And we're off!

Yesterday was our first day of official classes. They are similar to those that I have been in before and yet at the same time so very different! We spent most of class doing housekeeping items such as figuring out frunter (our version of skai/blackboard etc.) and going over our class schedule. The second part of the class was our lecture, Inger our prof, discussed the Norwegian welfare state. The amount that they pay in taxes and the benefits that are returned to them. For instance a fully employed adult pays between 30-35% of their income (compared with in the US 15-20%) and Norwegians have 1 full year of paid maternity/paternity leave, with an option after that to stay and get a certain stipend each month, a cap on how much they can pay for doctors/dentists and free health care up to a certain age (12?) for kids and dental until 18 plus a pension after retirement until its no longer needed. Oh yea, did I mention their public transportation? Its amazing!! Granted the population of the entire county is only slightly bigger than that of metro Seattle (the city and surrounding areas). I'm finding it fascinating how they are able to sustain a fully fledged welfare state. Now this situation obviously wouldn't be able to work for every country in the world but some aspects are still intriguing to possibly be applied else where (including the US).
Later that day after our class we had dinner at Ingers house, we took the bus over (its seriously like a charter bus, its so nice!) since it is just outside of Hamar. She made more traditional Norwegian food including smoker salmon, which I tried, roasted or smoked sheep, which I did not and scrambled eggs with butter. She had different kinds of salads and plums from her garden. It was an interesting evening not only because of the food (which I don't really eat, even though I did try it) but after dinner when we were hanging out, we saw a bowl of marshmallows and roasting sticks, me and the rest of the Americans got very excited and immediately started to roast the marshmallows. Some of the other students looked at us completely baffled. They told us that Inger had told them earlier when they asked what the white things in the bowl were hat the Americans would show everyone later, that it was almost a sort of game. They then asked us what they were and we told them they were marshmallows, after the confused state we told them it was like sugar only more puffy and in the US we roast them over a fire and they become soft and sticky but really good, we also told them about s'mores however Inger didn't have any grahm crackers. Anyway we all took turns roasting marshmallows and either giving them away or eating them ourselves. We also showed them how to roast them, many of them told us it was too sweet for them but it was still good, they would not take another one however.

This morning Makara and I went to Oslo to visit a friend of ours who was going to be there before she left to go back to school on Sunday. We went to the most beautiful park and walked around (I'll try to get pictures up soon!!) we ate lunch and just saw a little bit of Oslo before we had to catch the train back up to go to class at 5. It was so much fun but exhausting. Oslo is very much like any other big city.
It has been very weird, I'm in a foreign county where I don't understand any of the language and most of the time am thoroughly confused but every time I look around everything is the same. That's hard to explain and I'm not sure why but even with everything being different, Norway reminds me of home, everything I see I feel like I've either seen before or I could have seen before. Well except for the Medieval castle on the other side of Hamar :).