blog that explores some of the emotional/social questions I have been exploring this first week, rather than an entry that recounts that day.