Nothing brings out the important metaphysical questions like Halloween...how does a fork end up on a washing machine? How does an apple explode in a varmeskap? How long does it take to use 200 cups? How many people can sing Botan Anna at the same time?
These and many other important questions were brought up following the Peace House's Halloween Party on Saturday. We had over 50 people occupying all three floors of our house in a ridiculous collection of crazy and creative costumes. To understand the full extent of the Halloween Party, we have to start at the beginning...
I had my first guest come last week as Beth Borowski who went to Luther with me came for a short visit from the UK. We had a great week doing all Tromsø had to offer including bargain shopping, eating rømmegrøt, climbing a mountain, and getting ready for Halloween! 
Beth brought with her incredible expertise and we bought two pumpkins and Thursday night had a kørselig little party with a few friends. We did the whole works: carving the pumpkins, cooking the seeds, and even making pumpkin pie out of the left overs. It was so much fun! You can check out the pics here!
After a great night of halloween fun, Beth and I spent Friday climbing a mountain near Tromsø. We had a great view of the city, and we brought sleds with us so on the way down we were able to sled on some fast, bumpy, virgin trails. After a short night out with some random Norwegian course friends, Beth and I got ready for Saturday, the big day!
We spent the morning getting the house ready. Beth did a little more shopping with Marjaana while I got my costume from Silje. We decided to meet up at where else, but the Tromsø storm basketball game! We had a great time at the game laughing and enjoying the entertainment that is professional basketball in Tromsø. We walked home and Beth was getting frustrated that after being in Tromsø for multiple days that she had not seen the Northern Lights.
She didn't have to wait too long. We cooked a little dinner and finished up preparing. We had a game room complete with bobbing for apples, a jail, a feel this gross stuff that we're going to label as scary, and a seven minutes in heaven booth. We also had great American decorations all over with spider webs across the ceiling, Halloween candy throughout the house, our pumpkins out front and candles spread everywhere, and Ipods playing on all three floors. Beth threw together a good boyscout costume with Stian's clothes (which always seem to be picked when costumes are needed). The Dutch girls were the first to arrive to get their costumes ready and soon Rachel, Hanne, and Eleonor came to prepare. Finally, the clock struck 9pm and the party began with the Mosjøen Men, the guys from Stian's home town.
The party continued to grow and I was truly amazed by the great costumes. I know I've said this before, but I always feel like Norwegians are not big on putting themselves out there, but on Saturday everyone did! It was great. I think the prize for the best costume would have to go to Line who was a hunchback, Silje who was a great witch, or maybe Eivind for his homemade robot costume!
In addition to the well decorated house, mother nature helped us by providing some amazing northern lights! It was such a beautiful night, but cold enough that everyone wanted to stay at our house instead of going out. The party lasted until 6am when I walked downstairs with a group of Spanish girls and was treated to a Saami Joik circle. There were four Saami people singing, which sounded somewhat similar to traditional Lakota singing. So I was hearing people talking in Spanish, people singing in Saami, and the whole time wondering how the night ended at this point. It was great!
Well, unfortunately the night didn't end there. There was one person who was asleep on our kitchen floor when I went to bed. I figured he would wake up and think, I gotta get home. Instead he thought, I gotta get up and take of my clothes. So he did. I got a call from my roommate Ida and had to go help the guy get dressed and get out the door. Then, I got to crash.
Beth and I enjoyed a quiet breakfast amidst empty bottles and trash. Along with Stian and Maaike, we managed to clean the house in two hours! We all picked up trash, and then I vacuumed while Stian washed the floor behind. At the same time, Maaike was washing dishes...every cup in our house (which has a lot of cups!) had been used. But now, the house looks better than before the party. Beth left Sunday afternoon, and I enjoyed a Tromsø football game in the snow.
So Halloween has already come and gone here in Tromsø...and it was great! I hope that anyone celebrating today has as much fun as we did here. Happy Halloween!
I had a great weekend complete with Rachel styling my hair into a new hairdo (not pictured), making my first ever home-made batch of guacamole (a messy, tasty creation), and winter! That's right. Winter has arrived with about half a foot of snow covering the island. It now looks beautifully wintery! Along with the arrival of snow came one of the best parts of Tromsø: the Northern Lights! For the first time, I was able to get out my tripod and capture the beauty on film. Check out some of the best pictures I've taken in Tromsø...hopefully it will make you want to come visit!
I made a great discovery this morning as I was stretching in the sun after a run. The houses in Tromsø talk! I was slowly stretching trying to suck in as much Vitamin D as I could when I started hearing noises. My guess is that as the frost melted off the old wooden houses in the sun, the houses started to creak and moan. Kind of reminds me of myself trying to wake up during mørketid! I guess it's just part of living here in Tromsø, for both houses and people.
It's been a late night studio session her at Meyer Productions, but I am proud to announce that the first Dutch release of "Noodles" is now ready. Click here for all the details and the audio download.
I didn't see it coming this year. All of a sudden this morning I woke up and realized that mørketid (the "dark time" when the sun doesn't come up) was quickly approaching. I had an unusually difficult time falling asleep last night and waking up this morning, and I think I must have started to think about it yesterday when, for the first time this fall, I had a conversation about mørketid. Fortunately, it started to snow today which will help lighten things up. With my new warm socks from home and lots of candles, I'll hopefully be able to survive! Off to send in the absentee ballot...if I can vote, so can you!
It was a crazy weekend here in Tromsø with the unusual combination of Swedish hip-hop, American rap, and Norwegian pirates.
It all started Friday when I joined Rachel, Collin, and Jeremiah for the Insomnia Festival. It was a four day festival of electronica, hip hop, and rap music. I just checked out Friday because there was the awesome line-up of the Swedish hip-hop group Snook and the historic US rap group Public Enemy! Both lived up to the billing in my eyes. We were in a cozy venue with maybe 400 people, and Snook came out in white fraks like you would wear in middle school art class. Their music was very danceable and I took the opportunity to bust a move to the incessant, rhythmic stream of Swedish lyrics. The funniest part to me was when they would speak to the audience. It usually went something like this: (in Swedish) "All the ladies in the house" (in English) "Say ho. That's right." It was such a fun mix of Swedish with American slang. I especially loved the song "Längst fram i taxin" when they ask the philosophical question, if women make the same amount of money as men, (remember this is a Swedish group so maybe they can actually say that), why can't they pay for their own cab.
Following Snook was Public Enemy with Flava Flav and Chuck D. They put on quite a show. Over two hours of high energy performance. The highlight was the MC who had a scratch solo. He was unbelieveable making this 5 second sound clip into an amazing solo. Flava Flav was pretty ridiculous too with his gold teeth and huge watch hanging from his neck. 
I even got to give him a high five because we were so close to the stage. It was pretty funny and sad to see this 98% white crowd holding their fists up in the air singing "Fight the Power." Also hilarious to here Flava Flav yell, "Tromsø!" If you want to enjoy that one for yourself, check out the video on my webpage.
There was no time for rest following the concert because Saturday night was the Oktoberfest party! It was basically like an early Halloween party with a theme, which this year was a Pirate's Life. Rachel and I decided to try to be creative and we dressed as Royal Navy officers out to catch the pirates! We made our costumes, and I even hand sawed batons for us, and also made capirininhas! We ran and caught the bus and headed first to a pre-party at Tim's house, a friend from Germany. There we had a great time talking to some other pirates and after a while we headed out to catch the last bus. 
The northern lights were filling the sky and it was the best bus entrance ever to walk on and in the back of the bus see 30 pirates all singing, drinking, yelling, and being rowdy. It was one of the most fun bus rides I've had in Tromsø.
I felt the same effect walking into the party. We walked through the entrance and then the stairwell in the medicine building where the party was leads down into a huge open area. As you entered you saw down into the open area and it was packed with over 800 people all dressed as pirates! 
It's my impression that Norwegians rarely get dressed up or really into something, but they sure did for this party! It was great to walk around and see the costumes, dance to the loud music accompanied by lots of flashing lights, and live the pirate's life.
Now back to school for a while. I have an exam due Friday and part of my thesis due on the 10th of November, so it will be back to work for me. Arrr.
It's been a week now since I flew to Latvia where I took part in my first ever election observation mission! It all started last spring when I took a course called Election Observation where we learned about democracy and about how to watch elections and discourage, identify, and report election fraud. Well, our class was fortunate enough to get a chance to practice this new skill for real in Latvia last weekend.
My friend Andre and I flew down from Oslo on Thursday and spent the next two days learning about Latvia, their electoral system, and dividing into groups that would look at different aspects of the Latvian democracy. 
Some groups talked with the media, others with NGO's working with democracy, and my group was supposed to look into voter education. Unfortunately, we didn't have a translator before the election day, so we spent most of the time walking around the beautiful city of Riga and performing hand motions at the election centers were voters could go to get information about the candidates.
The city of Riga truly was beautiful. Parks and rivers leading to the nearby coast filled the city, and a beautiful mixture of colorful buildings, orthodox churches, and art nouveau lined the cobblestone streets. 
Riga, and Latvia in general, has a fascinating history as well. It was not an actual country until after World War I. Then when Hitler and Stalin signed their secret non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union was "given" Latvia. Thus, when the Germans later invaded Latvia, Latvians greeted them as liberators. They soon realized however that the Germans weren't much better. The Soviets then came back at the end of the war and occupied Latvia until the end of the Cold War. During the Soviet occupation, Latvia was dramatically changed as 40,000 Latvians disappeared to Siberia the first week of occupation and Russian became the official language. Now, Latvia is in an interesting process of rewriting their history and identity, explaining that Latvians have been a nation occupied for hundreds of years. There is a tension between Latvian speakers who make up about 60% of the population and Russian speakers, about 40%, who are often unfairly association with the past occupiers. That also is one of the only issues in politics in Latvia. Most Latvians were quick to agree to join the EU and NATO (to which they now belong), and the main issue in the election seemed to be who was more Latvian and who hated Russia more. Interestingly enough though, the President visited Russia in the spring and after that happened the official historical view of Russia was softened...crazy how history can be changed to reflect the present.
This was one of the things for us to watch for: to make sure that minorities, like Russian speakers and the Roma (gypsy) population were not discriminated against and to make sure that everyone had a chance to freely vote. To do this, we woke up early Saturday and watched the polls open at 7am. We watched them unlock the polling station and seal the ballot box. We then watched about 20 different polling stations in a Russian majority town about 50km northwest of Riga and kept track of any problems we saw. 
The most common problems were family voting, when a bunch of people would go into a booth at the same time, and lack of privacy when voting booths were easy to see into. Both are technically violations of the election laws, but it also is partly a cultural aspect. That was one of the challenges for me. Often I felt we were culturally observing instead of election observing, so it was difficult to say "this is wrong," when essentially you are saying "your culture is wrong." After a day of watching the polls and staying up until 2am while they counted the ballots by hand, we met with the other 10 groups and compared our results for a report that will be giving to the election commission for recommendations for the next Latvian election.
Following our days of hard work, we were able to celebrate Sunday night with a few of the other observers and some of the translators who helped the different groups. We had a great time enjoying the colorful nightlife of Riga, even on a Sunday night. The only downside is that Riga is considered a weekend holiday spot, especially for British men, so there is an excessive amount of escort women and drunk foreigners. Fortunately, there are also a lot of great people and places! 
I was wiped out after the quick trip to Riga, but thankful for the experience, even if I really didn't do too much to "protect" (impose?) democracy. Now I'm resting up for a fun weekend of concerts and costumes. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, check out the pictures from Riga.
I am currently sitting in Andre's apartment in Oslo on my first stop on the way to Latvia where I'll take part in an election observation mission. I'll be with about 20 other Norwegians who studied election observation with me last spring, as we take part in a training mission. We'll go around to different voting locations and hopefully deter any cheating. I'm not sure if I'll be the most intimidating observer, but I'm excited to learn more about it and to experience a place I know very little about.
I had two great experiences before leaving the sunny island of Tromsø. First, I went for a run this morning as the frost was melting under the sun's rays. I came home after a quick run and realized that I looked like one of those big football players playing at Lambeau Field as my sweat was evaporating and creating the illusion that I was on fire. I had fun pretending that I ran so fast that I was smoking!
The second cool discovery was on the outside of our laundry room. There were over 20 tiny snails clinging to the wall, presumably to stay warm during the night. Well, it didn't work. They were all dead and as soon as I touched one it would fall off. Maybe a sad reminder of what might be on the way...
Time to cheer on the twins via gameday. They need it now! Keep your eye on Latvia on Saturday!
Last night I enjoyed a great pizza party at Rachel's apartment as we tried to re-create the magic from last spring. There was good wine, great pizza, and of course, lots of conversation. By the end of the night, however, this conversation had taken its toll on me. I've been getting over a cold and after a night of talking over music I sounded like a 13 year old singing the national anthem. I decided to head home a little early as everyone else hit the town. When I arrived home though, I realized that I didn't have my keys and that everyone was out on the town. Since I didn't know when my roomies would get home, I decided the only solution was to break in.
I, quite obviously, pulled one of our garbage cans to the side of the house underneath Maaike's window. I carefully climbed on top of the garbage can and slipped my fingers in the small opening between Maaike's window and the window frame. I heaved the window open and with a deep breath jumped and pulled myself up and into her room. I felt quite accomplished having made it without injury. I tried not to get too much mud in her room, and as I tip-toed across the floor I grabbed the door handle and pushed. Nothing happened. I turned the light on and realized that she had locked her room door. Who does that?! I tried to pick the lock for a few moments and finally just sat down at her computer and surfed the internet.
About 15 minutes later I heard someone come home, so I again got to play spy, except this time I had to climb out the window, jump on the trash can, drag the can back to the street and then ring the doorbell. I then realized that I left my coat in Maaike's room and left the light on, so I had to text her and admit that I had successfully broken in and out of her room. She later admitted that she had locked her room because everyone was gone and she didn't want her computer to get stolen. Now she learned her lesson: don't lock the bad guys in. Leave your room open so when the bad guys break in, at least everyone will get their stuff stolen. Oh yeah, and don't forget your keys.
