Right now I’m sitting in the Oslo airport waiting for my flight to Stockholm and then on to Prague. Yesterday I said my goodbyes to everyone in Trondheim and I moved out of my apartment this morning. It was sad leaving, but at the same time I’m excited to do some traveling in throughout the rest of Europe and this means I’m getting close to going home and seeing everyone I’ve been missing for the last six months.

My last weeks in Trondheim were pretty crazy. The exams in Europe tend to be much longer and comprehensive than exams in the US so I had to study a lot for them. I also had my first oral exam which I had to fly to Oslo to take. The oral exam was for a class that was taught remotely from Oslo using cameras and a room with a couple big screen TVs. NTNU covered all of our costs to travel to Oslo. Unfortunately I had to take the exam pretty early so my flight was at 6:10 AM. The exam was basically just discussing all of the important material we covered all year for about 45 minutes. Since this was for a class about visualizing data, I had a whole chalk board filled with terrible attempts at 3D drawings and various differential equations.

After the exams were over I got to relax a bit, sleep in, and stay up late hanging with anyone who was free. The weather has been fantastic for the last few weeks so we played a lot of volleyball and had some nice picnics. Although Trondheim does not get midnight sun, it never really gets dark anymore. The sun sets at around 11:30 PM and rises again shortly after 3:00 AM. Everyday the sunset and sunrise lasts for hours and is really beautiful.

Once I land in Prague I will start on an almost 4 week tour around Europe. One of my friends from NTNU lives in Prague and has kindly agreed to let me store my luggage at his apartment so I can make a loop through central Europe before flying home on July 3rd from Prague. The stops were planned around meeting up with a few friends from Trondheim in their home cities and going to a couple concerts from bands that rarely tour in the US. I won’t have my computer with me during the trip, but I’m going to try to upload a few pictures here using my phone. Below is the roughly the route I’m planning on taking, but things will probably change once I get going. I’m excited to get going!