Holmsåa

So I realise I haven't posted anything in a while, life is kinda busy! Last weekend (the one before this last one) I went to a cabin with some friends that's 2 hours away on bus, followed by a 3 hour hike. There was no electricity or running water. It was very cold when we arrived, but since there were 15 of us and a stove we managed to warm up the cabin by night time. I also tried a sauna for the first time while we were there! I think pictures will do a better job at describing the cabin :)

Arriving at the cabin, it was colder inside the cabin then outside (our hands and feet were steaming)



Once we warmed up:



The next morning (after a chilli night):

Shallow Diving

So today there was a Guiness World record attempt(and set) diving from 11m in to 30cm (1foot) of water.
Heres some pictures:










Click HERE for the full set.

There was a pretty big splash!
More coming soon!

New Bike!

So I whent to the slavation army to see if I could find anything useful, I got a well needed pepper grinder (so flatmates: yes I was using your pepper grinder behind your backs, but not any longer, dont worry I refilled yours.... I doubt they will be reading this), mugs, small water glasses, a rug..... and most importantly and least expected: a Bike! I saw the price and i thought 300NOK (50$) was cheap! so I tried it out and took it. When I was gonna pay the cashier only rang it up as 150NOK (I kept quite thinking it was a mistake), he then said "Dont show anyone the price tag, I thought 300 was really expensive!"
As vintage bikes are fashionable in the US, this bike would have easily gone for 150$ in Minneapolis. I think I found the first thing (besides school) thats cheaper in Norway!
It felt wonderful to ride a bike, even tho it was 4*C, raining, and uphill :-p



DBS is a Norwegian bike company, my friend Kristin says it stands for "Den beste sykkel" meaning "The Best Bike"!

I cant wait till it gets nice out!

All over!

So the sun finally desided to come out on Wednesday, and I didnt have class until 3, so I decided it was good day for a walk, I think it was like 4*C and sunny, which even for Minneapolis in the winter, is really nice! Heres some pictures from the walk. There was an area where there was all this watter melting/freezing and it was beautiful! I kinda went crazy taking pictures!




And heres Trondheim! It's not the prettiest of its sides, but you can see the ocean!


After going to Instrumentation lab I came back home, had dinner, and then went to a Jazz show in the sutent society building, Samfundet, which is kinda like a student union, but with bars, cafes, restaurants and music clubs instead of offices. Here I had Guinness on tap for the first time, delicious! :)



On Thursday a few of us went to club Downtown again, which was really fun! Thursdays seem to be a good night to go out, because the beer is "cheap" all night, and the entrance is free as well! We did however end up walking back at 3am, which involved getting a little lost because we took the scenic route hehe, luckily it wasn't very cold out so it wasn't a problem.

On Friday night Kristin, a fellow electrical engineer who I knew from Minneapolis, invited me to eat a traditional Norwegian dinner with her mom and her sister, which was very delicious and fun, I also learned a lot about Norwegian history and candy :-p

I might have mentioned this before, but theres this bus that leaves on most days, which takes you to Sweden for free, well, to a store right across the border. I was supposed to wake up early yesterday to take the trpi and buy meat, cheese, and beer (they are all much cheaper there), but I overslept! So unfortunately that will have to wait.

Last night I had dinner and icecream with Louisa and Sandra and then we went to some friends apartment and watched Dr. Strangelove, which I hadn't seen in a long time, great movie!


Fun fact: Norway has the highest coffee coffee consumption in the world, at around 10kg of coffee per person per year! I think they are back and forth each year with Finland.
Fun fact #2: There are no Starbucks in Norway!
"Friends dont let friends drink corporate coffee!"

Heres some more ice pictures :-)

MUSH!!

Sooo... I think I now I can start writing about Norway! This past weekend was rather long! My only class on Friday was canceled, so my weekend started on Thursday night, a few of us went to this club in downtown called "Downtown". It was pretty fun, when we got there there was this guy playing the keyboard and singing all these pop songs, he was pretty good, but it was really hilarious. The beer was pretty "cheap", around 30nok for a pint, which is not cheap in the US, around 5$. The place then turned more in to a dance club, with a DJ and two bars on the 3rd floor, and 2 bars bars with different atmospheres on the main floor. We then decided to take the 40 minute walk home at 2:30am due to the ridiculous cab prices, I was a little hesitant about this at first but then we whent through this tree covered path and the trees were covered with crows and I think bats, it was REALLY cool! You would clap and they would all start flying around, it was straight out of some kind of Tim Burton movie.
On Friday I did laundry and things around the house. I also watched "Soacial Network" which turned out to be a pretty good movie! Then I went to this small "club" in the basement of one of the student villages thats run by students. Its called "The Basement" and its where a lot of the exchange students go on Fridays, the beer here is actually kinda cheap @ 3$ a bottle. The downside is that its usually really crowded and it closes at midnight, but its very fun!

I guess the highlights of my weekend were on Friday. I woke up bright(not so much, it was still nighttime) and early to go to the central bus station and take a bus to Roros, where we would go Dog Sledding!!






The photos really dont capture how beautiful and amazing it was! although we didnt have to worry about steering the dogs (they just followed the trail), things would get pretty intense when going down hill. After a couple of the hills i was going to fast and lost control and flew in to the snow! and when you fall off the dogs just keep on running! so you have to chase them down, luckly theres always someone ahead to stop them but you have to yell so that they dont go on forever. It was really exciting!

Heres the doggies on a break:



Anyway! after a long sleepy bus ride home I had dinner, freshened up and whent to a birthday party at another student village. Only after "pregaming" at Louisa, Anna, and Sandra's apartment.


"French" kisses for the Italian birthday boy!




Tea after-party.

Also heres a picture of my room!



And a couple pictures from a really cool building at NTNU (the university I'm studying in).

Last littlebit from Tenerife!

So Its been over two weeks since I've been in Trondheim, Norway. And I've been running a million errands that are involved with moving to Norway, its rather difficult! Here its very icy (they dont lay down salt, just something that looks like cat litter) and I've fallen around 3-4 times already, here I was thinking Minneapolis had trained me well for ice walking. Also just in case you didn't know its very expensive to live here, especially to drink! (at least $80 for a bottle of liquor)
Despite all this I am quite enjoying myself, I'm meeting a lot of people, classes are very laid back so far, I really like my room (which is more like a studio), and I'm finally getting over my cold!

Aside from that I have a few more pictures from my last day in Tenerife, when I had the pleasure of getting a moped tour of Santa Cruz by Atenea. We went to the marina/docks where people live in their boats year round, to the theater, to a couple different scenic lookouts, wound around the teeny side-streets where most cars aren't allowed, and again to the beautiful Parque Garcia Sanabria.
















And here's a little taste of Trondheim, there was a snowstorm on the first day of class and I snapped this from the bus:

5 Ambientes un dia

So I haven't posted anything in a while, I've been really busy arriving to Norway, so I still need to catch up on pictures from Tenerife. One thing thats worth mentioning his that I ran in to a old childhood friend called Kristian from Venezuela who I hadn't seen in 8 years.



These pictures are from a trip we took to "El Teide", which is the talest mountain in Spain, and happens to be an active Volcano. The point of the trip was to see all the different environments in the island, not necessarily to go up to the volcano. We started in the city of Santa Cruz, which I've posted pictures of before.

Then we went through a jungle like, "cold" area in the north of the island.



Then through pine forests



Then we started getting in to the zone where theres no trees.





and it starts looking like a volcanic desert

and back down


and then we went swimming in the ocean!

and took silly pictures