First week

Hi there,

Even without the pressure of my mom, ( "not pressing you to write a story on waarbenjij.nu, but I would really like it") I would have written a story by now. If I had only had the time...

Since my arrival here in Sogndal I've been kept really busy. To my suprise did my trip to sogndal go exactly as I planned it. And on thursday afternoon I was standing in my tiny room in the nicest studenthousing I have seen so far: i elvatunet, Sogndal, Norge...*

That day I explored my surrounding (okay, i went to the nearest supermarket, but explored my surrounding sounds so much better... ) And cooked myself some chickpeasstew. Not so lovely without the neccesary spices, tbh...

The 10 years anniversary celebration of the mountain to fjord course:

Starting on friday with breakfast, getting to know each other, Pizza lunch (appearantly something typical norwegian whose mainfood is no longer potatoes and fish but pizza) and some lectures about how the course has been and all the fantastic amazing and exhausting things we are still going to do. After that we had a fish BBQ at the akvakulturstasjon... (or something like that)

But then it was saturday. The day of the glacierhiking. As you might know I have hicked on a glacier before in New Zealand. I thought myself very adventurous and amazingly tough... Even though the glacier was allready in sight when we started hicking to it.

This was kind of different. We started at a hotel near the mountain of the glacier. We hicked. (hicking is just walking but then without a proper path and with hills and mountain to make the walk a bit more exciting) We hicked about 6 or 7 km. Also through a sort of swamp, and my hikingshoes are waterproof! And then started climbing this mountain. (which was kind of tough, but some kind of path was still in place) The mountain was a lot more steep then the mountain I am used to in Holland. Anyway, during this pleasant times in the nature, people were running passed us up the mountain for fun and sports. Appearantly they also do jogging/running in norway, appearantly going up a mountain. When we had climbed for I have hear something like 800 metres, we could almost see the glacier... It was really cloudy, and misty and this was the best time to leave the path and hike towards the glacier.

The glacier was all it promised to be: big, cold and icy. We didn't really go on the glacier since the teacher had warned us of the danger of falling, and then gliding into the ice cold glacier lake. (you would probably die of the cold, which seemed a clear disadvantage)

After resting for some time I took four steps onto the glacier, made the "I am on the glacier picture" and went back to the nice and warm restaurant, only an eight km hike away...


After the anniversary celebration we have also had some really great lessons in:

Norwegian: Eg har det bra, takk!
And how to act among Norwegians:
-Never say hi when you pass a stranger at the street, don't smile to strangers on the street, or they will think you are a lunatic. However allways say hi when you see a stranger in the mountains, otherwise it's really really rude...
- Also, don't scare the norwegian, they are shy, when they turn away because you have scared them, approach them again more carefully.. (truelly, this has been said to me, by both my teacher and my studybuddies)
- And finally an introductionvideo about norwegians had been shown. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebqdwQzmSHM

Greeting, groetjes og Ha det!

Daphne

* These houses had been built for the journalists during the winter olympics in lillehammer a long time ago. And have been removed from lillehammer to Sogndal to function as studenthouses when the olympics ended.