God tur!

Temperature: 20° C
Daylight: 14h 58min

I had my first Norwegian course today. It is a mix of immigrants and Norwegian language students. I am the only American.

I am paying too much rent (in my opinion) for the privilege of a single room (my own bathroom, a shared kitchen) in a building that looked dingy until I spent some time in another Fulbrighter's building, which will be closed in October for renovations. When she first walked into the kitchen, there were pigeons eating garbage off the counter. The trade-off is that she has a 13th storey view, which is quite lovely.

My hallmates, I guess I will call them, (we share a hall and a kitchen) have been a bit mysterious for the past week, but I think I know who all of them are now. There is a very friendly girl of mysterious national background who has lived in Norway for 5 years and speaks Norwegian well. There's a Swedish guy who's studying Architecture here for one year. There is a German girl with whom I've made friends because we don't know anyone else. There's also a man from Tanzania who has taken to teasing and generally lecturing me about everything from the amount of time I spend in my room to the amount of oil I use when cooking rice (too little, just so you know). There is also a Norwegian guy who yesterday reminded me of the Norwegian word for butterfly (sommerfugl=summer bird) after I recounted to him the harrowing tale of how I rescued a little one who I found beating herself silly against our window by catching her in a water glass and setting her free from the kitchen balcony. "You've done your good deed for the day then," he said.

I've learned that I make people repeat things a lot. I don't know why other accents are so opaque to me. I fancy myself fairly cosmopolitan, so it's embarrassing. Last night, however, Frederik, the girl whose name I don't remember, and Simon were getting acquainted in Norwegian while Ziege (the German girl) and I were also hanging out in the kitchen. It was bizarre to be able to follow their conversation easily, while at the same time knowing that Ziege hadn't the faintest idea what they were saying. I realize this is a common experience for anyone who is multilingual, but I think it's the first time it's ever happened to me. Usually the people I'm around have somewhere from a faint grasp of English to a command that puts me to shame, but there are still a fair number of people in the world to whom Norwegian sounds like a lot of amusing noise. But not to me. Strange ...

I'm going to eat lunch now and go meet with my advisor. I am thoroughly enjoying the large role played by bread and dairy products in the Norwegian diet. On Thursday and Friday, we have orientation for Fulbright students, so I will probably break out the camera and become more touristy. I have the luxury of being able to blend in here most of the time if I want. As long as my language skills hold up, everyone on the street thinks I belong there. So it takes a brave leap to whip out my camera and disclose otherwise. But I realize a visual account will be more pleasing.