Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

I'm sitting in class right now during a break...we are talking with Roy Bhaskar about critical realism, basically a lot of philosophy about how we can look at the social world and problems of peace, conflict, being, and other fun stuff.

I don't really know where to start. I don't have internet yet in my new house so the posts have been sporadic, but Alison left yesterday, the rain is coming down hard today, and I watched TV for four hours yesterday late morning which included, in this order: Bonanza, Will and Grace, Lassie, and the Bachelor. Wow, what a line up! I have to admit it's my first time actually watching an entire episode of Bonanza or Lassie. It's funny though because we just have the basic channels which is quite typical in Norway...so it is a new experience to just sit and watch one of four channels...and since our tv doesn't have a remote we pretty much keep it on one channel. A lot like prison actually!

The other funny phenomena is the varmeskap. It is literally translated as a warm closet and is a large closet where clothes are hung and when the door is shut, warm air is supposed to circulate in the oven-like closet and dry the clothes. Well, Alison and I tried this, but after 8 hours of waiting for the clothes to dry, we realized that the clothes just hanging on the drying rack in the middle of the basement were actually dryer. Good idea, bad performance.

Speaking of bad performance, Alison and I were all psyched to go on a brewery tour of the Mack brewery, the self-proclaimed "Northern Most Brewery in the World." But, as we found out, they must only have one guide because when we arrived, we were informed that the guide was sick and there wouldn't be any tours the rest of the week. So, instead we headed to Polaria, the polar museum where we saw bearded seals and got to dress up like arctic explorers. Exciting stuff.

Well, off now for a lecture from a professor from England named Rob Walker. We'll be learning about early modern state building. Good stuff. Seinere (later) fra Norge.