Hvalbiff!!

Whalesteak!!

Yes, that is what I bought today.  On Lars's recommendation I bought hvalbiff (sounds like valbeef), with some mushrooms, sauce, and potatoes to go with it.  So I think that's what I'll have tomorrow; tonight it's a pizza.  The only real Norwegian food I've been eating so far has been knekkebrød and brunost, a cracker type bread about the size of a graham cracker and brunost means brown cheese, but it's spreadable, so it goes on the knekkebrød.  

I had my first class today, and it's taught in Norwegian.  There are other exchange students in there, and so thankfully the teacher took her time in saying what she needed to say, so when there was a word I didn't know, it was typically understandable enough that I'll be able to go and look it up.  And now I'm really forced to do a lot, I have over 200 pages (in Norwegian!) to read for NEXT Wednesday, yippee.  We have to read the first part of "Kristin Lavransdatter", a historic romance.  She actually suggested that we read it in both Norwegian and English, but I'm not sure there's enough time in anyone's day to do that.  The most exciting part of the day, was finding out that there will be a seminar on the 21st about fantasty literature, and one of the guest speakers will be Nils Ivar Agøy, member (chair?) of the humanities faculty in Telemark and the translator of the Hobbit into Bokmål, the main standard language in Norway.  Since I knew of him before I came, I was hoping I would somehow get to meet him, and so I of course went and bought a copy of his translation today and can hopefully get it signed when he is here.  I actually didn't think that I was going to find a copy; at the bookstore there were a lot of copies of the Hobbit in Nynorsk, the other standard language in Norway (and the administrative language in Bø), but I got the only one in Bokmål.  So!  it was a good day.

It's warming up now, and I guess we're supposed to get more snow tomorrow.  I was also just informed that we're eating tacos and playing more euchre right now.