I have hopped back across the pond and am in fine form after a four day trip to New York! 
The reason for the trip was a job interview, or so I thought. I bought a new shirt and tie all ready for the big event, but when I arrived it seemed I missed the memo. Everyone else was wearing jeans and sweatshirt. What I soon found out was that the "interview" was actually a throw-back to old standardized tests...I think I distinctly remember saying after the GRE that I was forever done with standardized tests and bubbles, but no. That’s right, in order to work for the federal government you have to be well-versed in bubbles.
The test was a little over 3 hours and consisted of critical reasoning in which we would read a paragraph and they would ask us oddly worded questions to see what info we could deduce from a few facts. Then there was the personality section (my favorite) when I had to say that no, I did not think that a messy room was a sign of an unintelligent person, yes, during high school I would see friends 7 or more times a month, and that I thought the worst part of the “computer revolution” was the loss of personal contact. Interesting stuff. Not sure what kind of person the test will tell them that I am, but I wish I could just tell them myself. The final section was basically like the English section on the SAT, correcting spelling mistakes, organizing data, and finding passive voice. So there you go. That’s how you become president, or at least a presidential management fellow. I think the test typified the federal government as an impersonal way to move through a bunch of people so it made me think twice if this was a job I wanted, but I’ll wait and see what happens. The highlight was meeting a girl from Hawaii who knew someone already working for US AID. We were both a little out of our elements in New York so we stuck together and laughed about it afterwards.
Besides the test, New York was great (and ridiculously cold)! I stayed with my friend Alison and she was kind enough to show me the city and enjoy some theatre with me. We hit up the half price ticket line to enjoy two great, and very different, Broadway shows: Translations and Spring Awakening. Translations was a play written in the 1980’s about an Irish girl who falls in love with the colonizing British soldier. They don’t speak the same language and it plays with the idea of names and language and power. After the show they had a discussion which was really cool in which an actor from the play along with a famous Irish author talked about it. Apparently, the play was really controversial because it was show in Ireland right during the height of violence between Protestants and Catholics, who were often fighting of the same thing of naming and place and claiming it as their own. Basically, I felt a lot smarter after that show. Spring Awakening was a rock musical about rebellion and repression from parents. It’s set in German in the late 1890’s and shows kids dealing with their new sexuality in a culture that makes them feel guilty for it. It had amazing music and all the actors were probably in their late teens. Just amazing voices. Also, a guy who was in season 5 of 24 was in it and apparently the music was by the band that had the song in the early 90’s “I am barely breathing, I can’t find a way, don’t know who I’m blah blah, imagining you here...but I’m thinking it over any way...” It was so much fun and great to see a new musical (apparently it was based on a play written in Germany in the 1890’s that was banned for decades.
Besides the culture I also ate some of the best pizza of my life at Grimaldi’s in Brooklyn and enjoyed some shopping in downtown Manhattan. Lots of food and relaxation. I even started Alison on the path towards an Office addiction, I think. Now I’m back in the Oslo airport, waiting for the short flight home. I’m excited to go home and enjoy my life outside of the bubbles in Tromsø.
and I have. I am watching them gas up the KLM plane as I prepare for some trans-atlantic hopping. I'm doing the business trip itinerary of Norway to New York and back in four days. Kind of crazy! It should be exciting though. The reason for this sudden and short trip is also exciting: a job interview!
Monday morning I will have a combination of a test and an interview for a position as a "presidential management fellow," which basically means I would get a job in one of the variety of departments in the government. I think it would be a good way to get my foot in the door working with foreign aid and international politics, and hey, it would be a job, right?! So dust off your suit and prepare for a variety of fine inflight entertainment because we're taking off. If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere...
Do you ever wonder what Noah would have done if it would have been below freezing when the whole 40 days and 40 nights thing started to happen? Would he have built some kind of eco-dome to support the animals, and if so how would they have enough oxygen and how would it smell...or maybe he just would have built a house? Thoughts like these enter your mind when you enter approximately the 6th day in a row of constant snow. It is deceivingly beautiful, and it falls so slowly and lightly that you think there is no way that it could possibly accumulate...but it does.
And it has now engulfed our mailbox, our porch, and soon our entryway. This has seriously tested our unspoken rule about not buying a shovel for the house. No one in the house has ever offered to buy it, and we have never really had a conversation about n
eeding it, so we just continue to create a small walkway through the huge pile of snow to the street. . .It usually works alright, until the piles of snow go to your waist and the path gets narrower and narrower...and let me tell you it's difficult to mirror the stride of someone when the dryness of your groin is at stake. Now we walk out of the house and arrive to the street with two matching white legs. It's too bad white jeans aren't back in style or we would be in fine shape.
It doesn't look like it will let up any time soon, but tomorrow the mail comes again, so I'm excited to see what the mailman does. 
In the meantime, I'm going to wiki "the construction of bio-domes." Hopefully see you in 34 days.
APPENDIX
As a late addition to this blog, today I have to ask again what's up with the snow. It's not falling as flakes in the shapes that we used to make out of construction paper. Instead it's falling in small, condensed balls, like dippin' dots from the sky. Does this mean that the future of ice cream is finally here? As exciting as that could be, it is quite strange to see people using umbrellas to seek refuge from the pellets of snow. Take cover, the dippin' dots are here.
Even though winter in Tromsø lasts from October until May and is completely dark for about half of that time, the one consolation we have is that it's never as nasty as winter in South Dakota. Sure we get a lot of snow, but it's never that 20 below, blowing snow, blizzard, cancel school kind of weather. Well, until today. I made the mistake of coming to school today in my first ever Tromsø blizzard. The wind was whipping off the fjord sending snow upwards and downwards at the same time. Meanwhile, I was attempting to walk up the hill to the peace center, which is a little steeper than most of the hills in South Dakota. The only thing falling faster than the blinding snow was the snot dripping out of my nose, which gave me brief distractions from attempts to see how close the peace center was...and by peace center, I don't mean world peace. I mean the center of tranquility, warmth, and internet connection. And how great it is. Too bad I have to go back out there eventually, to relearn what winter is all about.
The past four days have been filled with everything from man eating Korean monsters to military juntas which can only mean one thing: the Tromsø International Film Festival! It is a huge event that fills downtown Tromsø with thousands of eager movie fans. This year I am volunteering which means I can get into the movies for free! I have been running from theatre to theatre trying to decide what to see, and am off again soon to try to get a left over ticket for the short film festival competition. Thus far the best film I've seen is "The Cronicle of an Escape" about Argentina in the late 1970's. Full reviews of all the films will be up soon...after I rub the glaze from my eyes.
My housemate Jostein comes from Kirkenes, which is the Norwegian town next to the Russian border. I'm not sure if this is the reason or the excuse for what happened about five minutes ago in the kitchen. He asked me if I had ever had reindeer heart. Since he asked in Norwegian, I wasn't quite sure I understood what he meant. He then leaned into his fridge and pulled out a frozen reindeer heart in a plastic bag. Now, this wasn't like tripe when it doesn't look anything like what it actually is...this looked exactly like a heart with the valves and veins in perfect view. He pulled out a knife and in stereotypical Finnmark fashion cut off a piece of the heart and ate it off the knife. Well, I couldn't miss this
"opportunity" so he cut me a piece, and I choked it down. It tasted a little nasty...maybe like very over-cooked roast beef. Maybe it would have tasted a little better if I hadn't seen him holding it front of me like the Indian Jones movie while I ate. "Kalima!" Now, off to eat our homemade pizza. I better make sure the heart doesn't sneak in underneath the corn...and seriously, who eats corn on pizza besides Norwegians?!
Hello again from Tromsø!
It's dark today, but the crisp air and deep snow are welcomed signs as I return to my life in Tromsø. It feels great to be back and sitting in the reading room..."reading." I'm still carrying a few signs of Americanism like the dollar bills in my wallet and the baseball cap I'm sporting today, but I think soon they will fall victim to the cultural imperialism of Norway.
I had a smooth trip back, albeit with quite a few stops. In an effort to save a few bucks, my itinerary included stops in Sioux Falls, Minneapolis, Chicago, Amsterdam, Oslo, and finally Tromsø. Oddly enough, I spotted a Luther classmate, Megan Clarke, on the flight to Amsterdam so we had fun catching up and sharing Europe graduate school stories (she's graduating right about now from her one year program in the UK). Finally, 27 hours after leaving home, I staggered to the Peace House and was greeted by the newest member: Gjermund. He opened the door to my incessant doorbell ringing and just stood in the doorway until I explained that I lived there. He seems like a great guy though, and as Stian and I learned last night, a fellow Settlers of Catan player.
I was quickly thrown into Norway upon my return. I headed out to town to meet Rachel for a beer at Blå Rock and then we headed to a cafe where there was an acoustic night featuring all the hippest Norwegian songs. I started to fall asleep about 10.30pm so I had to head home for my cozy bed. I think my body has to adjust to the new dimensions because I definitely drilled my elbow against the wall in the middle of the night!
I followed up the excitement of my return with a busy first full day in Tromsø. I enjoyed a run across the bridge in the snow and became the newest member of the local gym called SATS. I then headed to the university where I took a Norwegian entrance exam. It ended up being three hours long, but I think I did pretty well. There were 17 students and I think 12 are accepted into the course, so hopefully I'm in the top 60%! I do think that the questions were a bit biased against me though because we had to write an essay about European immigration and fill in the blanks in a story about Baghdad. It's as if they were trying to isolate the American!
So life begins again in Tromsø. It's always fun to return to friends and a schedule and a sense of purpose (which will hopefully be the thesis). Tromsø is as beautiful as ever and even the kitchen was looking clean through my rose colored glasses. It was a fun and busy holiday season and now I can look forward to my family coming to visit my other home in Norway in June! Until then, time to...read. oh yeah. read. Here I go...
