Yesterday was my first day waking up in Oslo. Like I mentioned in my previous post I slept in and wasn’t kind of relaxed in my room during the afternoon. Later on I took the T-Bane to BI(Norwegian Business School) to get my photo taken for my ID card. My school is just down one train stop from where I get off for my dorm. Including all the walking and the train ride, it takes about 15 mins to get from my dorm to my school. When I arrived, there were a bunch of students registering. These were all of the Norwegian students who are enrolled full time, not the exchange students. I went to find the student center to take my picture, but they were closed when I got there. I then took the train back and came back to my room.
Later on that night the group of exchange students for the fall got together on the rooftop of BSN, the other, more convenient (it’s literally across the street from BI), but more expensive residence place for the BI students. This is the view from that rooftop.
I talked with many students from all over the world. To name all the countries people were from would take way too long, but to name some, there were people from France, Switzerland, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Mexico, Holland, Netherlands, and Germany. I was talking to a guy from Sweden and we got on the topic of hockey, of course! (: We had been talking about American Accents and the Texas accent. He then mentioned that his favorite goalie to watch growing up played for the Dallas Stars before he came over and played for a Swedish professional team towards the end of his career. He said he had played goalie as a kid and just idolized him when he played for the Chicago Blackhawks. I told him I followed hockey quite a bit so he was like you might know him. It just so happened to be Ed Belfour! 😀 That moment I realized that depending on who you’re talking to, the world can be so small. I told him, “You’re not going to believe this, but Ed Belfour played college hockey for a year at my school back home and won a national championship with them.” He could not believe that I knew who he was or let alone I go to the same school he did. What a crazy world.
We left the rooftop to go to Hard Rock Cafe because they were having some student welcoming party. It’s right downtown the city center of Oslo. So the group of us hopped on the T-Bane and walked to it. It was super busy so we went to try and find a different club to go to. We get to this one club and they say the age limit is 20… So I had a short panic moment and thought oh God, I’m going to be the only one who can’t go in and will have to take the train back to my room alone at like 12:30am. Luckily there were 5 other people who were 19 and 4 of them live at the same residence, so we went back together. Three of them were French and one guy from Poland. Whenever the French would talk to each other, I could somewhat pick out every like few words when they talked. When we were walking back one of them said to the other, ” Elle est de Dakota du Nord ” It was funny because I immediately said ” I understood that!!” 🙂
I’ve also had 2 people think I was from Norway. One guy on the bus I took to Ikea started talking to me in Norwegian and then these two girls, who both looked Scandinavian, asked me if I knew where this club was. I said I didn’t know and that I wasn’t from here, they looked at me shocked and said where are you from? I said the United States. They we’re wondering what the heck I was doing in Oslo and said I looked soooo Scandinavian. I took that as a compliment! 🙂
So far I’m the only one I’ve met who is from the United States, and most people I’ve talked to has said the same. I’m hoping to change their view on Americans by not being what they say the “stupid American.” I think I have a start to that because I acutaly know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland. 😛
It’s so interesting meeting people from all over the world and especially when you have 2 people that both speak the same language and I just sit there having no clue what they are saying at all. I don’t know if they’re actually talking about me or what. I just assume they’re not… hahaha lol
