Homework

Yes, I am still alive, I've just been doing homework pretty much since my plane landed me back in Asia!
I'm happy I got into a high unit at the language school, cause it shows how much I've learned so far, but boy what's up with the homework in this country?? Going from hardly having written down a sentence in the language (only speaking), I now have to produce 3-4 one page essays each week, give two 7-8 minute presentations each week, do grammar homework, get answers to all kinds of cultural questions from my poor friends and neighbors, do dictations almost every day, summarize texts out loud I've read only a couple of times...it's quite a leap!
But if this doesn't boost my language abilities, I don't know what will! Tomorrow I might even take some pictures from school to show you..

Christmas photo dump

Here are some pics taken this christmas in Norway! Since I hate using a flash and I only had my cell phone camera, and most of the time was spent inside, there isn't too many ;)

 Rice porridge on the 23rd!

 Short walk up the ski-lifts, as you can see there was not much to ski on ;) Complete with a pretty unsuccessful selfie

 The dog went absolutely nuts when I came home!

 We played a couple of rounds of trivial pursuit, and some mexican train

 Some fire-making in the woods

 My mom killed at bowling!

 I tried making some mie goreng!

 This is the most snow I saw, driving over a mountain on the way to the neighboring town

Last dinner: Sushi! Very christmasy I think ;)

Santa Lucia and batik birds

Today I was able to learn how to make birds and elephants out of batik fabric and towels. Why would you want to do that, you might ask. Well, here it's a tradition for the grooms to give their brides a bunch of baskets with presents, nicely arranged with origami made from the clothes or towels and so forth that they receive as gifts. My language helper Ibu L has the skills, so we decided to take advantage of that and learn how to make some gifts, all in the local language of course, just to make it a bit harder ;)

 My birds after an hour of hard work :)

 And then since it's Lucia dagen I just had to make lussekatter :) They were enjoyed with Esther and the kids, big cups of hot chocolate and julekalenderen episode 13!

Eventful weekend

This weekend I went with some friends to a nearby town to do some Christmas shopping :)

 Sushi, bacon, fresh bread, brie, watermelon....all you can eat, can you imagine a better breakfast!!

 These ones went for the sweeter version ;)

 We went to visit a very famous hindu temple, the largest in the world in fact. Of course there had to be elephants there as well :)

 Everyone had to wear skirts! Even got help to get them on ;)

 Our knees got a workout!

Risgrøt and perkedel

Sunday the 1st the norwegians got together for some amazing risgrøt and spekekjøtt!! (Takk mamma for grøten! Og for dere som sendte kjøtt til Erlend, som var så snill å delte med oss :) It was awesome to eat porridge together the norwegian way, the first day of advent!

 Later that day my friend Julia came over to my house to teach me how to make perkedel. It is a bunch of veggies cut into tiny pieces, mixed with some water, flour and spice, and deep fried into little paddies. Tastes amazing!

 I'm working on my grinding skills. They use a mortar to make almost every meal here, usually to grind garlic, tumeric and other spices together before it is fried.

To be enjoyed with sambal, which is hot sauce, a tad more spicy than most stuff in norway! You can also just nibble on a whole green chilli while enjoying your perkedel. I tried it, but its not quite enjoyment for me yet, that stuff is HOT ! ;)