Sarah Howell

It is official. I have been here for ONE MONTH (and since I started writing this post, it has now been almost a month and a half…)! Boy, does time go by fast!

I have finished up my August block course in Conservation Biology. It was a three week course, which met every day. I thoroughly enjoyed the course though it did have a lot of familiar material from my other undergraduate and graduate coursework in biology and ecology. It was nice, however, to discuss the same concepts from an alternative point of view, so all in all it was a great class for me. Our exam was on Monday, and yesterday the “Autumn Parallel” session began, so now begins the rest of the fall semester. I will be taking an environmental economics course, one in restoration ecology (which I am very excited to take!), and another in coastal, marine and aquatic resource management. I think it will be a fantastic fall course load.

However, enough of boring coursework talk… the adventures of living in Norway continue! Jen has arrived from the US and she and I will be here studying together as exchange students from our program in Washington, DC. I certainly am looking forward to our many adventures together, and hopefully we will have a chance to go on a trip up to some fjords soon!

This past weekend, the weather was absolutely perfect! Jen arrived on Friday (now two weeks ago…), and in celebration, she and I and another friend, Paige, went to Oslo to wander and explore and just enjoy being outside in the warm, clear air. Jen fought a small bit of jetlag in the morning, but once we had our coffee and got our feet in the city, we were only bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Paige met up with a friend of hers, and so Jen and I wandered off towards the proclaimed “hipster” neighborhood of Grunerløkka.

Grunerløkka is a lot of fun. There are just tons of vintage and higher fashion shops, little bars, cafes, open parks where you can sit and relax by some fountains, crooked streets with old houses, and one of my favorite things, graffiti and tagging on the buildings. I do not know where I developed this like for graffiti art, but it is something that I always end up taking photos of when walking through different places. People have some funny things to say on buildings!

After walking through Grunerløkka for a bit, we made our way to meet up with Dan to get some groceries and other supplies. It was a perfect day to have a picnic in a park and that was exactly what we set off to do. First on the shopping list was a one time grill thingy: it is a simple and beautiful concept, though I think a bit wasteful, which takes a simple aluminum pan, inserts a small bag of charcoal on the bottom, and tops with a wire mesh surface upon which you put your meat, vegetables and anything else you chose to grill.

Apparently during the warmer months of June, July, and August, these are all over the place. According to a Norwegian friend who met us for our picnic, because the weather in Norway is so sporadically nice, you have to act quickly if you want to have a picnic, and so they go into any of the small convenience or grocery chains, pick up one of these one time grills and any accompanying foods, some beer, and then practically sprint to their favorite picnic spot. It may sound like an exaggeration but I think it pretty much works like this. In almost all the public parks in Oslo, you will see these large, square trash receptacle things, almost the size of a portapotty, located with the other trash cans and recycling bins. The large square bins are made specifically for throwing away the one time grills. I am curious if the charcoal and aluminum gets separated out in any sort of recycling process, because it does seem to be pretty wasteful to just use one of these for a two hour grill time.

Anyways, the picnic was a grand success. The weather was gorgeous, Frognerparken was beautifully hilarious with all of the naked statues, and the company was wonderful.

Met some new friends from both UMB and also from Dan’s workplace. We sat, talked, played some soccer (where I managed to be on the ground more than standing on my feet…), ate, drank, and were generally merry.

Now that the weather is starting to take a bit more chill into the morning and evening air, I am glad we took advantage of the warm weather when we did because there really has not been as perfect of a picnic day since.