Hei!
With unpacking, eating Pad Pak at Little Bangkok Thai restaurant, packing an entire Plymouth experience into a few days, hanging out with my pack (friends and family), buying necessities like a backpack, workin’ on my six-pack (Translation: working out), and then repacking, my few days at home could be most readily be described as packed. I had a great time, and on Friday after a long kayak trip in Ann Arbor I jumped on a plane and started my journey to Scandinavia with a celebratory legal glass of white wine over international waters.
After a 5 hour layover in London I, one of three brunettes, boarded the plane to Oslo, Norway. I have only continued this trend of looking completely out of place and in attempt to mildly conform with societal norms I walked to H&M and bought some necessities: skinny jeans and silver tennis shoes. Since, things have been better but I am still definitely foreign.
I live in a student apartment building that is a 2 minute walk from school. My roommate, Katherine (also from Michigan State), is a great companion. Not only is it nice to have a comrade when the Canadian exchange students are on the offence, but she is ready to explore and not afraid of trying new things. We decided we had done well in adopting the culture the day we were both eating fish for breakfast. This morning I learned something very valuable at the grocery store: Laks (smoked salmon) is cheaper than chicken. I bought a 1.093 Kg fillet as protein this week which is too long to fit in my fridge and makes me laugh every time I see it.
School is great. I am attending The Scandinavian School of Management BI in Oslo, Norway (www.bi.no). It is a private international business university with about 7,000 students. The school is housed in a beautiful 2 year old building located in Nydalen, a refurbished industrial burrow of Oslo. My favorite class is my finance class, followed by Managerial Accounting only because my teacher looks, talks and acts like Goldmember from Austin Powers AND he is from Holland (isn’t that veird?) I have spent a lot of time studying in order to stay in line with my newly adopted objective to truly learn material vs. just getting A’s.
I have gotten a glimpse of the city in the midst of getting settled in and beginning school. An MBA student from Minnesota took me on a bar hop of some of the cheap places in town (average beer cost: $10.00). We ended in Gronland, the immigrant neighborhood, where you can find a rare gateway to acceptable meat: The Halal Butchers. On Sunday, some friends went on a daytrip to the old castle on the Fjord. It was a beautiful day which caused for many pictures and a reason to take our time. Afterwards, we wandered the city where we found an intimidating jail-like building known as the U.S. Embassy. My roommate and I stuck our hands inside the fence to feel a little piece of home (it felt great). We also went to the movies last week to see Rush Hour 3. It was in English and subtitled in Norwegian, which was fine until Jackie Chan started speaking Chinese, which was also subtitled in Norwegian.
I am two weeks into Ironman training and it is going good. The date is official: August 9, 2008. More information to follow!
I hope all is well at home, wherever your home may be.
Much Love,
Alexandra
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