My trip to Trondheim had a bit of an unfortunate start. It was 12:30 PM and I was finishing up packing for my 7:30 PM flight. Then I receive an email reminder from Orbitz. Turns out I somehow thought my flight was at the wrong time. It was actually at 3:30! We frantically finish up packing and high-tail it to the airport. Luckily I made it there with plenty of time to spare. Getting though security was uneventful and the flight to Amsterdam was as good as a nine hour flight can be. I met a couple other study abroad students on the plane that I hung out with for a few hours of my 8 hour layover at Amsterdam and we all had breakfast at McDonalds.
The flight from Amsterdam to Trondheim was much more exciting. It turns out that the mountains in the area surrounding Trondheim cause a lot of turbulence when planes are coming in to land. I have never felt a plane moving around that much before, especially not that close to the ground. The plane landed a bit ahead of schedule at 4PM and it already looked like it was the middle of the night. I was too late to make it to the housing office so I ended up having to stay at a hotel. The next morning I made it to the housing office early in the morning and got everything moved to my room in Steinan Studentby.
Orientation
They had a weekend of activities planned for us at the exchange student orientation. On Friday January 3rd it was a sort of scavenger hunt around downtown Trondheim. We visited some famous locations in Trondheim such as the Nidaros Cathedral, the statue of Olav Tryggvason, and the Old Town Bridge. We also had challenges where we had to brave trying brown cheese and fish oil.
On Saturday we visited Kristiansten Fortress. We formed groups and played a bunch of fun games against other groups at different stations around the fortress. Later we had a picnic before heading home. That evening I was able to meet up with a group of study abroad students and explore downtown Trondheim and the Moholt student village. On Sunday we rode a bus for about 20 minutes out of Trondheim to a large ski jump and then a park with hiking trails. We were at a much higher altitude so there was snow covering the ground unlike in Trondheim. The trails all had a thick layer of ice covering so all the hills were pretty exciting to climb. We hiked about 2 miles until we reached a cabin right around sunset. We had hot chocolate there and we lit up torches for the descent back to the buses.
On Sunday night the exchange students met on campus to watch the movie Trollhunter. It is a movie that was funded by the Norwegian government and is completely in Norwegian. Despite that, it has actually had some success outside of Norway. I thought it was pretty good, but I was so tired that I was out for much of the movie.
Starting Classes
I was really hoping that this would be the semester that I don’t have to take an 8 am class, but unfortunately I will have to be on campus at 8 am two days week. On the plus side I am done with class by 11 am on Thursday and have no classes on Friday. I am taking Intro to Supercomputing and Visualizing Scientific data. I was really hoping to learn some Norwegian while I am in Norway, but everyone here speaks english so well that it is going to be difficult to do. I haven’t met a single person while I am here except other students from the USA that don’t speak another language.
Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries before I could take any good pictures of the house I am staying in so those pictures will have to wait for another day!