Søvasslia

A couple of weekends ago we went on our semester student retreat to Søvasslia, a retreat center about an hour and a half outside of Trondheim. We had ten students go with us and it was an amazing weekend.

Me and Cortney making dinner.

The view from the cabin.

The Easter basket was appreciated by all. THANKS MOM!!

Linn really likes my mittens so I am wearing hers.

Magnus and me trying to figure out stuff for worship.

Me and Audun. Looks like something serious was being discussed.

We had the retreat from Friday until Sunday afternoon. We talked a lot about the grace of God and finding our identity in God. We had so much fun and it was a time to really grow closer to each other and to God. We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful place either.

Flying Cats

Some people say I find ways to put myself in random situations on a regular basis. This is living proof that it is in fact random situations that gravitate towards me. Yesterday morning, I had just woke up and was sitting on my bed which is under this window. When I am sitting all the way up, my head sits right by the base of the window. I also have my window open all the time to get some nice air-flow in my room.



As I was sitting there checking my emails, I hear this loud 'meow' come from outside. As I turned to the left I see a cat crawling through my window. It's head is about six inches from my face and it nearly gave me a heart attack is scared me so bad. It was lucky I had just woke up otherwise I probably would have punched it in the face with my amazing self-defense reflexes. I looked at it and let out a scream which in turn scared the poor cat that was already terrified because it was stuck on my roof. Once I realized what had happened, I tried calling it back to my window. I reached out and got the cat and brought it into my room for about a half hour and gave it a head scratch that was greatly appreciated. I'm still more of a dog person though. They are nice and don't crawl into second story windows onto your head.

Tautra

Here are some pictures from Tautra, an island on the same fjord that Trondheim is on. We spent about 5 days at a monastary there on a silent prayer retreat between Palm Sunday and Easter.

The chapel

The view was a bit of a distraction during the sermon. Not complaining though.

The old monastary ruins from 1207.

Our first morning there it was so windy. I stepped outside for about

one minute and my sweatpants were caked with snow. I love storms!!!

The view from my room.

On the train ride back

Scotland Banter

While I was at the conference in Belgium during August, I had the chance to meet some crazy, yet amazing people from Scotland. A couple of weeks ago, Kelly and I had the chance to travel to visit them. It was such an amazing time! Really can't say enough good things about it. Here are some pictures from our time there.

After a glorious night train. I LOVE THE MORNINGS!!!

We had a great welcome team

Strolling through a park in Dunfermline

The Abbey in Dunfermline. Part of William Wallace is claimed to be buried there.

Our male models....

Downtown Edinburgh

William Wallace himself

Everyday at exactly 1 they shoot off this canon over the city so everyone knows it's one o'clock. Kind of like in Mary Poppins.....

There are at least 4 of us in there, maybe 5. I can't remember if Linda squeezed in there.

Sign winner of the day

HUGE calzones.

The gang walking around at the castle. We got to see the crown jewels of Scotland. They've also rebuilt certain areas of the castle to make it how it was during the time of wars and keeping prisoners there.

We found out that Dunfermline is the sister city to Trondheim so Kelly and I had to get a picture with the sign. Unfortunately though it was kind of in the ghetto so we took a quick picture and got out of there.

Introducing Puppy Chow and 7-Layer bars to the Scots!

I don't get how an entire continent doesn't like peanut butter.

Linda and Jo hard at work in the kitchen making dinner.

I think I am checking to see if the bars are done.

Haggis, potatoes and turnips.

Haggis is a traditional Scottish food that is the ground up organ meats of the cow boiled in the stomach of a sheep. I actually really liked it.

Down at the beach!

It was so windy that day.

I swear....it wasn't my fault.

Luckily it wasn't too cold that day.

Kelly and Linda dried my clothes using the little hand dryer in the

bathroom in the basement of "Miami Beach"

Balmeddy (pretty sure I spelled that wrong) Beach

yes....yes we do

It is known for its dunes.

This is Jo explaining Donnottar Castle.

Jo and me

We were trying to take a picture and Jo was more focused on getting us across the street.



Walking around the University in Aberdeen.

Airport fun. I have Nessy on my head.

It was so sad saying goodbye to everyone there but we had an absolutely amazing time. I can't wait until our paths cross again!!!!

Fridays, Peace, and Pride

I now have a "lost in translation" story to add to the books of them before me. Aside from announcing in my Norwegian language class earlier this fall that I "straddle" the bus instead of "ride" the bus, I haven't had that many slip ups.

In September, I decided to teach myself guitar so that I could help out leading worship. By November, I was struggling through songs but playing nonetheless. Since then I've been playing more and more and felt confident to start leading some songs in Norwegian. Sunday night was the first time I lead a song in Norwegian. It was at our student service. I only had to mumble my way through one part and felt pretty good about it afterwards. Tonight we had a prayer meeting at Brett and Cortney's house. We usually start off with a time of worship where I am playing guitar. With my new found confidence in singing in Norwegian, I decided to play that song again. Because it was a new song in my repertoire, we didn't have the lyrics on our normal sheet of music for people. Right before the meeting started, I took a few minutes to type up the words to this song and printed out a few copies for the evening. We had already sung a few songs when I started playing "Jesus Du Viste Veien" The first verse went fine [although looking back on the sheet now, I am finding several typos]. I start singing the second verse, and the mood of the room started to change. I look up to see that everyone is looking, pointing, smiling, and Kelly is trying hard to control a fit of laughter. Soon everyone is rolling in laughter. I stop playing, assuming it was something that I said while I was singing or the way I pronounced one of the words. With my face hiding behind my guitar to hide my embarrassment, I ask them what it was I said that made them laugh so hard. They assured me that it wasn't what I said that they were laughing at rather what I had written.

So the text was supposed to say:
Jesus du gav meg livet, Du gav meg fred

Which means:
Jesus you give me life, you give me peace

When I was typing up the lyrics I wrote:
Jesus du gav meg livet, Du gav meg fredag

Which means:
Jesus you give me life, you give me Friday

As if this weren't embarrassing enough, later on in the song I accidentally wrote "Jess" in a spot where "Jesus" was supposed to be. Word to the wise, never substitute your name in for Jesus' name in a worship song. It just doesn't go over that well.

On a slightly less embarrassing note, here is a video of me singing and playing at the Open Mic Night we had last Friday (oh how that word haunts me now). Hope you enjoy :)

Auschwitz

We were down in Krakow, Poland for a prayer conference this past weekend. Our first day there we had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz. It was a very sobering experience. For the most part, no one spoke the entire time we were there. To imagine that amount of devastation really was impossible, but being there brought it a little closer to home. It was an experience I will never forget.

"Work Makes Freedom"

There was an orchestra that would play right to the right of this gate twice a day to make sure the prisoners marched quickly enough and instep which made it easier for the guards to count them.









Flowers at the "Death Wall". The woman who was showing us around had an uncle that was murdered here for sneaking extra food.

The prisoners' flag.

Women's hair that was used to make clothes.

People were told to mark their bags clearly so they could be found easily after settling in their new homes.

Baby's clothes

80,000 shoes that were collected after the war.

Just behind here is where Rudolf Höß, the SS commander in charge of Auschwitz lived with his family which included young children. Their complaint was that during the time the crematorium was being used, they had to close their windows because of the horrible smell and the ash that would settle in their house.

The crematorium at Auschwitz.

Where Rudolf Höß was hung after the Nuremberg trials. Höß was the SS commander in charge of Auschwitz.

They left the chimneys of all the old barracks up, but the rest of the buildings were torn down. This is at Birkenau (Auschwitz II).

The rail that passed through Birkenau to the crematorium at Birkenau. They had the capabilities to gas and cremate 20,000 people a day.

The "Passage of Death" into Birkenau (Auschwitz II). This building was used in the filming of "Schindler's List".

A watch tower at Birkenau. If a prisoner escaped, they would kill his or her family publicly as well as murder ten people at random from his or her barracks. During the existence of Auschwitz, 700 people attempted escape and only 300 did it with success. It was through the testimonies of some of those who escaped that the devastation of Auschwitz began to be taken seriously.

Some barracks in the women's camp at Birkenau.

The SS destroyed the crematorium before leaving Auschwitz.

This is a memorial at Birkenau. Over six million people were killed during the Holocaust. Our tour guide gave us the comparison of the number of deaths on September 11th happening every second day for six years.

Leah er med meg i Norge!!!!

Yippe!!! I was graced by my first visitor over here in Norway. My cousin Leah flew in the same day that I returned from Germany and stayed until the morning of the 13th. We had an amazing, very relaxing time together. I wouldn't suggest visiting Norway in January due to the darkness, cold, and the fact that pretty much everything is closed that is interesting to see, but we made the most of it. It was great.

Leah and me at Lade.

Helena, Leah, and me on the boat on the way to Helena's place for the weekend. There is a video on the bottom of this page of our boat ride there. It was a bit bumpy at times but overall a good time.

Helena, Leah, and me in Bjugn, Norway, where Helena's family lives.

Me and Leah making peanut butter balls.

Downtown Trondheim.

Leah and I are expressing different levels of joy of being caught outside in the snow.

SNACK PACK LEFSE!!!

Angellica, Leah, Helena, and me having some fun with facials.

Sorry, the picture is kind of blurry but this is Leah and me on the back of the boat on the way to Helena's place.

Leah was my personal Santa and brought over gifts from the United States. We had our own little Christmas together. It was amazing.


This is the video from the boat.

ESC in Nuremberg

I've decided that I love the destination part of traveling, but not so much the traveling itself. After spending an amazing week in Levanger with the Berg family, Kelly and I took a train back to Trondheim around noon on Dec. 26th, unpacked, packed again, and met up with Brett and Cortney to catch a night bus down to Oslo at 11 pm that same evening. We made it to Oslo just before 7am where we met up with Fredrik, a student in Trondheim who went to the conference with us. We waited about three hours for our flight from Oslo to Munich.

Here is a picture of us when we got to Munich.

Downtown Munich viewing a proud display of sausages.

We were playing 'hide and go seek' in the square in Munich.

Remember this is 15 hours into traveling and on very little sleep.

A night shot of downtown Nuremberg on our way in.

This is me realizing how 'back-packing Europe' is not nearly as cool as people make it out to be. Those packs are heavy and walking on cobblestone streets up hill is tricky on the ankles.

21 hours into travel. We were at the castle we were staying at but couldn't find the door.

This was our neighbor castle.

After getting settled in, we went to the "Bratwurst House" for a great meal of brats, sauerkraut, and real German potato salad. The food was great, the waitress was terrifying. We were just happy to be there.

A daytime shot of where we stayed for the week.

Downtown Nuremberg.

Overlooking Nuremberg from up by the castle.

This sign for a barber shop made me laugh.

Strolling downtown with people from the conference.

Inside a church.

Emma and me inside that same church.

Emma is working with Students for Christ in The Netherlands.

We stopped at a bakery on one of our days out in Nuremberg and enjoyed some reasonably priced pastries for the first time since moving to Norway.

Me, Anne, Kelly, Cortney, Brett, and Fredrik.

Me and Kelly pondering what this sign was saying to us.

Outside the castle.

It's a German tradition to eat one of these jelly-filled doughnuts at the stroke of midnight on New Years.

Outside on the balcony enjoying New Year's fireworks. They were amazing. They were being shot off from all over throughout the city.

Still outside shouting our "ooh's and ahh's" at the fireworks.

The trip home was longer than the trip there. After a very short two hours of sleep on New Year's eve, we were on the road by 6:15am. We walked about a mile to the trainstation, took a 2 hours train ride into Munich, where we caught another train to bring us to the Munich airport. We killed a couple of hours there before flying back to Oslo. Kelly and Cortney stayed in Germany an extra couple of days to visit a friend of theirs, so it was just Fredrik, Brett, and me at this point. Fredrik then took a plane from Oslo to Trondheim, so the gang was down to Brett and I. We had to wait 9 hours in the Oslo airport for our night train (much nicer than the night bus). This was a banner that was hanging over the seats we were waiting in. I could have asked for a nicer banner to stare at for that long.

It's hard to see in this picture, but each of those tiles have a bunch of tiny holes in them. Brett and I were debating how many wholes we thought were in them. Unfortunately, after a long discussion and some serious attempts at counting them, we realized he was talking about the square tiles on the left, whereas I was looking at the longer rectangular tiles to the right.

After awhile, Brett pulled out his camera, zoomed in on the tiles, took a picture, and proceeded to count the holes on the picture. I was pretty close. I guess 50x125 and it was actually 62x134. Disclaimer, once again this is 16 hours into travel.

I was really cold so I broke out the sleeping bag and warmed up while waiting. We caught our night train around midnight and made it back to Trondheim at about 7 in the morning. I made it back up to my place, slept for about 2 hours (the first time I had slept 2 consecutive hours in the last 2 days) before I had to go and pick up my cousin Leah from the airport. By the time I got back from the airport with Leah, I had been traveling for about 34 hours on essentially no sleep. Between Leah's jet-lag and my exhaustion, we both slept VERY well that night.

The conference in Nuremberg was really an amazing time. We had different morning sessions where we would all gather together and in the afternoons we would have electives you could sign up for on different topics. We had a speaker from England for the night sessions. It was a great time to gather together with students and leaders in SFC from all across Europe. It is tradition that the last evening of the conference there is a talent show, "Bunte Abend". This year, Brett put together a special 'Scandinavian Hand Dance', for those of us who are just a bit too reserved to really dance. He has a video of it posted on his and Cortney's blog, http://cortneyandbrett.blogspot.com/ at the bottom of their post 'European Student Conference, Nuremberg Germany' if you want to view it.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and a happy New Year.

Christmas in Levanger

Here are some pictures from my Christmas in Levanger with the Bergs. It was an amazing holiday!!! I was there from the 20th until the 26th when I left for Nuremberg.

This is the newspaper in Levanger

Christmas dinner. Ribs (my personal favorite), sausage, lamb, carrots, potatoes, rutabaga, and mashed peas. It was all amazing.

Me, Elisabeth, and Kelly at Christmas dinner

Taking a break from cooking and jamming on the drums :)

Making lefse!! It was so much fun. I was pretty much a pro.

We introduced egg-bakes and caramel rolls. We made two pans of caramel rolls and 3 quiches for about 15 people. They loved it.

Papa Berg and Elisabeth

Stockings on Christmas Eve morning. They celebrate on the 24th in Norway. We started off with stockings in the morning. Then we watched 'Popelco' which is a Czech version of Cinderella which one man dubbed in all the voices into Norwegian. It's a big tradition here. Seeing as how I can't understand Norwegian or Czech, Anders, Solveig, and Elisabeth all took over different parts and translated it into English. Great times.

Decorating the tree on Dec. 23rd. They decorate with Norwegian flags. So cute.

These are some pictures of walking behind Elisabeth's house.

god jul

I am all packed and ready to go to Levanger for Christmas this year with the Berg family. I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I'm sure I will be posting pictures and stories from Christmas and the conference in Germany over the New Year, but thought I would pass on my greetings ahead of time.

god bless,

jess

umn bound

I just got my acceptance letter to University of Minnesota Pharmacy School last night! I will be starting in September of 2008. This is such a huge stress off of my life and I am so excited.

klem fra meg!

Christmas day marks five months in Norway for me. I cannot believe how fast the time has gone by. Five months here has felt like a week, yet five months away from home feels like a year. Christmas means many different things for me this year though. Kelly and I have been invited by Elisabeth to go with her family to Levanger, about two hours north of Trondheim for Christmas. It is so great to be able to spend Christmas with a family. I am also excited to experience a traditional Norwegian Christmas. It will be my first Christmas without my entire family, well any of my family for that matter, I will be spending it with a family whose primary language, I understand little of, and it is the half way mark of my time here in Norway. Approaching the halfway point really makes me think about my time here. It is really neat to be able to stand back and see all that has happened in these first five months, see the plans we have for next semester, and continue to seek after God's plans for my life.

Kelly and me in front of Nidaros Domen

This week is my last week of Norwegian class, at least for this semester. I am trying to get in at NTNU, the university in Trondheim, for next semester, but it is really hard to do so if you aren't a full-time student. Overall I would say it is going pretty well. I think I have learned more about the english language since trying to learn Norwegian. It is really pathetic though when the teacher has a question about English grammar and looks to me and I have less of a clue than he does. He is from France, teaching Norsk to students from all over the world in English. Oh well, language just isn't really my thing. Jeg kan leser og skrive mye norsk, snakker litt norsk, og forstår bare litt norsk. Å lære et nyt språk er veldig vanskelig. Vennene mine er så flink på norsk! Mange ganger jeg synes <<Å! Jeg er så dum!>> Vi arbeider på Dragvoll og Gløshaugen. I said that last sentence just so I could use 'ø'. That one is my favorite. I am considering replacing the 'o' in 'Tonder' with it. Actually, I just found out that Tønder is a small town in Denmark. I hear they decorate a lot for Christmas there. That is very fitting. I like Christmas decorations.

For all of the norskies reading this, go ahead and laugh at all my mistakes in that last paragraph. And yes, your English is probably better than mine too.

Kelly and I mean business when we make gingerbread cookies.

Now I am just adding pictures so you don't get bored.

For those of you who have seen the movie "Bandits" with Billy Bob Thorton and Bruce Willis, there is something that Billy Bob's character says that I have thought of numerous times. He is sitting there, taking in a foolish idea of Willis', and says "You want to know what the worst part about being smart is? You pretty much always know what is going to happen next." Disclaimer: I am not trying to say that I am smart enough to tell the future, but almost :) This was one of those times. Last summer before I left for Norway, I remember having several conversations with people saying "Wow, I am already not looking forward to those first few weeks in December. I will have just had my 21st birthday, missed out on Thanksgiving with my family, will be coming up on the half way point of being gone, approaching Christmas with the knowledge that I won't be going home for it, Whitni will be getting married and I won't be at it, and to top it all off, the sun will be coming up around 10:30 and setting by 2:00 in the afternoon." It looks like I was smart enough to see this one coming. Maybe it was simply a self-fulfilling prophecy though. If that is the case...I am really wishing I had never even thought it.

All that said, deep down (I just have to dig a little deeper than normal) I am still loving it here. My cousin is coming to visit in 22 days and the days start getting longer in 10 days. The next few months are going to be filled with traveling (Nuremberg, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Aberdeen, Scotland; and the south of Norway). I am very excited for all that is coming and I am eagerly awaiting to see God's plan for the spring semester.

I miss you. Seriously. I would love to hear from you!

klem!

jtonder@hotmail.com

I really hope someone saw this happen

This is further proof that I need someone to follow me video taping my everyday actions.

The last couple of days, we have started to get snow here in Trondheim, the kind that actually is staying on the ground. As much as I love snow and am ready for it to NOT be raining any more, I have also been fearing this day. If you don't remember, I happen to live up the side of a rather large, steep hill (see pictures below for my daily climb). I also have a limited selection of shoes, especially any that are ready to face winter. I blame this partially on living in Missouri for the last two years. I put on my only shoes that have a good chance of keeping my feet dry and headed out the door on the way to church last night. I was slipping and sliding a bit walking on level ground and began to embrace the fact that this trip down the hill could be very eventful.

As I neared the top of the hill, I let out a little gasp of joy when I realized that either someone had shoveled away a path on the hill going down or the melting snow from the trees had conveniently melted the snow there. I figured I was in the clear. I started down the hill with high expectations of a successful journey.

I was about 1/4 of the way down the hill when a large van began the ascent up the hill. I chuckled because of its eminent fate. It began to race up the hill, and when it got up to where I was on the hill, the tires began to slip and it stopped making forward progress. As I was walking past it, it too began to move backwards down the hill. At first I laughed to myself because we were at the same spot on the hill, and this driver was trying to desperately to make it up yet we were making the same progress down the hill. The van then proceeded to move backwards, exactly at the same pace as me, down the entire hill. The entire hill. It was actually quite funny and awkward. The faster I walked, the faster the van slipped.

We got to the bottom of the hill in unison and I paused, waiting for it to back into the street and get turned around. Apparently the van was content with just sitting there so I crossed the street. (I'm now going across the old bridge where the pictures of the building on the water were taken, see below). I started to cross the bridge and the van kept backing up with me, only now it was moving in reverse on level ground. Side note: this bridge can only be crossed by vehicles during certain times of the days otherwise there is a gate that drops down at the other end. This was not one of those times. I was hoping that the driver would realize that even if he successfully backed across the entire bridge, he would just have to sit there. About half way across the bridge the guy realized it and started to drive forward again.

I really hope that in one of the apartment building along this street, someone was sitting in there window saying, "Hey everyone! Come look at this. Wow, that must be awkward for that girl walking alongside the van."