Internasjonal dag

So yesterday was the glorious international day, where internat'l students studying at the høgskolen could set up a table to display a little bit about their country.  Naturally I and all the other Americans set up an America table.  This table included, a glorious flag (hand drawn), a map of the U.S. with various pictures from Chenoa's travels, chocolate chip cookies, special-K bars, a showing of Tim Lincecum (ace pitcher for the San Francisco Giants) as he pitched his first full game and a shut-out at that (last september 13), and a description of the events in professional rodeo (as well as some pictures; one of me, and it took everybody a while to accept that it was me). We wore our typical American clothes.  Most of them wore jeans with college sweatshirts or tshirts, and I wore a Giants shirt and hat, and I lent Teddi my cool old nylon Giants jersey shirt.   

We also set up a computer playing a bunch of songs that said anything about America.  In this case I think we would've had a much better playlist if country had been allowed (or on any of our computers).  We made all of the goods on Tuesday night.  The chocolate chips were especially fun, since there were no chocolate chips here.  So I ended up chopping up three chocolate bars into pretty small pieces.  

Maybe chocolate chunk woulda been a better name, since it exists as well, but chip was more "tradisjonal".  There were quite a few tables out: the Spaniards (there's a bunch of em) had a table and were showing youtube videos of people dancing, the Slovakians, Polanders, the one Lithuanian, Nepalese, Zimbabwians, Russians, and oh so many more.  Two from Nepal danced towards the end, and it was really fun to watch them; they looked like they were having a good time!

Elvetur

River trip.  Yesterday me, Chenoa and Heather took a little hike down to the Bø River.  We had been studying a bit of Norwegian and were talking about going on a hike, and for a while I was in doubt as to whether I should try to get something done or go for a walk.  It was far too nice out to stay inside, and who says going for a walk isn't getting something done?  As we were walking on the road to get to the river, I ended up offing the coat and just walked in a flannel shirt.  It was beautiful.

There were tons of people out skiiing, walking, shoveling, snow-shoeing and playing.  After a while we got to the river, which I was very excited to see.  I was hoping that I might be able to glimpse some fish down in a pool but the river ended up being a 'big-river'.  In Wisconsin I'm used to small and calm streams where the riffles aren't too big or long and they widen out into pools that are decently small and able to be seen through.  Generally you can see fish in the holes or spook them out from under the banks, although seeing fish usually means you're not going to catch them (that is if you're in a position that you can see trout, you're probably too close to catch them).  Now that's the pattern for every river in history, at least rivers that trout are in.  There are riffles and eventually they tend to narrow or come to a corner where the crick then sort of washes out into a slower and deeper pool with a stronger current at the head (for the Richland Centerites, think of as you are driving over the bridge by the Community Center; right where the Pine River gets narrow and there are 'rapids' and then it broadens out into that pool where everybody fishes).  It's an endless cycle.  Now, Bø elva is a 'big-river' and runs pretty wide and straight and powerfully.  It was thus hard to see fish.  

A lot of the river looked like that, but then as we were making our way down I came acrossed a great looking hole along the edge of a cliff.  There was a narrower spot and then it opened up into a great looking spot:

I'm thinking about buying a cheap spinning rod and reel so that I can come down here soon and pull a spinner through and see what I can get.  There's supposed to be mostly trout (ørret) but also eel (ål) and I think whitefish (sik).

The hike was a good time, and mostly revolved around the river.  We followed a few paths not knowing where they were going, but everything ended up fine.  When we weren't on a path, the snow was over our knees and very hard to walk through.  Here's Chenoa trying to plow through it.

We took a break along the river at one point to drink some tea.  Heather is apparently amazing at packing random things that you might need on a hike, such as: extra gloves, socks, food, hot water and who knows what else.  The second picture from the top was taken from where we were taking our nice break, and it was a nice view.  You can see there's a sort of golden mist above the trees; this was the mist from the falls in the light of the sunset.  As were were taking our break we also observed a small bird that would fly up river and land somewhere in the middle and float downstream doing I know not what.  It was fun to watch at anyrate.  And that was mostly the only wildlife that we saw.  

The day really did feel like spring.  I woke up that morning and was sitting eating my breakfast when I could hear birds singing outside, so I cracked my window to be able to hear them better.  Also while I was sitting there I thought I heard what sounded like geese.  I'm not sure what kind they were, but they were large water-inclined fowl that were probably some sort of goose.  I'm convinced that winter can't last much longer, though the snow itself might be another story.  As soon as I get another nice warm day like yesterday I would like to try to get down to that hole and see if I can't pull a decent trout out of it.  

Hos tannlegen, 2:3

At the dentist, 2:3.  As the title implies, I'll be back again in a few months.  Great.  The dentist, Lars Haakon Lunde, was able to remove most of the (apparently pretty big) cavity, but part of it will have to wait.  I'll be honest I didn't fully understand the explanation, but the main point was that he is trying to avoid a root canal.  He was worried about getting too close to the nerve, and for some reason or other coming back later (April 29th), removing this filling, drilling out more of the cavity and putting in another filling.  So today I went in, and the office was all but empty.  It was only Lars and a dental hygienist, nobody at reception.  He started with getting me numbed up, which seemed like a good idea.  After a while of drilling and jack-hammering I had a gigantic hole in my tooth.  He then filled it in with some sort of a filling that smelled like gum-drops; the initial consistancy was probably similar as well.  So that filling took little to no time to put in, and I was done!  It was funny because the numbing job had to have been near perfect; there have definitely been times that I have gotten numbed and couldn't feel a very good half of my mouth, but somehow would still feel a little bit when I would get drilled.  This time the numbness was limited to just the area of my tooth, and I never felt anything.  So now you'll have to wait until April 29th to finish Lukestannssagaen, the saga of Luke's tooth.  

Other than having my teeth attacked, I went grocery shopping, meeting Gustie and Sarah on the way as they were coming out of the post office.  I got the materials for a good ole American dinner one of these days: BBQ chicken, french fries, and corn on the cob.  They sell corn on the cob in cans here, and they come from Canada apparently.  Kitchen mate Christoffer was eating some about a month ago, which of course made me want to eat some.  It will probably be pretty weird eating corn out of season, since I literally only eat corn on the cob during the early fall.  

In other news, I've just discovered how to set up a random playlist (more or less shuffle) on my computer, which is sweet.  Completely eliminates the need to choose music!  

We're hoping to go sledding/snowboarding on the hill again tomorrow, always a good time.  Possibly watching a movie tonight at Grivi where Gustie lives.  Other than that, I think I really need to study a lot.  There are papers to be done now.

Hos tannlegen

At the dentist.  

Well, I went to the dentist today, as part of one of my molars had sort of fallen apart/off.  It turns out that I have a cavity, which really sucks.  Furthermore, it's pretty deep apparrently (I don't know what good brushing two times a day and flossing does if it can't stop these things!) and he's hoping that he doesn't have to do a root canal.  I happen to be hoping the same thing.  The tooth is still alive, which is a good thing.  So, now I'll just take you through my day so far.  I woke up and watched some NRK while I ate breakfast (I've been eating on one side of my mouth for a couple weeks now) slowly.  Around 9:20 I started heading to the dentist's office which is maybe 10 or 15 minutes away.  Even though my appointment was at 10:00 I did NOT want to be late to get this checked out.  I sat in the waiting room for about 15 minutes reading a newspaper.  I read a few articles in both nynorsk and bokmål, always nice to have variation.  The nynorsk article that I read was about a man who was born in Somalia and lives in Norway, speaks the local dialect and everything, but has problems getting good jobs because of his name.  So at one point he changed his name to Kevin Sander so that he wouldn't get the reactions of telling people his name was Hamse Mohamed.  His mosque took that as an offence, and he eventually changed his name back.  Sometimes people think that his name is Hamsun, which he doesn't mind.  After that article I just read a bunch of music reviews and dropped eaves on a couple of middle-aged people sitting in the waiting room as well.  And I firmly believe that eavesdropping is allowed if it's not your first language (especially if you are inproficient as I am).  I always enjoy hearing the local people talk, as it's unique and different from what I'm used to hearing.  My favorite that I like to share (if I haven't put it on here already, I'm not going to check) is that in school we learn 'hva' (pronounced 'vah' in a very un-IPA format) and 'hvem' (which more or less rhymes with 'aim') for 'what' and 'who' respectively.  In the Bø area these are 'hått' and 'håkkenn'.  Yeah.  So, after eavesdropping and reading, I was finally called in.  I filled out a brief health status sheet, and went in.  I can't remember my dentists name, but he seemed like a pretty nice guy.  Most everything was done in Norwegian, but when he described my next visit he thought he'd better do it in English (I'm not to up on my dental terms in Norsk).  I had x-rays done to start with, then a generall look around my mouth to make sure everything was in order.  It mostly was, except for that tooth that fell apart.  Then I was told to hold on to some sort of device, and touch it to the tooth (he did the guiding); me holding it caused a small electric current and if my tooth was alive I would feel it: I felt it.  Then he told me that next time he would probably try to do a filling, and if worst comes to worse a root canal (praying that that doesn't happen).  So, on friday at 15:00 I go back to find out what's goin down.  I learned a few vocabulary items which I promptly forgot, so maybe next time I'll remember them and share, in case you're in my situation and need some vocab (but chances are the dentist will know enough English).  To be continued.....

Birthday Abroad and More!

Well, well.  Yesterday was my birthday, and it was definitely a blast!  It is always good to go in with hazy expectations.  I just wanted to go out to eat with some of the Americans and eat some pizza.  Well!, they surpsised me with a couple of cakes and three candles to blow out (my idea to light and blow out two of them eleven times didn't happen) before we made our way to the pizza place (that I don't know the name of).  We had a nice crew, I think all of the Americans and one Italian  guy came.  Now the pizza place is great, not only because they had a pizza buffet that we could go to town on, but they also have folk music and dancing on Wednesday nights!  So, I (we) ate some pizza and listened to the music and watched the (admittedly older) other people get going dancing, and then finished up and joined in.  It really is super fun.  The regulars are really great about dancing with us and teaching us how to do things.  There are also a couple of Norwegians our age who are getting into doing it too, so it felt good not being the only new person!   One of the older men, who was very good at dancing by the way!, also sang a couple of ballads, which is very rare nowadays, yet very very cool.  I wish I could've understood more of what he sang.  The first one definitely involved a boy, girl, and a priest, and a joke I didn't get; the second one I zoned out just listening to his voice, and didn't catch any of it, unfortunately.  I hope to hear more that I can understand (and remember to pay attention to!).  By the end of the night I was getting the feel of the rhythm of both the 'gangar' (an easier beat) and the 'springar' which is a little harder.  I think we're going to plan on going back on Wednesdays; it really is a blast, and hardanger fiddle music and dancing was a big part of Telemark (and especially Bø) culture for a long time, and still is.  

After dancing and pizza we went to Gullbring (the dorm that I live in) and watched Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.  It was my turn to read the scrolling introduction, and did it in my best Cartman impression, which I'm pretty sure was terrible, but funny.  Went to bed quite late afterwards, considering that I needed to wake up at 6:30 this morning.

And today, we went to Rauland!  Rauland is one of the campus locations for the Høgskolen i Telemark, they focus on Folk Music and Art.  We got to see people making instruments such as accordions:

We also got to see people making some very thin, crispy, unoffensive tasting flatbread:

The last thing that we did for the day there was listen to a Slovakian violin/fiddle group play a lot of music and do a sort of workshop where people could play with them.  Chenoa played with them during the second half, and seemed to enjoy it.  I got a short video of them:

We were able to dance to a couple of the songs, and we even go tot sing!  Very fun time.  It was also really cool, I guess the (0r a?) fiddle instructor at Rauland is arguably the best fiddle player in Norway.  He just recently one the Landskappleik, which is a national competition for folk music.  So, it was a pretty fun couple of days, with many fiddles and dances.  I am now fully exhausted.  

Nå blir det fisking!

Now there's gonna be fishing, indeed.  I just bought a 9 foot, 4 piece, I think 6 or 7 weight fly rod for fishing in Norway.  The unfortunate part of buying it now is that I have to wait a while to be able to fish (not to many fly hatches in the winter).  I still might see about a cheap spinning rod for up in the lakes and ponds, but we'll see.  I don't have my literature class this week, so I decided I might as well do some shopping to see how to take care of my fishing needs.  So I went to a sports store downtown, which seemed to have a little of just about everything.  They had guns and some hunting gear, fishing stuff (although he had to take me into the basement for anything that wasn't icefishing), horse stuff (half of which looked foreign to me since I'm not in the states, they wear goofy boots here you know!), snow sport stuff like skiiing and snowboarding, and then just general outdoors stuff like boots and clothes.  I tried a few rods, but I'm sort of limited to what I can fit in my luggage, so when I got one that felt ok (although I couldn't do any full motions over my head), and looked like it would fit, I went ahead and bought.  I got back to my dorm, and it did indeed fit in my luggage, diagonally and just!!  

Yesterday, Monday, was a really fun day.  After Norwegian we decided to do some sledding.  There's a couple of ski jumps next to the school (that we didn't hit), but there's a really steep hill where they would land, and a different and better jump at the bottom of that hill.  So got we got our saucer on.  It was GREAT!  Not only was the hill super packed down and steep, so we flew, the jumps at the bottom were super fun.  There was one small one that worked for a little while, but I think the trail got a little off from everybody (actually only a couple people) putting their feet down instead of keeping them crossed on the saucer like their supposed to.  I really didn't even warm up by just cruising down the hill a couple of times, I was psyched for the jumps.  The others had been going down this other part of the hill before I got there, and let me tell you, I know it was inferior!  So they followed my to the superior area, where I took a few attempts at it to figure out just how to aim towards the jump (these saucers were not exactly precise!).  I got a couple of good runs where I got a little air and then cruised down the landing.  Chenoa got good air at least as many times as I did, but everybody else put their feet down.  

Then just before it got to dark we decided to step it up and hit the big part of the jump.  The little part was about 3 feet from lip to landing; the big part was about 15 feet (at least) from lip to landing, with a gap in between.  So I kept working my way up the hill, going faster and going farther.  I would definitely be to scared to do the big part from lip to landing on a saucer, as you would need to go reeeeally fast to clear the whole thing, and if you didn't I'm sure pain would only be one of the consequences.  So when I hit it I would sit cross legged, and hold onto the handles, then when I would go off the jump, I would pull the saucer behind me and just extend my legs and land on my feet.  I can definitely say that it would've killed (as in hurt really bad) to try and land on my butt.   So now the goal for next time is to: jump, pull the saucer out, land on our feet and jump at the same time, and land with our bellies on the saucer on the landing.  Hopefully there will be video.  

Right now I'm enjoying the peace and quite of the fire alarm testing having ended.  I think they (they being one guy) went to each individual room to find out if the fire bells work.  And they are bells, old fashioned school sounding things.  Really loud, and the intervals between rings are long enough for the ring to integrate easily into a dream (which is what happened to me last time when it went off at 3:30 in the morning).  

The Photo Post

I just thought I'd put up a bunch of pictures this time.

 That's the "New Church" above.  War memorial below: the top inscription is in memory of those who fought during the Napoleonic wars.  The bottom is in memory of those who fought during WWII.   

That's just a gander at part of the town from the church hill. Below is a look at part of some of the mountains.

What appeared to be a little used cabin

We were actually more or less los when I took the picture of these signs.

It appears that my dad is eating vicariously (or something like that) through what I cook in Norway, so I thought I'd better put up some more quick before he grew weary.  Baked lemon and pepper salmon, boiled potatoes and green beans.  Simple and delicious.  Oh, and my beautiful orange plate(s), with bowls to match.

Very foggy day snowboarding at Kongsberg.

I'll try to do this again at the end of February or early March with pictures from February.  Otherwise, the lack of blogging is more or less from a lack of action.  There has been much studying, but also much non-radical chill time (aka perhaps not always worth writing about or taking pictures of).  Me, Teddi, Gustie, and Sarah have been watching movie series lately.  We started sometime in January and watched the first three Indiana Jones movies.  Now we've started Star Wars.  Not sure what it's gonna be next.  I'm currently trying to go through all of the poems that are in the curriculum for Norsk Litteratur etter 1900, which is a fair few and taking forevooor.

Folk

Well, I can definitely say that my favorite lecture so far was the one given in conjunction by Kristian Hanto and Anne Svånaug Haugan.  I'll start out by saying that especially in the last year or so I've been really interested in folklore and storytelling traditions, I think they're fantastic (in many meanings of that word).  It's unfortunate that for the most part these traditions have died across many cultures, for a lot of reasons.  That said, Anne Svånaug plays the Hardingfele, what we call the Hardanger Fiddle.  It's looks similar to a normal fiddle, and there are four strings that are actually played, but there are four sympathetic strings that produce harmony, as you can see in the picture.

The result is awesome.  You can google search "Hardingfele" or Hardanger Fiddle" and come up with a lot of videos to get an idea of what they sound like.  Kristian is excellent (in his prime one of the best I guess) at dancing in the more or less traditional way to the music that is played on the Hardingfele.  It was really great to see him dance by himself (doing what is called a 'halling' like 'halfling' because it's only one person) and with Anne Svånaug on a couple of songs (the partner dances are called 'springar' or 'runner' and 'gangar' or 'walker).  He was a bit shorter than her (she was pretty tall) so it was funny when he would miss her hand when he would spin her.  But you could tell she really enjoyed dancing with him.  I guess he's a pretty surprising dance partner, you never know what he's going to do.  There were many stomps, foot slaps, hops and twirls (and even a few yips!).  After showing some dancing he talked about what I briefly brought up above the picture regarding folklore (folktales).  He talked about the state of the regional music in Norway (that is the "folk" music played by the fiddle, Jew's harp and many other instruments that I don't know).  For them "folkore" and "folklorish" have bad connotations.  They are something unauthentic.

This sort of music is for fun.  It was primarily for parties and celebrations where people could dance and just have a good time.  Serving the same purpose as dances nowadays.  Something which we don't see as a valuable cultural expression, just a good time.  The conditions in which the dances developed influenced the style and how it was done.  Limited space meant limited, but certainly creative ways of dancing.  When you take the dance and music out of it's context, and put it on a stage, what do we have?  What you end up with is something artificial; the dances and music are not meant for that type of situation.  But on the other hand, it promotes the music and the tradition.  

A further question that he brought up was the concept of unbroken tradition.  It is real?  At this point is it just the older population who still enjoys partying to this sort of music?  If so, has the tradition become fossilized and preserved in that sense?  If so, then it is dead, and it's just being continued for the sake of being continued.  But this is what has happened with many "folk" traditions, whether oral or musical.  You could tell that Kristian had many more opinions about this subject than he expressed in class, and I really wish that I could've heard them.  At any rate, I was extremely happy to have heard the opinions and points that I did hear.  It really helped me to shape mine a little more clearly.  

In the end, however sad it is to see some forms of expression fading away, there are new ones to take their place.  The music that is fading now grew up under certain circumstances: they made instruments to the best of their abilities, they found fun and expressive ways to move and dance to the music, and most importantly it got people together for a good time.  Our technology has changed, allowing for greater variation in the type of music produced, and for greater exposure.  Naturally the kind of music that people play has changed as well.  If a kid wants to have fun, and had only had a wooden horse to play with his whole life, I think it would be hard to imagine him preferring the horse if a playground came along, not because the wooden horse is inferior, but because the playground is something new.  Choosing instruments that allow wider expression was the natural course.  However, it may happen that one day the kid will look back at his wooden horse and decide there is something about it that his misses.

Most of the folk don't live on the inherited family farms anymore.  They are moving around more, and cities draw in many of them.  The traditional music has given way to other preferences.  In this sense, Hip Hop and Jazz are just as much folk music as anything.  It's music that people produce out of their current situation with the means available, expressing something about that situation perhaps, but mostly it's something to bring them together.

http://www.nrk.no/radio/   That's a link to NRK's (Norwegian rikskringkasting) radio homepage.  There's a series of links on the left hand side, and one of them is "Folkmusikk" where you can hear some neat music.