This post was initially much longer (I lost like 600 words š¦ ), but WordPress apparently doesn’t save things automatically, which is insane. So what I salvaged is below. I will write another post later this week covering the stuff that I had already written about but sadly lost when I accidentally clicked away from the “New Post” page.
Whoa, I’ve been in Norway for an entire week. That’s pretty hard to believe, but I own several devices capable of trackingĀ the date, so I believe it. I’ve been very busy getting settled in (my room is no longer the disaster that it was when I wrote my last post), attending orientation events, doing fun activities with my “buddy group” of other new international students, exploring Oslo, and–oh, yeah–attending classes. Here we go:
In all seriousness, the orientation from the University of Oslo was pretty useless. I’m the kind of person who looks everything up. Everything. So there was VERY little information at the orientation events that I wasn’t aware of already. Sometimes being so prepared is boring, but whatever. During the opening ceremony there were some cool musical performances, though, so it ended up being pretty neat.
After orientation, we met ourĀ “buddy group”–a small group of 20-something new international students, led by several Norwegian students at UiO. The “buddy group” was my first opportunity to meet peers at UiO, and I ended up enjoying the experience very much. After introducing ourselves, we played an icebreaker (which is no stranger to me as a Welcome Week Leader at UMN) and talked about some of the events that we would participating in throughout the week.
As a group, we played volleyball, went to some bars (and paid $9USD for one beer–welcome to Norway, land of expensive everything), went on a bus tour of Oslo/explored the city, played trivia, visited the Viking Ship Museum, and generally had a great time. It was a really good initial experience to be able to get to know other new international students as well as the Norwegian students who organized the events. I am looking forward to hanging out with my new “buddies” in the near future!
I will continue this post in the near future, talking about what I had explained in my earlier post that I lost: exploring Oslo and my first “week” of classes.
Thanks for reading.
-TJS
Tim's Semester Abroad in Norway 