Starting out

My roommate, Eva, came in Saturday afternoon. She drove all the way from Germany to get here. We have had a couple of orientation meetings to prepare us for our summer school and life in the dormitories. I can finally sleep through the night. While I was in Lillehammer, I got into a habit of waking up at 4:30 a.m., and I couldn't fall back asleep unless I did something for a couple of hours first. The light Norwegian nights will do that to a person if she's not careful.

We explored the student pub Saturday night because we heard they have the best prices in Oslo. And by the best prices, I mean that the cheapest drink is about $5. We met up with some full-time students at the University of Oslo who are working through the summer. They were already pretty drunk on homemade wine, so they were pretty interesting folks.

Classes started yesterday, and with them came all the homework. Each of my two courses has three compendia, which are books of photo copied materials. I spend pretty much my entire morning and afternoon studying in the library or my room since I have some hefty daily reading assignments. The summer school was a little different than I expected. Both of my professors are American by birth, but they live and work in Norway. My government and politics course is half American and half everything else. I was surprised to see so many people from the U.S. at this summer school.

Last night, the City of Oslo hosted an opening ceremony and reception downtown. They hired a folk choir to sing during the ceremony, and the rector of the university and the minister of education gave their remarks. I was entertained by the murals in the festival hall where the ceremony took place. A select few of them featured people fully clothed, while the others pictured people doing odd activities in the nude. After the ceremony, we walked to the city hall for the reception. The city paid for the food and the alcohol, which I'm sure is a pretty costly venture. My friends from the Balkans tried to out-drink each other with the free champagne and wine. Needless to say, everyone was pretty merry.

*The person standing next to me in the photo above is my roommate, Eva. The other photo features some of my American and Balkanian friends.