Sour Cream and Snow Angels

I can now officially say I am a Rotary Exchange student. There is now no need to add a ‘will be’ or ‘soon to be’ to the start of the phrase. My location and current place of living is (for the next twelve months) Norway.

My 27 hours spent in transit is now over and my feet are back on solid ground (well, actually there is more snow than solid ground at the moment). The plane trips were long- there is no other way to say it. It was at Singapore Airport at around 3am Australian time that I think the excitement was replaced by pure exhaustion. Gradually everyone split off to go to their different countries and what had been a group of 22 in Sydney was now down to 10ish. Once we reached Copenhagen Airport we were pointed on our way by our tour leader and we were then on our own. Two important life lessons were learnt at Copenhagen Airport:
1. If you and your fellow exchangees look really confused and lost after passing through the security check a kind officer will approach you and help you find your way. I think we will be forever grateful to the security worker who was able to use her special code to find our gate numbers for us(for the record they weren’t on the ticket and weren’t displayed on the screens yet). To give a little bit of context it was 6am local time and it was certainly not rush hour.

2. In European countries you should try to find free wifi so that you can google translate the writing on a bottle of water. I learnt this the hard way. One bottle of accidentally purchased sparkling water later I made sure I knew what words to look for (I had thought I was getting the gist of the label written in Danish but obviously not).

The last flight was by far my favourite. It might have had something to do with it taking only one hour or the fact that when we dipped out of the clouds over Oslo we were met with the most amazing view. I will take this opportunity to mention that on this flight (and only this flight) I had a window seat. The view was breathtaking; the snow, the trees, the little houses….everything!

The first thing I noticed when I got outside was just how much snow there really was. Winter wonderland doesn’t even begin to describe it. I now know that this is the most snow that Norway has received in around 8 years. Surprisingly though it wasn’t actually that cold. I guess in Norway they actually dress to the weather.

I walked around my house with one of my host sisters a couple of days ago and to say it took longer than expected is an understatement. The snow was so deep that even if you tried to move quickly and lightly you would, at one stage or another, fall completely into the snow. I made my first snow angel and discovered that the hardest part of it was trying to get back up without ruining the shape.

Sadly, as I am writing this there is nowhere near as much snow around anymore. Some warmer weather and rain means that the once soft and powdery snow is now more icy and hard. I have been walking to and from school this week and it is certainly very different to anything I’ve done before. You had to climb over piles of snow that were on the sides of the road to try and cross and it took much longer than you’d think to walk. Over the last two days the footpath has turned very icy and I have now lost count of the amount of times I’ve almost slipped over (emphasis on the almost).

Last Sunday my host family took me to Fetsund Lesner, a lumber museum that sits on the Glomma River. The museum was closed but the view over the river was truly spectacular. I was very surprised about the number of ducks that were sitting in the water considering just how cold it was.

The most interesting part of the walk, however, was discovering what Norwegians put on their waffles. First of all let me clear something up: what you probably think of when I say waffles are Belgian waffles. Belgian waffles and Norwegian waffles are very different. Norwegian waffles are a bit like pancakes or pikelets but in a flower-waffle shape. My primary discovery was this: It is completely normal to put sour cream and jam on your waffles. I tried it and it was actually quite nice but it still confuses me a little.

However, this was not my only sour cream related discovery of the week. I went along to a Rovers/Scouts meeting with my host sister. There was pizza served (probably one of the reasons my host sister invited me) and everyone was just drowning their slices in sour cream! Now when you think of sour cream do you really think of waffles or pizza? I’ll be honest though, it doesn’t taste as weird as you would think.

During this week I have tried a couple of different Norwegian foods. I had brunost (brown cheese made from whey), fish, Risgrot (sort of like porridge) and knakkerbrod (a grainy snack food) but my favourite by far has been bolle. Bolle is a bit like a sweet bun and you can get different varieties of it such as vanilla, sultana or (my new favourite even though it’s the only one I’ve tried) cinnamon.

I’m not going to say much about school yet because to be honest I don’t know what to say yet. Everything is incredibly different, different not bad. I will tell you this though. This week I have had maths, english, science, massage classes and manicure class (I was rubbish at it by the way).

People are still shocked when I tell them I have seen a spider or snake that is poisonous which I find quite amusing.

There have been ups and downs this week but I’m sure that’s only normal.

Until next time,

Alicia