Well, I made it to Oslo! I’m writing this from my room in the Sogn Student Village near the University of Oslo’s Blindern campus. I am an idiot in that I didn’t have enough willpower to stay awake until a normal bedtime for Oslo’s timezone, which is 7 hours ahead of Minnesota. So I collapsed into bed around 7PM (or I should probably say 19:00—Norway uses 24-hour time) and woke up around 2AM. And naturally, I couldn’t fall back asleep, so bring on the jetlag! I have been up for five hours now (it’s 7:30AM on Tuesday now—technically the second day, but this post is about Day 1), and I figured that I should probably do something other than watch TV shows on my laptop, haha, so here we are.
I said goodbye to my family at MSP Airport on Sunday afternoon after we had an awesome brunch together in St. Paul. If you know me well at all, you’ll know that I have an incredibly close-knit (and large!) family. My parents and siblings are my best friends, and I love them to death. That is probably the thing that I am dreading the most about this entire experience: being away from my family for almost five months. It will be tough, and I know that there are going to be times when I get very homesick, but I plan on communicating regularly with them to avoid this. And my sister Laura is going to visit me in about a month, which is really exciting!
So anyway, after I said farewell to my family, I flew to Paris. I thankfully got a free upgrade to economy comfort (free drinks! 😉 ) from an awesome flight attendant, which was much needed. I barely had enough legroom as it was, so I feel like my normal economy ticket probably would have been miserable. The flight to Paris was pretty uneventful. Watched some TV on my laptop, part of Divergent, started a new book (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed), and slept for maybe 20 minutes, haha. I had a very short connection of 1 hour and 10 minutes in Paris Charles-De-Gaulle Airport, which I have been stressing about for months (seriously, months). I lucked out in that my flight from MSP arrived 20 minutes earlier than scheduled. I also was near the front of the plane, so I was able to get off of the plane and run to security before everyone else on my flight, which saved a lot of time. I managed to get to the waiting room at the terminal I was flying out of almost an hour before I needed to. And then my flight to Oslo was delayed by 35 minutes anyway, so I ended up with plenty of extra time. All that stressing over nothing. Typical.
After landing in Oslo, I immediately purchased some alcohol in the airport (hey, alcohol is super expensive in Norway and duty-free in the airport is the cheapest—don’t judge), picked up my luggage, got some Norwegian Kroner from an ATM, and purchased a train ticket to the Oslo Central Station. I knew that the public transit was going to be good, but I was blown away by how nice everything was. The express train to the city center was hella fast and it was so smooth that it felt like it wasn’t even moving.
After getting to the train station (which is also crazy-nice) I found the meet-and-greet people from the University of Oslo. We waited awhile for some more new international students to show up before we took off on the metro to campus to check in and get our room keys. I met other students from throughout Europe, one from Australia, and one from Chicago, which was really cool. We all commiserated in being exhausted and ready to stop carrying our heavy luggage everywhere with us. (Seriously. I had like 80 pounds of stuff total throughout a huge duffle bag and my two backpacks, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is a disaster to be carrying for several kilometers.)
The walk to the Sogn Student Village is uphill, which I didn’t realize from my Google Maps creeping. By the time I finally got to my apartment (or “flat”, as it would be called), I was drenched in sweat, which was gross, since I had already been traveling for 12 hours, and totally exhausted. I took a shower right away, got somewhat settled into my room (somewhat is being liberal—my stuff is strewn everywhere), and pretty much went to bed immediately, which I am sure that I will be regretting by the end of today.
I haven’t met my flatmates yet, but I think that they are all girls, which will be a kind of new experience. (My sisters are family, so that only kind of counts in my mind.) They probably think that I’m super weird because I just took a shower and went to bed without making any kind of attempt to introduce myself to them, but that was kind of weird to do and I’m not really sure why I did that either. (Note that I haven’t seen any of them—I didn’t see them and then not introduce myself. I’m not a total weirdo.) Whatever, exhaustion makes a person do stupid things.
So anyway, that was my first day(-ish) in Norway. I have orientation starting at 10:30 with a Welcome Ceremony, and I’m excited to get that underway! More soon (with pictures).
-TJS
Tim's Semester Abroad in Norway 