Delighted but Confused: Sorry I'm so lame

It's been a while since I've put anything on here, and for that, I apologize. It's not that I've forgotten about the blog or have a lack of things to share, but that my time is occupied with many other things right now. I’ve been busy with that minor detail of why I’m in Norway, graduate school. The pace has really picked up the past couple weeks with a big lab project, even bigger paper, and the search for a thesis. Yes, I’m busy, but whatever the excuse I'm also disappointed in myself for not keeping a more regular blog. I haven’t come up with a strategy for churning out posts quickly and consistently. I will work on that and you can (hopefully) expect several updates soon, though they may be out of order. At this point I just want to get things written any way I can.

In the interest of telling you something, anything at all, new, here's a little bit about my day, studying with some Norwegian friends.

Meet: Gunn, Nina, and Marit

We're all first-year students in the Molecular Medicine Masters program. I feel lucky because they've taken me under their collective Norwegian wing, but also because we get along really well, and take each other's ribbing in stride. They've schooled me in the way of the matpakke (lunchbox), invited me over for delicious waffles with brown cheese & homemade jam, and taught me how to be sassy in Norwegian, though that will take some practice to perfect.

It's great to have made friends that I not only get along with, but who are Norwegian too! The one problem is that they, like many non-native English speakers, really want to practice their English with me. I don't begrudge them that, but I want to speak and get better at Norwegian, and there isn't really another country where I can go to do that.

Today, the three of them had to write an assignment in English, as our entire masters program is supposed to be conducted in English. They are quite good in the language, but still need help once in a while so in between my own readings, I fielded their English vocabulary and grammar questions. I'm no English expert but when you are a native speaker sometimes you just know what sounds right. It's been a lot of fun to teach them new things and discuss the differences between our languages. After being in our program for about two months now with most speaking English as a second language, I have a greater appreciation for knowing English fluently. I wish I was a native Norwegian speaker but I'm thankful that I haven't had to learn English as a foreign language because it makes little-to-no sense, and it is seriously everywhere.

I had to take some pictures of the girls today because it looked like they planned their wardrobes together to be triplets. This may be a gross generalization, but it seems like every Norwegian girl wears a variation of this same basic outfit. I'm not saying it's bad thing, just an observation that there's a distinct style here.