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