All over Denmark!

*Day 1 we began our trip on Friday the 13th and made it safely to Copenhagen for a day full of sightseeing after getting settled! Copenhagen is such a fantastic city, 5 story buildings, lots of people on bikes, and a bustling town of history and architecture! We walked around the central town area seeing Trivoli, the Town Hall + Pheegan, and the Natural History Museum. On the way back to the hotel we found the Hard Rock Cafe and even took a shot!
*Day 2 started out early with a 4 hour bus trip to a town on the main part of Denmark called Hjortshoj where Inforse is located, a fully sustainable community of 250 residents. We toured all their buildings and even saw a compost toilet! Certainly a fascinating way to live! At the end of the day we got to tour around Aarhus where we stayed for the night.
*Day 3 was the full day on the island of Samso! We started by taking a ferry and met up with our guide for the day Frank. He works at the Energy Academy and to me seemed a little insane, but none the less an interesting guy! He took us all over the island - literally! We saw the Baltic Sea, visited a wind turbine field and climbed to the top of one!, visited a medieval church from the 1600's, a wood chip heating plant and solar field, and a cute village which has been there since the start! It was a busy day of sustainability!
*Day 4 was another free day where a group of us literally walked the whole town! Our stops along the way included the Christianborg Palace, Nyhavn Walking strip + Pheegan, Amalieborg Palace, The Little Mermaid Statue, and the Rosenborg Castle. We had a quick session as a group near lunchtime and then we were off again to walk the "walking street" that was filled with lots of great shops! At a little chocolate shop a bunch of us got hot chocolate and ice cream and a free marshmellow ball ~so delicious!
*Day 5 was our final day and a bunch of us remembered our green attire to celebrate St. Patrick's Day! We only had meeting in the morning at the Environmental Agency and then had lunch with a lady who helped set up our trip! The rest of the day was our plane, train, and bus trip back to Lillehammer! It was all very tiring, but a really great trip filled with some memorable moments!!

Update

Here is a little update of the previous week after getting back from Tromso. We had another full week of school, through Thursday that is! We finished up our Historie class and have an exam Monday, we have one more week of Norwegian, and on Wednesday we had student presentations in Norwegian Culture & Society class. Some intense planning for spring break and other trips have taken place as well as a bunch of postcards were written and mailed out recently! Today, Sunday is Bri's birthday so with a bunch of our recycled bottles we collected money and are having a taco fiesta tonight to celebrate! We have also had the weirdest luck with buses this weekend trying to simply get in and out of town! And even today Andie and I almost got stuck way out at the ski jump trying to see the World Cup Skiing, but it was cancelled because of visibilty issues! We are all getting really excited for more travel and getting a new schedule after about five weeks here! Cheers to new adventures!

Tromso!

This past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I spent some time with Andie, Mal, Brienne, and Emily up in the beautiful arctic circle in Tromso! We started off pretty early on Friday and made it safely to finally see some spectacular mountains! This is a view from the plane window! Mal has never seen mountains, so she was freaking out on the plane! Here is Pheegan and I and a view of the city!
Our first stop was the Polaria Museum where they have bearded seals and they do gymnastics! Found a great cafe for supper, then headed back to the hotel. Here is where we met a couple German guys who asked if we would like to join them for some Northern Lights exploring and we definitely couldn't pass that up! A group of us all hiked it up a mountain in a suburb off the island where we could find some darkness! And sure enough in the freezing cold and with a little patient we saw a breathtaking sight of greens, whites, and reds that expanded across the sky and danced along the horizon! Sooo amazing!! This is a picture I took of the island all lit up at night! Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of the northern lights!
The next day we started by visiting a glass blowing place where we met a very friendly lady who gave us a demonstration! Next we were set up for a tour at Mack's Brewery, but they only give tours M-Th in the winter - well it didn't say that on it's website, but we went across the street to the ajoining pub and bought some souvenirs anyway! We then had arrangements to meet up with Mandy, a concordia student who is studying there for six months, so we were definitely excited to see one another and swap stories! That night we headed out to do some dogsledding!! Yes dogsledding! We got an hour ride on a sled and afterward met a bunch of the dogs in the yard as well as hold some of the puppies!! So cute!! The whole ride was alot of fun and the view of the city and the mountains at night was so great! As for Sunday we only had the Tromso Musuem to see and to check out their selections of Viking and Sami jewelry! Afterwards we had dinner than headed for a restless night at the airport! An amazing experience so far of Norway!

OSLO

Here are just a few highlights from this past weekend in Oslo! It was great to finally get out and travel! Day one we made it around to the Nobel Peace Prize Museum, the Resistance Museum in the Akershus Castle, then the outside of the castle, and finally the new Opera House! That night for supper we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe!

Pheegan overlooking the docks at Akershus CastleAkershus Castle - where they still have guards and we watched them change!

The new Opera House
Day two we started off early and made it to the Vikings Ship Museum, Holocaust Museum, Kon-Tiki Museum, Fram Museum, Folk Museum, and Vigeland Park! They were a couple of exhausting days, but definitely had some good days despite the layers of snow and slush everywhere!!

The Vikings Ship Museum - The Oseberg Ship

Me steering the Fram ship which we got to roam around in and check out!

Vigeland Park entrance - this pic has its back turned to the main top portion, but I liked this view of Oslo in the background!

...these previous days

So I realized I haven't really posted anything lately, but to be honest we haven't done much but prepared for upcoming travels. Here are a few highlights... We had a girls night at our place with all the international girl students and made brownies and cookies and watched Love Actually to celebrate Valentines' Day. We tried to go out and eat at a restaurant as a group, but the buses were running awkwardly so we canceled and ordered in pizza instead and played a couple rounds of the cup game! Went to a "Lovefest" student service on Sunday. We were invited by a lady we are taking religion sessions from. We met the choir girls from our school and may join their sessions to try and meet some Norwegians! The other day in a search for Andrea's lost key in the snow I tried cross-country skiing and only fell once! I must say though it was going down a really big hill and cross country skis are not as stable as downhill!! Since then it has been plans for the coming three weekends Oslo, Tromso, then Oslo again. Also we did some spring break planning which consists of Italy and London! Last night we went to the better dance club in Lillehammer - Brenneriet and tonight we head back out to Bingo for a live band!

Maihaugen

We made a stop at the cultural museum in Lillehammer today and Pheegan tagged along. Maihaugen was the name which means May Hill. Very interesting place with a lot of very old equipment, chests, and clothing from all the previous eras. Norwegian culture at its finest! Like a picture find... Where's Pheegan?

Address

I know a few of you were asking for an address over here - so here it is! I am certainly not expecting anything - it is way too expensive and I don't need anything - so if you do perhaps a card or save the date invitation ;)

Martha Pearson
Flat 8A 13D:
Storhove Studenthjem
Overjordet 8A H0103
2624 Lillehammer, Norway