settlin' in

Første Dagen min! (My first day!)
Well, here I am...rock you like a hurricane. Wise words spoken many a year ago by the Scorpions. That is about how I am feeling. This country has already charged me up and I am anxious for school to start. I think probably to provide some good structure to a lifestyle I can already see will be much more relaxed then the one I am used to. I had a long flight which awarded no sleep, just a rather smelly, cute Indian man sleeping half on me and half in the isle. I await the flight home, not for timing sake, but because it is daylight the whole trip the 9 hour flight-9 hour time change it stays the same hour and you don't have the mandatory 'everybody sleep now' bullshit. I wanted to read my book and the flight attendant came by and made me feel like an asshole because I was the only one in my seciton with a light on. Anyhow, that is four months from now. I was utterly exhausted when we finally got here, but had my first grillpølse or hotdog at the airport. Had some confusion with the group and I had to play dad a bit...but all got worked out and I got them on the train and to Hamar.

I woke up this morning after a blissful 11 hours of sleep and strolled to our first group meeting, late. Oh well, Norsk klokka allerede! (Nowegian time already!) Joe, my roommate, and I got to the school and met up with the five Namibian students who are our classmates in what is called the "society and culture" programme. The group which we heard yesterday would be 30 is acutally only 18 people. 10 Americans, 5 Namibians and 3 Norwegians.

After touring the school with Knut Haugen, our rather eccentric International student coordinator, we came back to our apartment at Fredik Monsens Gate. I read more of Deception Point and relaxed. I have of course still not unpacked, nor showered...both of which will shortly take place. And now we just got back from a dinner at Inger Haug's home. She is the program director, our main lecturer and a lovely person. She will no doubt me like a mother to our group. We enjoyed olive bread and a wonderful seafood chowder which included cod, salmon and shrimps (they use the 's' to denote the plural...sounds funny to those of us who just say shrimp). At dinner I also met our second teacher Alexandra Klein who was one of the coordinators I met this summer at Nansenskolen i Lillehammer. It was nice to see familiar faces again in Inger and Alexandra.

As dinner went on we had a nice time getting to know the people around us. I am finding I am learning as much about my fellow Americans as Namibians. None of the fellow Lutes I know better than the other, so I see this a good chance to make new friends evenly and not have the "stick to your buddy at summer camp syndrome." I had a great conversation at dinner with two of the Namibian students who posed the question to me: "with all of this traveling around, do you ever intend on graduating?" I thought of my dad when I was asked this. Also, I explained to them PLU's emphasis and accredidation for studying abroad. They were amazed. One Namibian girl who goes by Jo and whose real name is pronounced Too-will-icka (I will get back to you on the spelling...she is easily the most outspoken Namibian of the five and I will no doubt write about her again) told me that she is here for the semester and receiving only 2 credits from University of Namibian...bearing in mind they take a semester of 30. In that regard, I was proud of PLU for its emphasis in international study.

The dinner conversation, with she and Francois (pronounced but also not spelled) included a discussion about Starbucks, Namibian languages, English accents both regional in the US and in the world, and the influence of English on Namibian culture.
Regarding the English influence Jo said of the five languages she can speak, she can "express myself best in English." When I asked her why she said it was because of the shared context so many people have with English. She said phrases, slang and generally meaning is so readily shared through movies and music that people understand me best. She said she never listens to Afrikaans radio or tv and therefore has the greatest lexicon of emotional language in English. Pretty incredible. I have heard this now from students from more than 12 different countries all whom have learned English from has early as 3...in the Namibian's case to those who are 18 my friends from the Balkans. Definitely a PRO on the tally for English's pervasivness.

I have also been making more active attempts to speak Norwegian. The American student who is from Virginia, Britt Inga, has family just north of Bergen (west Norway - fjord country) and speaks Ny Norsk fluently. She has been playfully forcing me to "snakk norsk" with her. It is fun because the dialect I have learned is bokmål which is surprisingly different. Ny Norsk is a collection of dialects more rurally spoken and bokmål is basically Oslo-talk. An extreme example being: in the Norwegian, the pronoun for 'I' is jeg (Yigh) and for Britt Inga it is eg (Egg). Therefore, it really forces me to recognize the dissimiliarities and listen carefully to those words that we do share. Anyhow, I know she will be a strong teacher and friend for me to continue language skills. I am planning a review of my first year stuff tomorrow after unpacking.

I am having a great time and I think the casual orientation week starting on monday will be great. The group dynamic tonight was fantastic and similar to a cross section of PLU 6 men 12 women. So, what I am used to. I have already not had my camera out enough. I will be better about it tomorrow, I promise.

My thoughts as you can tell are a bit scattered, but I have started a hard copy journal and will distill stuff out of that for blog-worthy topics. For know, this was a rather verbose update. I will be in touch soon.

Oh yeah, for all of you Pro-jetlaggers...I still cry bullshit.