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."

Playing Catch-Up

Once again it has been a while, but here is some of what has been going on over here. We had our second student service on October 20 at Betel. Continuing with our "Quest" theme, we talked about journeys and how it is impossible to live your entire life without affecting others or living a life where no one else has an impact in your life. We then broke into groups and had everyone draw out his or her journey. For those of you who have been witness to my insanely awesome drawing abilities, you know that people were blessed by my pictures that night. :)

The following Friday night after Unbad, the youth service at Betel, we had an all night prayer meeting. It was really cool. We started at about 10:30 and left the following morning around 8:30. We started out with about 17-18 people and by the morning there were still 8 people there so that was really cool. It was an awesome time where we just gathered together in prayer over the city of Trondheim, the students, the church, and other personal prayer requests.

Sorry the pictures are kind of blurry. I didn't want to use my flash and be a distraction. We set up different prayer 'stations' throughout the sanctuary where you could go and specifically pray prayers of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (we used 'ask' instead). Seeing as how I hardly know what supplication means though, it didn't translate as well as hoped, therefore destroying the 'ACTS' acronym. It all worked out fine though. We had worship throughout the night and had fruit and tea on a table there as well. In the front we had a place where people could write down prayer requests and then have others pray for them throughout the night. There was a group from the Chi Alpha in Duluth that got together during part of the time that we were praying which was really cool to know that we had people all over praying collectively for the same things. It was such an amazing night and we have another one planned on November 30th so mark your calendars and feel free to join us!

These next pictures are from Lade, an area of Trondheim along the fjord. I went there with Linn Cecilie, who is Kelly's roommate and a huge blessing in my life. We had a blast.

Way to sport the authentic Norwegian sweater Linn! So great.

Haha. We were going around to all of these old historic places and making up our own stories about how history went down. I was currently pretending to be a great commander in the army giving my troops a pep talk during 'the great war'. I think we kind of scared some of the other tourists. We were laughing though.

Yes. We found a swing in the middle of the woods. It was awesome.

This is a place at the end of the trail where you can go and buy waffles and coffee and tea. As many things are in Norway though, it was very expensive so Linn and I opted to purchase soft (the Norwegian equivalent to Kool-aid) and chocolates at a little stand along the path.

This one is for my mom. :)

Ahhh the trip to IKEA!! It is times like these where a car would be nice. You can't see it but Linn has another huge blue bag on her right shoulder. It was freezing cold that night and we had a bit of a hike to get to our bus. Sigh. Oh well. My only purchase of the evening was a comforter for my bed. In the same way you should never shop for food when you are hungry, you should never shop for new comforters while you are freezing cold. I bought one of the warmest ones and am paying for it nightly, I am always so warm. I guess I won't get cold again though. That is always a plus.

Helena, Kelly, Cortney, and me. It was Helena and Cortney's birthdays so Kelly and I had them over and they had foot baths (no, I did not touch their feet for those of you who just gasped) and had facials. The red masks were self-heating. They were crazy. Pretty much right when you put them on your face they started to get really warm. Kind of like those little hand warmers we use when we are deer hunting, except all of my face. It was amazing.




This was at our Halloween party. From left to right:

Magnus is a gangster, Brett is the Holy Ghost, Cortney is a basketball player, Brita is an old Norwegian woman (Oh wow...I just realized she is wearing the same sweater that Linn was wearing from our trip to Lade. The funny part is, it is Kelly's sweater) and Kelly is a Zebra...Cat....Lemur. We couldn't actually decide.

We wanted to carve pumpkins really badly but we couldn't find any in Trondheim. No one there had ever carved pumpkins (some couldn't even remember seeing a pumpkin in their life) and none of them had ever dressed up either. We bought Halloween candy though and served caramel apples (they hadn't had those either) and hot apple cider (also a new thing for them). It is funny how there are so many things that you just assume the entire world enjoys but I am daily finding out new things that they've never heard of and many things in their lives that I've never heard of or experienced. It makes life more interesting.

This is me and Fredrik. I was a troll and Fredrik was a pirate. Kelly and I put his costume together and I put on his tattoo :) It says I love MOM in case you can't see the whole thing.

I wish I had an excuse for why I tend to only blog about once a month, but I am just going to have to say it is a sign that I am keeping busy over here. I really am loving it here. I wish that you all were here and able to experience it with me.

Trondheim in the fall

I am just putting up a few pictures of Trondheim this fall. Most of them are taken at an old military fort just up the hill behind my house. Enjoy :)

This is the classic Trondheim postcard picture. I even got the reflection in there.

I was proud of myself.

ahhh this is the hill I 'get' to walk up daily.