God tur!

Here's my ticket to the CNN interview of Mohammad Yunus a few hours after he'd been presented with the Nobel Peace Prize. That was cool. We got headphones. There was a dolly right over my head. Sometimes the arm would come really low, and I thought it was going to hit me. There was a Fulbrighter sitting next to me who kept saying, "Go ahead. Just pull that green cord out. I'm sure they wouldn't mind." Sharon Stone, however, was not there. Probably because the King and Queen weren't there either, so she had no one after whom to make her grand entrance. Later that evening, we went for pizza, though, and we were able to see the torch processional down Karl Johan, and the laureate waving from the balcony of the Grand Hotel. That was cool, too. By the way, in case you didn't know, Mr. Yunus is a Fulbright alumnus.

Milk cartons in Norway can be very informative. This part of a milk carton tells the story of how yoghurt came to be popular in Norway. It's from a series of cartons celebrating 125 years of Tine milk. Spennende! (Exciting!) I think that's supposed to be a Greek guy in those speedos. The title of the article is "Continental Customs." (I'm not sure, but I think they might be intending some kind of pun with vaner and vanner--waters--because I can't come up with any other reason why that guy would be standing there in a little bathing suit.)



Milk cartons in Norway can also be festive! This is a Christmas milk carton with skiing Julenisser all over it, as you can see. I think it's adorable. Plus, one of the panels talks about how Martin Luther invented the Christmas tree. I think any scholar of pre-Christian religion among Germanic peoples would beg to differ, but, whatever ...



I get lots and lots and lots if advertisements in my postbox at the student town. In fact, I rarely get anything else. (One reason why you should think about writing me a letter. I promise I'll save it forever ... ! Whoa, accidental end-rhyme.) What I think is really funny is when the most upscale department store in Oslo sends its Christmas catalog to a bunch of starving international students. Here are a few of the funnier pages:



You probably can't read it, but the slogan for this clothing company is "Defining Scandinavian Preppy." My friend Joel thinks that's hilarious, and I can't help but agree.


Here we see the traditional Christmas custom of building gingerbread skyskrapers while wearing really expensive vests. I'm going to go ahead and leave that very typical typo in this post, just so you can see how living in Norway is giving me a learning disability. "Skyskrapers"?!?! Seriously?!?! Sometime I'll have to do a post on English words that are really funny to Norwegianize by changing "c" to "k" and "z" to "s".



... And here is a really fancy pile of marzipan pigs. Those little guys are just s'damn versatile.