By the time orientation was over I had barely even begun to unpack and didn’t really know how classes worked at all. This last week I was able to relax a bit and get everything in order for the semester. The most important thing I had to do was go to Ikea since I didn’t have curtains or a blanket for my room. Ikea is 3 miles away, but I still decided to walk there because the route to get there went along some of the giant hills surrounding Trondheim. I found a few great vantage points for some pictures of the area. When I got to Ikea I was surprised to find that it was almost identical to the Ikea in Minnesota and might have been even bigger, but it was hard to tell. It also had some of the cheapest food I have seen in Norway so far. More on that later.

The rest of the week until Thursday was spent just relaxing and getting used to my new apartment. Thursday was my room mate’s birthday so she had a bunch of her friends over and we went to a club in downtown Trondheim.

When I got up Friday morning we finally got some snow! It was only a couple inches, but it’s still something. One thing I found interesting is that it seems that Norwegians do not bother to shovel or plow out the snow at all. It is now Sunday and there is still a lot of snow on all of the roads and snow covering all of the sidewalks. When I walked through some of the neighborhoods everyone’s front porch still is covered with foot prints going up to the door.

I spent both Friday and Saturday evenings hanging out with other new exchange students. Every semester there is a big party at Moholt to welcome new exchange students. Moholt is another student village and it is about a 20 minute walk from my house at Steinan. Several of the apartment buildings at Moholt have areas in the basement to host parties. They are pretty big, but by 10 PM the basements were absolutely packed. Saturday night we had an “International Dinner Night.” There were about 20 exchange students crammed into a tiny apartment. Everyone brought dishes from their own country to share with everyone else. I couldn’t think of a good American dish so instead I brought quesadillas since I tend to eat them a lot. There was people from South Korea, Singapore, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, and Norway there so we had a lot of good food and ended up staying there late into the night just hanging out.

Today I decded to relax at home and do some exploring around my village. My house is right at the foot of a huge hill so I wanted to see what the view was like up there. I went along the edge of the hill for a little while on my way to Ikea, but I was still a long way from the top. My exploration led to the beginning of a huge system of hiking trails. At first the trails lead up to a huge power station and then follow power lines, but smaller trails lead off into the woods in every direction. The pictures in the gallery with snow are all from finding these trails and exploring. After wandering around for an hour or so I realized that it was getting very close to sunset. I think I could have gotten back the way I came, but I would have had to be quick to get back before dark. Luckily the trail I was on met up with the main trail not too long after that. I didn’t have problem getting back to my house before dark.

Shopping in Norway

Before my trip I kept hearing that Norway is a really expensive country to live in, but it really hit me when I went to get groceries the first time. The grocery store near my village is about as cheap as it gets and everything I have bought here still costs around double what I would pay in Minnesota. Fresh produce and meat is particularly expensive. Two small chicken breasts were around $9. Beer is very heavily taxed so most of the “cheap” beer is around $4-5 per bottle or can at the grocery store. Similarly restaurants are at least double the price I am used to. On one of our visits to downtown Trondheim we looked in the McDonalds. All of the meals (burger, fries, and drink) were around $10 to $15. We looked at a menu at a smaller restaurant downtown and cheaper entrees were over $20.

On Thursday I am going to take one of the free buses from Trondheim to Sweden along with a big group of exchange students so we can stock up!