Norsing Around

Woops! Time really flies when you’re… doing whatever I have been doing for the last almost half of a year. Seriously how did that happen?

I just returned from a glorrrrious trip to Ireland (a country on my very short “to see” list for the past few years, and then just HAPPENED to be the chosen place for my program’s paid for trip this year!). I am still getting my pictures together from the trip, SO for now I shall do a quick “catch up post” which might be painfully boring, but we will just have to see for ourselves, won’t we?

Okay, let’s see. Last time I posted was freaking THANKSGIVING. That is just appalling.   Since Thanksgiving, this is what has occurred in Syd World. 

• An adorable and culturally broadening (read: I ate moose jerky and dried whale) Christmas Market in downtown Oslo!

• Exams (oh also I have been frequenting these irritatingly addicting gif websites everyone loves now, so get ready for these working their way into my posting) (what posting, Syd?) (I know, I’m sorry, geez!) 

• The day after my last final was turned in, was the annual UNC girls trip to Cazenovia, New York (home of the wonderful Moore family!). This is what occurs every year…

• Christmas with the family…oh wait I have no pictures of my family because Mom and I spent an inordinate amount of time knitting (Mom making hats, Syd learning from Mom) and consequently I now have a small knitting obsession. Some finished works by yours truly include:

• Fancy dinner with Eirik in New York City at Marea which was absolutely delicious.

• New Years Eve in Manhattan! This is a tradition I do NOT want to ever end, so Kiera and Cara please live indefinitely in New York City. Thank you. 

• Once back to Oslo, baby Sigurd was born! (Eirik’s nephew) And since then I have been like this (Chandler):

• My friend Sara’s sister came to visit which prompted more touring of Oslo than I have done since I have lived here (in the very much below freezing temperatures)

• A fantastic trip to Tromsø!

• The selling of Eirik’s Bergen apartment! (Still working on buying one in Oslo but we saw THREE today so cross your fingers).

And that about sums it up! Except insert knitting throughout all of those things… and schoolwork of course. 

Next post will be all about the delightful trip that was IRELAND, but until then I’ll leave you with some gorgeous pictures of Oslo in the spring (photo credit Sara Doolittle Llanos). Spring here is so completely beautiful I can’t even describe it. Even when its a little cold (45 or 50 F) it is SUPER sunny and being in a fjord means only light breezes (unlike Ireland’s million mile an hour winds). Of course we still have rainy days too, and its not quite as warm as I am used to in May, but over all its really gorgeous and much appreciated after Norwegian WINTER. (GOD.) And it is light until 10pm! 

Thanksgiving was a total success! I honestly had so much anxiety about cooking an entire turkey on my own, but it was NOT hard. I found this website http://www.howtocookathanksgivingturkey.com/ which was great except it didn’t want me to put stuffing in the turkey… so I cheated and put stuffing in anyway. And no one got sick! (Did you know stuffing a turkey is a “health concern”?? so strange). 

I woke up early to get my big bird into the oven.

YES my hand is between the skin and the meat of the bird. I am not going to lie it was gross. But that website told me to do it, AND the Tom Colicchio recipe said to do the same. I made an herb butter (with Sara’s help!) and put it in the bird, but none on the skin! Just salt and pepper to make the skin crispy.

Action Shot:

This next picture cracks me up for some reason. Doesn’t it look like he’s saying “WHAT UP?!” or “COME AND GET IT!” with his little arms? Okay fine, I am morbid.

Yams, green beans and carrots being prepared!

The table was set beautifully! Candles were only a dollar from Grønland !

And while I finished up last minute dishes…

(

(with Sara’s help of course)

…the boys carved the turkey with a very helpful youtube video! Good job, Lukas and Pawel :) 

Look at how well it turned out. No basting or anything! It just gets buttered, salt and peppered, and stuck in the oven.

I made menus and little napkin turkeys for the table. 

Here is the full spread and me looking like I am about to eat six huge plates of food.

After STUFFING ourselves (I literally was full until midday the next day and that never happens to me), we still had pie! Sara made the pecan and I made the apple. They were so easy! A little too easy… we seriously looked at one another after making them and wondered if we are about to go down a dangerous path of extremely frequent pie eating.

Okay, this piece could be in a magazine, right?! SO EASY, I promise. For all of these recipes, I literally googled “easy ___”. http://www.momswhothink.com/easy-recipes/easy-apple-pie-recipe.html

We were so full we could barely move… and while my suggestion was that we all take naps at 7pm, others thought we should go on a walk. We decided to go down to Ulleval Stadion (a ten minute’s walk). They have decorated for Christmas and its beautiful in the evening!

Ulleval has an outdoor ice skating rink as well, so we stopped by to see how we can skate there. Turns out they have open skating every day and all day on Sundays! We caught the end of a hockey game so I took a picture for my very talented brother, Sam Buran who I miss very much back home. 

Sam wanted to be a zamboni driver until age five. We hope one day he can aspire to make this dream come true. 

After the walk, it was time for a Christmas movie! Which is a Thanksgiving tradition, obviously. We chose Home Alone, and moved our beds into the kitchen for viewing comfort. It was amazing.

All in all, a wonderful day and evening. I am thankful for my new life in Norway, the friends I’ve met here (especially from my flat, volleyball and my program), my family back home (and I am lucky enough to have TWO), my friends back home who I miss daily and am seeing in about a WEEK, volleyball, my earring collection, bananas, babies, the kindness of strangers, vikings, my tiny plant in my window, my down comforter, pottery, my hair straightener, and much, much more. 

Next stop… CHRISTMAS!!!!!

…and there is no possible way I could be more excited. Preparations have already begun!

My last post was about Grønland in all of its glory. Well, we can give this place one more gold star because it’s where I tracked down a 6 kg WHOLE turkey. This endeavor included: a trip on Monday to the fresh meat market in Grønland’s “basar” section (and let me tell you, that place is aptly named basar if it does in fact linguistically relate to the word “bizarre”), a 15 minute conversation in broken half English/half Norwegian with a man from Croatia, two phone conversations with said man, texts with said man, and finally another trip back to Grønland Tuesday morning to pick up my huge frozen turkey. Then, my huge frozen turkey and I went to Old Norse class. 

Here is the inside of the “Basar.” Palm tree, Christmas tree, it really does have it all. 

I don’t eat a whole lot of meat here in Oslo (I have never been big on cooking it for myself for some reason, even though I LOVE it) but the fresh meat shop at the basar made my mouth water. Fresk Kjøtt means “Fresh Meat.” 

I want to live in here:

And look at all of the steaaaaaks.

But I kept my eye on the prize, which was a 6 kg turkey for my roommates and I to enjoy tomorrow!

I have the menu totally planned out:

• Turkey
• Candied Yams
• Mashed Potatoes
• Stuffing in the Bird
• Cranberry Orange Stuffing
• Rolls
• Green Beans and Carrots a la Sara
• Cranberry Sauce
• Gravy
• Apple Pie
• Pecan Pie

The only thing I TRULY feel is missing is a pumpkin pie (and my family, obviously).

We started the cooking today and everything is so organized I feel really on the ball. I made both stuffings (but they are in the fridge, to be cooked tomorrow), the turkey has been thawing in the fridge for 2 days, Sara made a pecan pie, I made the apple pie and the cranberry sauce is done. All groceries are purchased. 

PECAN PIE!!!!!!!

APPLE PIE!!!!!! 

Filling (without top crust):

Finished (but pre-cooked!) apple pie with a Friends marathon of Thanksgiving episodes going on in the background (obviously). 

Pie friends getting ready for the oven!

Finished apple pie with impulse-bought Santa popping in to say hello. Julie is being very diligent in the background while I preformed puppet shows with afore mentioned Santa.

Hmmm what else could this feast be missing? Ohhhhh napkins folded like turkeys. 

CHECK!

Tomorrow is the big day so please wish me luck because if the turkey catches on fire/gives my roommates salmonella I will feel just horrible. 

**Disclaimer: The pictures from this post are from over a month ago, and Oslo in NO WAY looks like this now. Our fall is officially over and winter is definitely here!**

This post is about Grønland, which is a neighborhood in the center of Oslo described by Wikipedia as a “multicultural melting pot” which really means: people of all different races and religions coming together to sell things (possibly illegally) at prices MUCH lower than anywhere else in Oslo. It is awesome. People frequenting the fruit market here are (primarily) either: a) SUPER old, b) students, or c) of middle eastern descent. 

So now for the pictures!

1. FRUIT
2. more fruit…
3. This market may be cheap, but the aisles are ridiculously narrow and people are constantly shoving. I don’t remember what time of day Sara and I went last month, but it must have been extremely off peak because I’ve never seen this place this empty. 
4. Oh, hello, did you need some NOODLES? You can buy noodles here in bulk for 8 kroner ($1.40) per kilogram (2.2 lbs). 
5. One half of the “oil” section. You have to be super careful here since they also have HAIR oil in this shelf which seems like a really odd placement choice to me. 
6. About a third of the tea section. 
7. I really wish you could post SMELLS with pictures (oooo remember scratch ‘n sniff books?!) because oh my goodness this was the best smelling bread ever. When I came out of the store I had flower on my nose from sniffing it in the checkout line. Normal….

Statues around Grønland:

Sara plays volleyball for the same league I do but she is two divisions higher. Can’t you tell?! 

I really don’t know what’s going on with this thing, but I’m posting it because he appears to be skiing, which means even in Norway metal dinosaur/robot sculptures know how to ski.

Sara at the kebab place with all of our LOOT! These kebabs were wonderful. Kebab places are rampant around Oslo, but I think the best (and most authentic) places can be found in this section of town and they are CHEAP (around $7 for one which is amazing for Oslo). 

PUMPKINS.

So in a nut shell, Grønland is awesome. Things are cheap (a little too cheap sometimes… and by that I mean my Thanksgiving turkey for tomorrow may or may not be from some sort of black market), the crowds are eclectic, the atmosphere is vibrant and they have strawberries regardless of the season. 

In the end of our shopping trip I got all of this for around 190 Kroner, which today (the dollar is GREAT lately, thank you, America) is $33. 

After our shopping trip we headed home and I spotted these fellows in the city center and had to snap a photo. This is so common and something I either did not see too often in the US, or just didn’t notice. Norwegian men love to hang out with their babies. They go running with them, shopping, they meet up with one another with strollers, it is PRECIOUS. 

That night was a gorgeous sunset! On this day in October (the 23rd) the sun set at 6:01 PM. Ohhhh, those were the days….

Today we went to Stortinget, near the Norwegian parliament, to demonstrate against the unjust disparity of wealth in the world right now (well that is why I went… lots of people had different agendas and there were a few anarchists there that I didn’t quite agree with). 

In general, it wasn’t especially organized, but Sara and I had a good time sitting with others, eating our lunch, people watching, etc. We even participated in a drum circle! (I will post the video after this). We saw lots of great signs and some we could even translate ourselves!

SAY NO TO THE CORRUPT BANK SYSTEM. 

Say yes to your delicious lunch of apples, tortillas, salad, sunflower seeds, coffee and water.

Lots of people took pictures of Sara’s and my signs! One man interviewed us for a while with a big camera and sound stick (?) so we are going to look out for his video on the internet… his name is ASK. 

ACTIVISM IS NOT TERRORISM. 

DO NOT FORGET CHILDREN IN AFRICA.

This next sign I had trouble translating one word, but I think I like the message. 

This is our promise from brother to brother, we will be good to menskenes soil.

Maybe “menskenes” means mankind or something?

This is “Democracy” with money taping her mouth shut. 

Now democracy has been chained up by the bank!

For some unknown reason these people let me in their drum circle when I have never played a drum in my life. (I felt a lot like Julie Jacobson in this moment!)

Free vegetarian ratatouille type dish with rice and bread.

Stop the Casino Game of Democratic Control of Financial Markets. I don’t TOTALLY agree with this one, or I didn’t find it especially effective, but I enjoyed the huge size of the sign.

The po’! They stayed totally out of our way since we were so peaceful, but Norway has a “wall street” or financial street called “Børs” (I THINK, please correct me if this is wrong), and two people were arrested there today. We missed it since we were at the parliament!

This sign is TOO cute and I figured out how to make pictures blurry on the edges! Progress.

Say yes to a better world. Amen! And cute little people holding hands.

Sara and I left our signs at the demonstration site. Bye, signs. Experimenting with black and white and color picture editing….

Then we went to a book store!

Norwegians do love their trolls….

Then we went to see Sara’s Division 1 team play volleyball! They lost, but just barely and played hard. I have my first games tomorrow, and I am the team captain! Everyone think good thoughts for me tomorrow since I am the setter and slightly nervous. I am excited though, and have lots of faith in our team. 

I will leave you with these cute birds we saw on the walk home.