Trolljegeren

I saw Trolljegeren tonight with three friends: the German who lives down the hall from me, a German I’ve hiked with before, and his Polish friend. On the bybanen on the way into town, while the Polish guy introduced himself, I asked him which city he comes from. His eyebrows shot up, so I told him that yep, I’d been to Poland.

“Really?!” I assured him I wasn’t kidding.

“But why?” "School trip." After more pressing, I reluctantly told him that my tour of his country had been mostly a visit to concentration camps and cemeteries. He nodded.

“You know that we’re not really the ones responsible?” He made a funny jerking movement towards the Germans, which I didn’t get, and a humorous eyebrow wiggle, and then suddenly, in a brick-in-the-face kind of way, I realized he was trying to tell me that the Germans, not the Polish, were responsible for the Holocaust, and was doing so by gesturing to my two friends. I managed to smile and crush the instinctual recoil from Holocaust jokes, trying to figure out a way to respond lightheartedly and clear the air.

“Erm, yeah. You know I come from a country that actually was built on slavery, right?” I answered. “How ‘bout we let individuals not suffer for the sins of their countries' pasts?” Then I told the story about how I fell asleep in a cemetery in rural Poland and got left behind by my bus. To lighten the mood. But weird to think this guy lives in a country that to me means pretty much nothing but death and destruction. And to realize that Germany's associations in my mind manage to encompass the Holocaust without being overwhelmed by it, while Poland seems built entirely on it and of it. 

They're so cute!

Both the Polish and the German guy are big, seriously tall men, with hair to their shoulders. Stephan, the German, is a sweetie, but to look at him you’d think he was tough. They decided we should get off at Nygård and go through the park. Since I’ve never been through at night, and normally don’t have such bulky bodyguards, I agreed. We talked about how the drug addicts are meant to be mostly harmless anyhow, on our way up the slope. As we reached the square where they congregate, I saw a large clump of people. A woman stood in front, and as we approached, asked “hvor er narkomen?” Swiftly we passed her, though she followed us, and headed through to where men were standing, arms crossed, in front of us. For a sickening second, they formed a human blockade, and I thought they were not going to let us through. The Polish guy was at my elbow and steered me firmly beside him, and the men parted. Caroline maneuvered around to between him and Stephan. Whew! That’s the last time I go through Nygårdsparken at night, even with muscle backup.

Trolljegeren is fun, and I highly recommend it for not only a glimpse into Norwegian culture, but also snippets of this country's great natural beauty. On a hike this morning, I left the trail and after wandering under snow-laden pine trees and past delicately etched twigs, thought perhaps I might have left reality behind entirely and see Mr. Tumnus trot out from behind a hillock at any moment. But then realized that in Narnia, they never fell into snow drifts up to their tushes.  Totally worth it.

Not Going Home.

Betrayal.

That's it. I've had it. America can fuck its women over as much as it wants, I'm never going back. They'll have to bundle me kicking and screaming onto a plane to expel me from Norway.

I think what hurts the most about this is that it is such utter betrayal of one woman's organization by another. I've cheered for Susan G. Koman and all the work they've done alongside Planned Parenthood, and this hurts more than any blow congress can strike in the war against women in America (I used to put that in scare quotes. No longer). I am so angry right now, I'm writing through a blur of tears. Not sure how I'm going to teach in half an hour. All that about leaving one's emotions at the door only works when the emotions aren't brought on by a targeted decision to deny an entire demographic healthcare. How could this... who could... and what in hell am I going to tell my Norwegian students when they ask about the state of America's healthcare?

As I wrote on fb, this is actually really clever of Koman: if more women are dead of breast cancer b/c they couldn't access the preventative healthcare Planned Parenthood offers, less of them can have abortions. Solution to freedom of choice: kill off the choosers.

Here's your link to help provide one more woman with a breast exam: Donate to Planned Parenthood.
Or sign a petition to Komen to keep funding Planned Parenthood.

The Magic Trek

bootlegged photos

I was in the 9C kitchen at Fantoft on Saturday night, and had a hilarious moment while meeting a Spanish guy. As I put my hand up to shake his, he said, “no. Cheek, cheek.”

“What?” I asked, as he zoomed his face towards mine and kissed either cheek. “Oh.” That’s how it’s done in Spain. My French friend, Perle, laughed, and showed me the French variation. I must admit that it bugged me a bit. That kind of forced intimacy with a stranger… Fergus explained that women and men kiss, women and women kiss, but only men shake hands. “And intersex folk?” I asked. Everyone laughed, and he said he’d ask. I guess I’m too wired to think about liminalities.

Bergen in the snow

But truthfully, who wants to kiss strangers? I don’t think it’s just my prudish American upbringing, or the fact that I was in Israel for six months before Europe and not allowed to really hang out with guys, let alone kiss them in greeting… It may just be my naturally reserved way of showing affection… But that’s not so, because I have no problem cuddling with my sisters and hugging my best friends, and I’ve become somewhat of a casual hugger while in Norway. As I sat there, pondering, I became much more aware of all of the touching going on. Of the guy next to me whose feet were propped up comfortably on my chair, of pats on the back to get my attention and the hug that my male friend gave me as he left. That hug was nice. Some guys just hug really well, and there’s a different quality to a good guy’s hug than a woman’s, something that says “I know we’re just friends but I will protect you if anything tries to attack, and I smell nice to boot.”

I’m down with that friendship hug. And with all the casual fist bumps and high fives and reassuring shoulder pats that come along with it. Because it says, “we don’t think too much about touching, we haven’t heightened physical contact into some sort of evil thing, we are natural and comfortable with our bodies and with other people’s” (wow, touching is doing a lot of talking here). There was something so nice about that room and its comfort with bodies moving amongst people I know. It’s the stranger’s kiss that freaks me out. God bless undemonstrative America.

I found a new trek in Bergen—Låndasfjell, the mountain in back of Fantoft, was hitherto unknown to me. Friday morning I slipped up it, shimmying along an icy path compacted into utter smoothness by a myriad of hikers. Finally I reached the peak with the sunrise, and looked out across the low grey and salmon and indigo clouds to where the sun sparkled on the fjords beyond reams of mountains. On either side of the pristinely white swath on which I stood pine trees thrust up into the sky, saluting the brilliant morning light. As I continued towards Ulriken, the path disappeared, and I was merely trumping through footprints in the snow, aiming towards the glowing spire atop Ulriken’s peak. Any sign of solitary runner or dog walker vanished. Great glassy malachite iced-in lakes sank in the snow on either side of me, and I was reminded of the pearly whorls on seashells. As I clambered through the glimmering, snow-silent winter, sun beating down on everything beneath me, I beamed to have forgotten my camera. I don’t know that I’ll ever find a morning as glorious as that again, and I was ecstatic to have it all to myself.

As I continued northward, I began to hit deeper snow. Sometimes I would skim along the crust, practically snowshoeing along, and then I’d suddenly fall in snow up to my knee and lurch forward against its cushioning. At one point, the footsteps vanished entirely, the light dusty layer of snow grazing the plain and, even as I took steps, filling them in with the wind. I pushed on towards Ulriken in unbroken peace, and found my path again. As I came down the path from Ulriken, I once more hit the well-trod trail. It was a sheet of ice. I began to ski down, sliding casually as though I were surfing. Then, I hit a bump. As I shimmied down on my tush, unable to stop or gain any traction, I was straight on trajectory for a woman walking her dog. She looked at my calmly, and stepped aside at the last moment as I barreled down. Ah, the calm of the Norwegian. 

Culture Clash: Extra Credit

Led my high school kids in a rousing rendition of “Rule Britannia” today. I was prepping them for their shift to UK English next week. It was incredibly awesome that they just piped along after me; every time more evidence of my power over the class is shown, I get a huge impulse to abuse it by making them do something like lick the floor or kiss the goat (okay, camp holdovers). To curb the urge, I think we may start class every day for the next month with rounds of “Rule, Britannia.” That’s not too much like yanking puppets on a string, is it?

This was written on the bench at the Fantoft Bybanen 

stop. I checked it out, and surprisingly enough, 

it means “support Israel.” Take that, Bubby and Kim!

We finished up with Native Americans today, reading the short story “An Indian Princess”. While making my rounds during their group discussions, I stumbled onto a fascinating conversation. Four of the girls were talking about whether it’s okay to open a conversation with a stranger about their identity. What made it so interesting is only one is originally Norwegian. The other three are Russian, Somalian, and Chinese. The Russian was adamant that questions about identity lead to identity-reduction, while the Norwegian simply couldn’t understand it and the Chinese kid mediated and the Somalian smiled quietly and nodded occasionally in agreement with the Russian. I was really pleased with their frustration as they tried to get through to each other –how often do you get kids who care that much about something like this? Carefully, I worked them around to a point where they could understand each other’s point of view, and left them to hash it out.

I’ve been planning the lessons for this semester, and am a bit giddy at the thought of it all. I get to teach Victorian English! Of course we’re starting with Shakespeare, and I’m afraid I’m going to shock Anita, who has conservative plans—she wants them to memorize sonnet 18 and read through some Hamlet, but I want to give them a choice of sonnets, and make a speech contest with Marc Anthony’s “honorable men” and Henry V’s “once more unto the breach” and John of Gaunt’s “scepter’d isle”, and have them shout Shakespearean insults across the classroom (thank you, Guinan), and offer Stoppard’s R&G are Dead as extra credit for the Hamlet. There’s no point in simply boring them with Shakespeare when we can get them excited about Him and give them a taste that will send them gasping for more for the rest of their lives. Oh I can’t wait for Tennyson and the Brontes!

Chilling at UiB

I got the semester’s first batch of journal entries back from my high schoolers. My Uttøya survivor wrote a very penetrating poem processing her thoughts, which I’m going to put at the bottom of this post. Another totally psyched me out—they were supposed to simply describe an object, and she described this present her mom had gotten her that “feels good, better than using your fingers, no matter who they belong to.” She strung me along until I was absolutely freaked out about how to respond, and then delivered the clincher in the last line—it was a head massager called “orgasmatron”.

Was chatting with a friend of mine at UiB who is trying to figure out what he wants to do after he finishes the last possible year of stipended education the government offers him (he’s on his 7^th now, one more to go). He’s originally from Stavanger, and completely torn about whether to return there, or stay in Bergen, because of his roots in both places. His dilemma seemed so comic to my American sensibilities. Since leaving my homeplace Ohio, I’ve lived in Elqana, Maryland, Jerusalem, and Bergen, and will spend next year in Toronto before returning to an as-of-yet-unknown city in the US (unless I fall in love with Toronto; I am a Canadian citizen). Fearing to start fresh, or overdeveloped nostalgia for past connections, simply seems silly to the American who makes friends casually and then moves on. I’ve picked up precious relationships and valuable cultural insights in each of those places, but am quite content to keep only the best and relegate the rest to a part of my history. The Norwegian attachment seems deeper, less fickle.

Haven’t had a chance to post for quite a while—busy with the start of term and friends’ visits. Just going to add on to the end of this post.

THIS is how great Norway is

I TA’ed my first master’s seminar this past week. The professor began explaining American lit in terms of the word “multicultural.” Everyone in the class seemed fairly interested, but I think I was the only one having my mind blown as my American identity shifted and twisted. She uprooted the English settlers myth I’ve always known, talking about Spaniards and Russians meeting in the middle of the continent and trying to decide how to divide it between north and south!

To start my high schoolers off with the UK, I decided to hold a trivia contest about the UK in the class (which countries are included in the “British Isles”? What is the meaning of “bangers and mash”? etc). They became verrry un-Norwegianly competitive. We finished with a Riverdance contest, which several of them were weirdly skilled at.

Anita has decided that some of them are too stressed by the journals that I assign them every week, and so we are moving it to every other. I was distressed by her decision, because I remember those weekly writing assignments as one of the best, most productive parts of my high school experience. When Anita made the announcement, I noticed, aside from part of the class’ gasp of relief, disappointment on several faces, but most prominently on that of the best writer in the class. I approached her after, and she told me that she was upset. She loved the writing. I said we’d work something out, maybe journals every week for extra credit. She jumped at the suggestion. But Anita didn’t.

“Great, excellent! It would be so good if the ones who wanted to kept writing every week. But I don’t think I can give them extra credit. It’s okay though, it’ll filter down into their grade because their writing will improve.” Surprised, I asked why we couldn’t award extra credit.

“Because it would put pressure on the ones who didn’t do it—they would feel bad.” Um, well, but then maybe they would do it? Which is good, right? And how can you not reward the ones who do put in the extra work? And why shouldn’t extra credit be used both as a motivator and as a reward? And aaaah, I don’t understand this system! Finally, Anita said, “it’s okay, I understand, you have the American perspective here.” Well yeah, since the Norwegian perspective seems to be lowering the bar instead of pushing others ahead, I’m happy to own the American perspective on this one. I’m just so frustrated—Anita is a really great teacher, but why isn’t she willing to push her students on this? In fact, I think the journals add a degree of discipline and demand that might have been missing from the class otherwise. Well. Just wait. When I rule my own school... or kingdom...

Crocheting on the bybanen: the closest
I get to a kippa

Tomorrow’s my first cheider this semester. I’m going to discuss how the nation's origins in slavery was meant to teach sympathy with others who are oppressed, have the kids divvy up the ten commandments into chunks for a debate, and then research and build the beit hamikdash and role play with it (you’re the king, you’re the prophet, you’re the priest, you’re the invading army… go!).

This evening I went out for coffee with a visiting friend from high school. A woman came over to take an extra chair from our table, and then looked at my buddy's kippa and said, “shalom!” She had worked on a kibbutz twenty years ago. I think I really miss out not having a way to flaunt my Jewishness.

Just something cool: I was skyping with a friend of mine from home, whose birthday is one day and 69 years earlier than mine, and she mentioned that she just got a new walker. It’s Burberry. I want to be like her when I grow up.

My student's poem:

Sure you can ask me a personal question

Oh, so you see my button?

Yes, I'm in AUF

If I was there?

Yeah, I’m okay, I guess.

No, I’m not a communist.

No, I don’t want revolution.

Yes, I’m a feminist.

Why?

Because women are burned in India,

the women of Iran get stoned to death

and here I am doing whatever I want to do.

No, I don't hate men.

Yes, I believe in equality.

So you know someone that know someone

that knows someone that was there?

Yeah, sure you know how it feels.

Yeah, you’ve read the news.

Yes, he’s a monster.

You feel like you can relate to me?

You feel sorry for me?

Yeah, it was awful.

It’s hard to imagine, I know.

No, I love life.

Yes, I cry myself to sleep.

Do you want to shake my hand?

You feel better now?

Do you feel like it’s you duty as a Norwegian

to ask me all these questions?

Sure, I'm okay.

It’s a part of my identity now.

If I get tired?

I’ll make it.

Yeah, that’s what most people tell me.

I want to live, not just survive.

The Post-Post-9/11 World

One of my favorite spots in Bergen. In the field across
from Fantoft, there's a fountain with markers reaching
out from it showing the direction and distance from
different cities across the world.

Congratulations. We’re officially in the post-post-9/11 world.

At a Halloween party this week, my mind jumped out of my head and did a quick lap around the room before returning, completely blown. I had just seen a couple dressed up as the World Trade Center. They each wore cardboard boxes with windows drawn on, and had half a plane coming out of their fronts.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate a good bit of irreverence as much as the next person. I chuckled over the shoe-attack on Bush, and can cock my head to stare at Piss Christ with plenty of aesthetic curiosity. From the time I could write, parodies and lampoons poured out of my pen. But this touched the raw. And surprised me by doing so.

In recent years, I think of September 11^th less as a tragedy, and more as a paradigm shift. When it happened, it was horrible. I remember my seventh grade brain performing the following contortion: oh good, now America will understand the unbelievable fear and sorrow that Israel has been living with for years. Since then, I’ve been exposed to so much discussion of 9/11’s use as an excuse for oil-greedy grabs in Iraq and government surveillance and fuel of Islamaphobia, that it seems more a political event than an anniversary of death. Yet the Norwegian couple who thought it would be a good idea to dress up as this murder of thousands shocked me back into feeling.

I understand that ten years is a long time to some people (it’s true that my sense of historic time is so distorted that every summer I fast for the destruction of the temple 2000 years ago). But it is not so long that people are not still mourning their friends and family. I wanted nothing more than to walk up to the couple and sock them one with, “I didn’t dress up like Uttøya. You keep your hands off 9/11.” Which would have been at least as tasteless and horrid as their costumes. So instead I walked home, and opened the door to a pair of adorable trick-or-treaters with an enormous bucket of candy and change. I added a couple of quarters to their loot and shooed them back out into the scary world.

In my masters literature class the other day, the prof inadvertently raised a fascinating question. He was talking about American literature departments’ inability to cope with “The Man Who Lived Underground” properly, and include it as often as they did sentimental favorites with much less political punch. I mused a bit out loud on the humor of accusing lit departments of failing to be properly liberal and leftist, and then realized I’d hit a poser. In America, the liberals gather in the literature departments. But it’s not so here. Where do the liberal Norwegians hang out? Then I realized it was an incredibly dumb question—they aren’t enough of a minority to need their own cozy haven. In fact, whereas in the States identity and race and class are constantly clashed over in classes and pretty much every student of the Humanities walks around with a little conscience on their shoulder telling them to rethink their words and labels 24/7, the Norwegian literature department seems curiously absent of class anger or gender anxiety or inquiries of sexual definition. Though I’m certain these students have all read about identity and can speak intelligently on it when required, it seems less immediate. Perhaps its simply their European reticence and manners against American bluster. Or perhaps it really is less relevant here. Americans are so worried about defining themselves, and Europeans may be more comfortable remaining in the pack. Plus, they all look kinda the same to an American ;-)
Jonas, what do you think?

Rest in Peace, Robert Frost

 Well, it’s official. The world will end in ice. Great speculation here as on Friday the Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2012 will be announced. Other prizes are being declared, and the physics prize has ended Frost’s conundrum of decades.

"For almost a century the universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the universe will end in ice."

Ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

But it left me highly confused, as well, with a question about speed and distance and expansion, and a regret that I never took physics in high school but instead spent my time creek-stomping with Sasha and Paul. Whoops. Better memories, though.

I stumbled on this during a ramble

This week has the speeded-up quality that October always takes on. I’m catching up on work missed during the holiday, trying to get ahead for the next one, planning my trip to Stockholm next week and have forty papers to grade for my Amlit course as well as my usual journals for the high schoolers and a project on the US elections underway, not to mention the wrapping-up of my Norwegian bank account process and an application for my renewed Canadian passport to navigate. As a highly efficient, super-busy woman, I’m of course expected to multi-task. And usually I do, without problems. But tonight it just didn’t work out. I was editing the questions for my Amlit course’s upcoming paper while sealing a leak in my rain boot and listening to a shiur on the aseret yemai hateshuva which I kept stopping to see if I could translate into Norwegian, and the dance music from Fantofthallen probably didn’t help either, and, er, well, things got mixed up, and I accidentally glued myself to my computer. So I think I’m done with multitasking for awhile. On the upside, my rain boot, finger, and computer are now all waterproof. 

Today, walking up the steep hill to work, immersed in my thoughts, I passed a man hopping up laboriously on crutches. It took me a few seconds to realize what I’d seen, stop, return, and hold my umbrella over him as he made the rest of his way up. Bergen is horrible on people with disabilities: all slippery cobblestones and slopes. Every time something like this happens, I file it in my brain to be addressed once I can speak Norwegian. As we made chitchat, the man asked where I’m from. “Ohio… America,” I told him. “Ah, that explains it,” he smiled at me. What a nice thing to say about Americans.

While hanging with the English masters students, one of them started talking about a book he’s reading on hiphop culture. Each time he said the word “nigga” I flinched. No matter that he’s using it academically, that it’s rebellious reclaiming of a label, like feminists and bitch, that he’s Norwegian and knows nothing of the kind of overcoming of racism that everyone in the US is still struggling with, it still freaked me out. It had no load of meaning for the Norwegians. My automatic sensitivity made me think about my relationship to race in American society; though I grew up in a neighborhood of mostly black and Jewish upper-middle class neighbors, with everyone pretty friendly, the history I’ve been taught and my gender studies classes have me owning a part in America’s history of racism almost viscerally.

We decided we’re going to throw a themed party: dress up like your thesis. I can’t wait to see my dorky Norwegian friend all blinged out (or is it blinged up?). I guess I get to choose between Captain Ahab and Edna Pontellier… what a difficult decision. Peg leg or floaty dress.

Much as my soul loves travel, my body hates it. I’m on round two of the Great Norwegian Cold. I was actually planning on going to a free concert tonight at the Grieghallen, but my sniffles during class were so excruciating I decided I’d probably be lynched if I stepped inside the concert hall, and came home for soup instead.

It was dark when I left school. Everyone has been warning me of the depressing effects of winter, yet I’m loving it. There's a fire to Fall, a blazing up of bush and hearth against the shrill and whispering dark, that lights my spirit too. Listening to the rain trickle gently down the window, inside a well-lit room that smells of hot apple cider while cuddled in an oversized hoodie, puts me in a mood that I want to call Autumn Cheer and bottle up to sell in a candle store. Then sends me out to wander the dark streets and brace myself against the rain, wet leaves painting themselves against my cheek with swipes of the rainbrush. The clean shine of rain across the land, and orderly rows of lights glowing through the evening black, hold my happiness. Happy Fall, all.

Lord, it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing. 

Rainer Maria Rilke

Introductions

On Monday, I walked into the old, old, old building that houses Bergen Katedralskole. The front doors open on a broad, ancient wooden staircase, that doubles back and divides into two staircases up to the next level, and continues to rejoin and divide in a river of creaky wood until reaching what I can only imagine are turrets that the students use as lockers. Unsure of where to go after I’d climbed the first set of stairs, I looked about for some sign or information desk or object from the twentieth century.

“Kan…?” A man who had been walking across the landing turned back to ask if he could help me (I think. It was in Norwegian).

“I’m looking for Anita, or the English department,” I told him.

“Ah, you’re not, are you, you’re not Hannah?” he asked. Upon my admitting I was, he introduced himself—the headmaster of the school. Lucky hit. And very friendly, just as the English teachers turned out to be.

There are seven of them. We sat in an informal departmental meeting, brainstorming for the coming year. The teachers have varying accents: some, like Anita, speak near-perfect English. Others were difficult for me to understand—which perhaps makes it easier for their students to grasp English. I liked their laidback friendliness. The meeting was an oddly two-tiered experience: I listened to their accents and grammar and the books and movies they suggested, and knew I was making a few of them uncomfortable, or at least hesitant, because I’m so culturally literate as a born-and-raised English speaker, but I also sensed immediately that their competence as teachers and enthusiasm for their students places them miles above me. It feels like the perfect alliance: we’ll all come out with something valuable. After the meeting, one of the teachers asked if I’d help her work out a project about America’s current political situation. I of course agreed, but man will it be embarrassing to explain Michele Bachmann to Norwegians!

On Tuesday the university had its grand opening ceremony. It was picturesque and charming. The entire student body of the University of Bergen crowded into the plaza in front of the University Museum. There were less people than in my graduating class at Maryland.

They sang the Norwegian anthem. Then the Rector –Norwegian for Dean or President— (who was very funny, and invited me to a lunch when I met him at the US ambassador’s in Oslo), began by speaking about the July 22 attacks. He memorialized a student who ought to have continued her education at UiB this year, but had been killed, and affirmed the need to stand strongly united in our diversity. His words chilled and yet uplifted. Then he called for a moment of silence.

As I stood with bent head, trying to imagine what sort of thought could mean anything in the face of such tragedy, I wondered about the sign language interpreter on stage. What had she told her audience? That there would be a moment of contemplation? A moment of normalcy? How do the deaf feel about the non-deaf using their everyday element as a symbol of grief?

The Graduate Reading Room for Foreign Languages

On Wednesday Lene ran an English orientation for all the students in the English department. Pretty basic, except that moment when she introduced me to the class, and I made a quick joke, and they all laughed, and I felt a shiver of excitement run up my spine. I can’t wait to start! I love-love-love a captive audience, learning the liquid loveliness of literature and language-play… or, alternatively, alliterative agony…

I met the other English masters students at a department meeting. They have a limited number of course offerings, but there is one class on literature and science in 19^th C Britain that I am going to take if I have to wreak havoc with every plan that has been made for me (looking at the Katedralskole teaching schedule, I will). Then Lene, Øyunn (an Amlit prof here at UiB), Nat Wallace (the visiting Fulbright prof for the year), Ingrid (another instructor for the Amlit seminars), and myself sat down to plan the American literature seminars,  which the five of us will be teaching in various modes.

Professors and students have very different ideas of the college experience. As we ran over protocol for exams, papers, attendance, power point presentations, laptops, and plagiarism, I couldn’t help but smile at the gap between the teacher and the taught. Some profs have a pretty canny grasp of what’s passing through students’ minds, and teach accordingly. Others look at students as the enemy, to be caught cheating or playing on fb during class or absent throughout the semester. And the funny thing is, most professors are right. If you treat students as straightforward individuals, adults who are present to learn and contribute, they’ll act as such. If you treat them as recalcitrant children, you’ll be surprised at the willingness with which they take you up on it. Anyhow, we ironed out our plans for the seminars, and I’m psyched to start soon.

The cultural surprises of the past half-week:

Not all my Katten students will be taking exams: only a quarter of the class actually take exams. Huh???

Narcotics in the Park (No, that’s not the title of one of the UiB welcome week activities, it’s the reason that all the bathrooms require a swipe card to enter)

People are overwhelmingly friendly here. Perhaps it’s because things are on a smaller scale, so a camaraderie grows up. Either way, I like it.

Jogging in Norway is rather different from jogging in Ohio. Mountains!

This country does not seem to eat tofu.

And man do Europeans wear tight pants!

Some more pictures from Bergen:

 

The whole place swarms with quaint architecture, mountainscapes, and public gardens. You can tell which of us just arrived: we can't put our cameras away!

You don't look like an American

Friday morning I met my UiB supervisor, Lene Johannsen. She is very cool, and her office is crammed floor to ceiling with Amlit and the old familiar theory texts. She has spent so much time in America, and is so immersed in the academic literature scene, that I feel no cultural divide at all speaking with her, which is a bit of a treat. She showed me the lecture auditorium. “It’s for the biggest classes, it seats 100 people.” “Big” is simply on a different scale here. I have my own cubby in the foreign language graduate students’ reading room, luckily right next to a window. It’s comforting to re-enter the university world, which I already know how to navigate. Mostly—there are some differences. Like the swipe card I was given to access important, private rooms: my reading room cubby, and the bathroom (!!?!).

In the afternoon I walked out of town up Bergen’s favorite mountain, Fløyen. Geographical boundaries are so blurry here that the moment when our stroll ended and our hike began was not at all clear to me. Slowly, we saw fewer mansions on the mountainside and more statues of reindeer and trolls, until finally Bergen and the fjord lay stretched out beneath us, and then we were cloaked in forest all around. There were four of us: myself, a Minnesotan, and two French people I’d met the day before. We found a lake in the middle of the mountain. Juliet and Jacob (French and Minnesotan) braved an icy swim, and Damien and I chatted and picked blueberries. Europeans are much more casual about shucking off their clothing and going for a dip than my prudish American upbringing has prepared me for. Jacob seemed a fan, though.

There have been a lot of interesting foreigner-meets-foreigner moments. A German asked me if Americans still hate Germany after WWII, and a man from Ghana railed about how US politics is really a joint Republican-Democratic conspiracy designed to make people feel like they have some control of the country, when really it’s all about keeping power in the hands of the rich. Two different people have told me I don’t look American, and one of them added that that’s a compliment. A Frenchman used the word “ni**er” while discussing foreign stereotypes, shocking the breath out of me and making me think that the stereotype about the French being… unpleasant, shall we say? has at least one specimen to back it up. Of course, he may not know the load of meaning it carries in American terms. He also joked about wearing a swastika in Germany, so I guess I can discount him as a culturally sensitive individual. I played Frisbee with a bunch of Poles who came here for an easier lifestyle (“ve are so lucky, here ve can play Frisbee vith Americans on the veekend”), and met a Norwegian whose American accent steadily improved as she became more drunk. Since Fantoft is the international hostel, there are students from all around the world, all speaking English to each other. How’s that for cultural imperialism? Americans are at a premium because speaking with us improves Europeans’ English accents. I still haven’t worked out how I feel about all these people who are laboring to speak my language while I know none of theirs.

Saturday morning I went for an exploratory walk around Fantoft. There is a park across the street from the studentboliger (student apartments). I took a path through the fields and found Fantoftstavekirk, the old church that Fantoft neighborhood is named after. It is a gorgeous old church, with grasses growing out of the stone wall around it, and the steep Norwegian roof that looks so old-fashioned. It was supposed to be closed, but the door was open a crack. As I peeked inside, I heard organ music; someone was practicing.

The Fantoft cemetery is beautiful, a place out of time. Stone walls and pine trees surround it and cut it off from the quiet suburban streets. It is as liberally planted with flowers as with people, and instead of the sharp, starkly-cut stones in American cemeteries, the stones were simple rocks with names engraved on them. I found a nook in the older part of the cemetery which I think I will make mine. Now I have a room of my own and a cemetery plot of my own. I am more set than Virginia Woolf ever expected. 

Living In Translation

It’s always a jolt, that moment when I enter a foreign country and realize that I’ve been transformed from a competent adult (okay, super-competent, because my OCD and white middle-class privilege combine nicely for ultimate societal mobility in the States) into a pre-lingual child who has to work hard to fulfill basic needs. True, at the moment I have a warm and fuzzy feeling of accomplishment because today I figured out how to buy a light rail pass at student rates, but it may not count because I was helped by a biology grad student. Whose request for my number afterwards amused me because I don’t even have a phone yet, which sounds like an awful “move on, sir” line but was true (No, Casey, I was not a bitch!). Anyhow, my To-Do List is miles long, and each thing ridiculously contingent on another.

To Do:

Get internet access!

Get my student name and password so that I can have internet access

Get my student card so that I can have my student name and password

Get my personnummer (sort of like a social security number but much more necessary to

Norwegian beauracracy) so that I can get my student card

Fly to Oslo so that I can get my personnumer at the Fulbright Orientation

Check the bus schedule to the airport on the flybus website

Oh wait… first I need internet access.

Oh, and buy a phone so helpful grad students can call me after they’ve told me how to navigate Bergen.

Yes, it is a vicious cycle. Made more complicated by the fact that the forms and brochures and info-packets I’m using have all been translated from Norwegian, so that they are often vague or self-contradictory. And that UiB seems to have a ludicrously loose grasp on the fact that their system to access the internet actually requires checking one’s email for updates. Makes me miss good old U of Maryland, which, with all its challenges, had a wonderful surplus of informative helpfulness.

What I’ve accomplished since arriving:

A library card to Bergen Library, and three English novels plus a children’s book in Norwegian on my shelf. At least I have my priorities right.