We've Got Some Catching Up To Do

It's my last week and a half here in Oslo, and I thought I would share some updates with you all!

First, I took my Norwegian final back in November and I passed with flying colors! Congratulations to me, I can now speak perfect elementary Norwegian! I also just took my Fiction and Film final this morning, and I think it went well. And lastly, I just turned in my final paper for philosophy mere minutes ago, so now I can update this blog finally!

That's a perfect opportunity to inform you all about the exam system here at UiO. It is incredibly daunting that the grade for the course is based entirely on the final exam. Whereas at UCSB there are multiple assignments and thus multiple opportunities to feel out what the professor or TA likes or doesn't like as well as chances to improve your work throughout the course of the class, here you really don't have the slightest idea of what your grade will be going into the final. That's why it is crucial to ask questions from your professors about the finals, and I think that helped me on my English final. But aside from that, you just have to hope that you studied enough of relevant material for the exam and try to use up the whole 4 hours so you can do a thorough job. I get the sense that professors understand that this kind of exam system is challenging; my English professor assured us multiple times that we have nothing to worry about.

I have also been working as an editor for themoose.no, an exclusively English-language online magazine here that caters to an international student audience. I am the editor for the culture section, and you can read articles here: http://themoose.no/category/culture-creativity/. It is my first editing job, but I've learned a lot about the editing world and it is a good preparation for the professional editing minor at UCSB, into which I have recently been accepted.

Kyle and I have also done a bit more exploring while we wait for the snow to arrive. We always feel like we have seen everything we wanted to see in Oslo, but we always discover new adventures on our outings. Because of the few daylight hours now, we make a point to leave the apartment as much as we can so that we don't just sit inside all the time. A few weeks ago, we went to the market at Blå, which is in the very hip and fashionable Grünerløkka area of Oslo. Here is some graffiti from the area: 

 I of course found a kitty along the way:

Regarding the weather, it has only snowed on three separate days and not enough for it to accumulate on the ground. This has really disappointed me; I was looking forward to living somewhere where it snows and going sledding. I guess studying abroad here for spring quarter would have been a better choice for that. Instead, we have gotten "freezing fog," which looks like this: 

and leaves this on everything:

So while it is incredibly cold here, there have not been any snow storms and so all we have are ice crystals. 

The cold has also made the lakes freeze over, and Kyle and I stumbled upon this frozen lake a week ago:

Of course you should always be cautious on ice like this, so we didn't venture too far out.

It is, however, supposed to snow up to 5 inches tomorrow, so even though the weather has played with my heart too many times offering me empty promises of snow, I am still excited!