Our slogan: Hug Norway!

I've been told I should hug the people I care about.

Yesterday I hugged my brother, my mum looked confused and my brother, after recovering from the initial shock, said 'she probably hasn't done that since she was four..'.

Today I hugged my sister. She hugged me back, doing her best to break a couple of my ribs. Then I hugged my brother, who asked if they've been giving me some sort of weird therapy in my psyhcology classes. I told him it's important to hug people, he suggested that if I was going to go out and start hugging people, I would have to give them shock therapy afterwards. I told him I'm studying social behaviour, even have the book with me. I think he's worried what they're doing to me.


See?? We really don't hug! I'm doing my best to change that but I'm gonna need some help. I need your help. So whenever you see a Norwegian: hug! Together we can change the world!

Finns

How do you know a Finn wants to talk to you?

They stare at your shoes instead of their own.

-Margot Wallström, Vice President of the European Commission, in a the Norwegian talk show 'Først og Sist'.

Cute little description.
They keep even more to themselves than we do!

Sis is in the bathroom

My sister locked me in the bathroom,
I picked the lock with the tweezers.

Then she wanted to be locked in the bathroom
and now she's trying to pick the lock with the tweezers.

I left her to it - hopefully she'll be out by dinner time.


I just got home for Easter last night.
Have you seen my kitten?
Click and enlarge.

You never know... 'Anything' just happened

I should have written this a while ago...

The thing is.... I believe I'm in love.

Yup. That's right. And with a guy! Who would ever have thought??

He sent me an email six months ago and we finally met last Wednesday. If you want the whole story, here it is:

He said he was coming to Norway in February, spending a few weeks here for work. What is Norway like? Tell me about the people, how do they feel towards Americans? I talked, he listened. Then he talked and I listened. And we kept talking and listening to each other pretty much until February came.

Last Wednesday I flew to Trondheim after finally having got to book the tickets, planes, hotel, when does that bus leave?? The bus left alright, only I wasn't on it. And no, I wasn't late, it was late and I called a cab. Anyway, I got there. I was told I could check in early but when I came, I couldn't. So I spent a couple of hours walking around the city before going back to the hotel.

The girl at the front desk said some Americans had been there looking for me and could that be correct? Yeah, it was... They had gone to the pub and she thought they were still there. I went up to my room and suddenly I got all nervous. Then I got a little bit more nervous. I thought I'd go down to the pub and was on my way when I noticed that the doors of the other floors were locked; could these be the right stairs? I went up one floor and suddenly heard someone knock on a door. I don't know why but I just felt it was someone knocking on my door and since I was on that floor, I looked to see if someone was there.

And there he was - funny haircut and all - standing outside my door. Michael, the guy I'd been talking to for such a long time, and he was real!

We went down to the pub and I met his friends, seven of them. They were the funniest, smartest, nicest bunch of guys I've ever met. It was an interesting day - we spent it walking around Trondheim, seeing the sights, looking for restaurants that had turned into 7-Elevens. It was a great day. I didn't want to go to sleep that night.

And the next morning he left and now I miss him. I'm always in control of my feelings, I can tell myself how to feel but I just catch myself thinking "I wish he were here right now, that he could see this and know what my world is like". I can't control all of my feelings anymore. And that feels great.



I don't know when I'll get to see you again, but I hope it will be soon. I should have written this days ago but I just didn't know how to. I miss you. And now you're real, I'm 'allowed' to feel what I'm feeling, it's ok and it's not silly anymore. Surreal maybe, but not silly.



And that's the story... There was so much more, moments, images, words I'll never forget... Great couple of days. Cute city. Cute guy.

Simply gorgeous!

Help!

Please pick one.

Bachelorprogram i administrasjon og organisasjonsvitskap
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Påbyggjing i økonomi og administrasjon

We love the professor

Today I spent eight straight hours in a concert hall like thing listening to lectures. Since we can't use your Student Centre anymore, we have to go to Grieghallen, where they've placed chairs in rows in this big hall. Which is where we have our lectures now. It's not very practical.

Six hours into it we were all half asleep. We'd done four hours of social psycholoy and two of cognitive psychology already and the cognition professor was funny but now as funny as before. Or maybe we were just tired.

Then biology-psychology was up. We usually have this dreadfully boring Swedish guy but he wasn't there today. This old man was sitting on the edge of the stage before the lecture started. We all sat down, ready for two more hours. He must have been 75 but his voice sounded like he was 45 and his words made him seem 25 if it hadn't been for the slightly distinguished tone in his voice and some words he used.

We were all cracking up with laughter five minutes into it and more or less laughed throughout the first 45 minutes. He talked about stress and attention and just before the break he said that it's all about staying awake and he had to keep us awake, whether it was to provoke us, make us laugh or whatever else. That way we might remember something and not walk out and want to forget about it. I'm sure there were several of us who nearly fell off our chairs - I don't usually laugh that hard but he had some amazing comments you'd never expect to hear coming from a retired professor.

One of his comments was about this psychologist who lived in Canada and worked at the Université de Montreal. He didn't speak English very well and it didn't really matter because in Montreal they speak French, and if you do speak English you shut up about it.

This psychologist had done some research and realized the word 'stress' was one of few English words that were accepted in French. He then changed the meanings of the words 'stress' and 'strain' so that suddenly people who read his stuff meant something completely different by it than other psychologists - "as you would say in English" (the professor said in Norwegian), "he fucked it up."

We love him! I hope he'll be back sometime.

Hot Cellular Christians

These two landed in my inbox a few days ago:








Now, my first reaction was; "you have got to be kidding me!". But now that I've thought about it, it actually makes sense. Religion is everywhere and we're all arguing about it. It would make sense to know right away just how religious your date is so that you won't end up in a terrible fight when you tell your girl she can't talk to men she's not related to, or you tell your man he has to wear a Kippah to the synagogue.

We should have dating services for Jews and Mulims aswell, not to mention Hindus and Buddhists. This one is for Christians, I'm not Christian so I won't have any use for it, but there might be others out there who will. I wonder if you have to tell them if you are a Catholic or Lutheran or if you belong to the Angelican church (forgive me for errors, as I said, it's not my religion).

The second ad also makes sense. You wouldn't want your Christian money to end up in the hands of a Jew or a Muslim would you? Who knows what they would do with it. Muslims aren't supposed to pay interest, their religion forbids it, could that be your concern? It does not, however, say that only Christians can apply, it only says 'Money Lending Based on Christian Prinsiples'. What are Christian principles within the money lending business? We'll give you money now then we'll take yours later? Do to others what you want others to do to you?

A good idea for those who are Christian. Maybe we'll all just convert to Christianity so that we can date all those wonderful people in the first ad and get all the money from the second ad. We sure don't want to be left out and Christians do seem to get around. With fancy ads from Hot Cellular Deals and everything.

Oh no, not again

Dooooaaadooooaaadooooaaadooooaaa

It's bloody 2:30 in the morning and someone is smoking in their room.
Either that or they've decided to test the alarm.

Dooooaaadooooaaadooooaaadooooaaa

What if there's a fire? Should I go outside?
I can hear the doooos in my left ear and the aaas in my right ear.

Dooooaaadooooaaadooooaaadooooaaa

This is painful.

Compass

I have a compass that I got when I left France almost nine months ago. It's messed up when I try and sit here and figure out what's north and south cuz of the computer. So I go to the other side of the room and try. I want to figure out for once where is north, south, east and west. I hold the compass and see alright, that's north. I've got a piece of paper that tells me how many degrees I have to turn to find out where places are seen from Bergen.

I put the compass on the floor to be able to look at the paper at the same time as keeping the compass straight. To my surprise I see that on the floor, north has moved 60 degrees to the west. I try this again. And again. A change in elevation of five feet changes north between 30 and 60 degrees. Is it just me or does this seem silly?

Smoke = fire !

It really was a fire. Big one too. Four buildings down the hill on the other side of the bridge were damaged and it took two hours to get control of the flames. 25 people were evacuated and went to the city hall, then those who needed it were offered to stay at a hotel. No one got hurt and today they've been moving cars so that they wouldn't be hit by bricks and things falling from the houses.

All the things you'd miss if you were sleeping at 4am...