Norway in a nutshell

We've been a little lazy with the blog lately. Let's see, what have we missed...

Last weekend, we took a mini Norway in a Nutshell tour with a day trip up to Flåm. Following Rick Steves advice, we got off the train half way there to enjoy the scenery at slower pace. We had an amazing hike- good old Rick Steves knows what's up. We had the path mostly to ourselves, we ran into some friendly goats along the way and fed them some oats (totes). We hopped a wall and climbed through thorny bushes where Ashley developed some hives, all to scrounge for a few measly wild raspberries...then found a man selling a giant bag of them down the road for a few kroner. We got to see the Sognefjord, which was beautiful, but after all our travelling that day, we were a little fjorded out on the 5 hour boat ride home.

We had a lovely potluck dinner last week with our kitchen mates and a few other friends. Ashley made homemade macaroni and cheese for everyone, since many people here had never had it, but had only heard about it on tv. Others brought swedish pancakes, a peach crumble with some german streusel, some norwegian smoked salmon rolls, and lots of other yummy things- it was quite an international affair. We also celebrated Ashley's birthday a little early that night, since she went on a crazy hike this past weekend, which I'm sure she will tell you about soon.

I attended my first "Super Friday" this past weekend in the bar in the basement of our dorm. This happens when the Norwegian students get their checks from the government, and they celebrate with cheap 10 kroner beer, which is an unheard of price here.

And finally, we also started school, which has been a challenge with all the charting being in Norwegian, and not knowing who anyone is or where anything is, and all that fun stuff. But we will get the hang of it, and I think we will have a lovely semester. Looking forward to this Friday, when there will be a back-to-school party at the dental school, and we can get properly introduced to all our new classmates.