First days

Well, I made it to Oslo!  I left my hometown on Wednesday, and there was a lot of driving to do, as my flight took off from the international airport in Washington, D.C.  I left the country on Thursday night, on Icelandair.  This was the first time that I have ever flown out of the country!  I quite enjoyed this airplane, first off, because it flew, which is always important to me in an airplane, and secondly, because all of the safety instructions, signs, and whatnot were written in both Icelandic and English:  plus, there was an Icelandic lullaby written on my pillow:

The next morning, we landed in Reykjavik, Iceland, which has this (comparatively) small airport with wooden floors.  A short layover, and then on to Oslo, where I arrived a little after noon, local time (but my body still thought it was 6 AM, since it's 6 hours ahead of my time zone).  Exchanging money was fun, and the bank person that I spoke to had been to Michigan, and has a friend studying at Ferris State.  The University's Erasmus Student Network had arranged for people to meet anyone arriving that day at the Oslo Central Station, so I took the Flytoget (airport train-very comfy) to the Oslo S.  However, once I got there, I did a lot of wandering up and down staircases with my heavy suitcases trying to find the ESN.  Luckily, a helpful woman told me to check at the information kiosk, and Lo, there was an ESN person and some other international students!  Later that day, I went to IKEA with some of the same people to buy curtains, a clothes drying-rack, and other essentials for the room.  After all of this wandering, I was tired, and I think I adjusted well to the time-zone and avoided jet-lag (Hooray!).

The next day, I went to Kiwi (the local grocery store) to buy food, since my emergency oatmeal supplies wouldn't last forever.  I don't know a lot of Norwegian, so there was quite a lot of peering closely at pictures to figure out what was in various containers.  Food is expensive here, so I'm trying to buy mostly FirstPrice goods (reduced prices for "essential" items).  There is one food that is cheaper than in Michigan-nøttepålegg, or nut butter, which is like Nutella back home.  Basically, it's wonderfully chocolate-flavored spread, and it is amazing and cheaper than peanut-butter here! 

Later that day, I went on a hike around the lake near Kringsja with a bunch of other international students.  Picked blueberries, stuck my feet in the lake, got sunburnt, and met a bunch of really interesting people.  Here is the lake:

And the forest, which is beautiful:

Then, I spent some time wandering around looking at my phone options (since my U.S. phone won't work here), until it was time for the ESN party at Chateau Neuf.  That was lots of fun, and I've been meeting a lot of great people from countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Canada, Sweden, Iran, the U.K., Spain, Japan, and more.  And I will leave you with an interesting fact: Norwegian 10 and 5 kr. coins have a hole in them.