First Weekend in Norway (3 Jan- 6 Jan)

Well, being in a new country has its ups and downs. Of course there's a language barrier, but it's all very new to me (especially the snow), so its more ups than downs. The hardest part when I arrived was figuring out how to get where I needed to get to, because I'm so used to someone being at the airport to pick me up and not needing to take the train here and the subway there. Anyways, when I finally arrived at Kringsjå (my student village) I got to choose which apartment I wanted, now one thing you have to understand about student housing in Norway is that they can share apartments with guys and girls. Some apartments are shared between two people and others are shared between eight. The ones I got to choose from were two person apartments and all had males already living in them, so my choices weren't the best, but of course I chose the one in the building with the yellow windows!! After getting all unpacked the next day and shopping for a couple days of food, I met some people from the U.S. and went museum hopping with them that Saturday. First, we went to Vikingskipshuset, or The Viking Ship Museum which housed two Viking ships, the Gokstad and the Oseberg. After gazing at these massive ships, wondering what it would have been like to travel the seas in such simple ships, we walked up the road a bit to the Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Museum of Cultural History). Since it had started snowing we decided to come back another day when the weather would be nicer and when we would have more time to walk around. Then we rode the bus down to the edge of the water and went to the Kon-Tiki Museum which displays Thor Heyerdahl's expeditions to Polynesia and Easter Island. He was studying the Polynesians' origins, guessing that they sailed from Peru to Polynesia on rafts. Since he couldn't prove this was true he decided to make the journey himself and if he could make it in a raft, then the Polynesians could have too. He used this same principle (if you can't prove it, do it yourself) in studying the mystery of the statues on Easter Island. After our museum tours we walked around downtown, went to the store to buy more food and went back home. I'm not used to wearing so many layers when I go outside yet, I feel like a big ball of laundry that's waiting to be folded and put away. The sun setting at 3:45pm still gets to me too, it makes it seem as if I should be going to bed at 6pm. Well that's all for now!