Day 1 of Orientation week. (16/08/10)

Sven, Kati, Punky Italian guy and I met at the Bybanen station at 8am! and let me tell you know amount of coffee will ever make me believe that this ia a valid time in the day!!!. After walking up the obligatory hills we arrived at the student center and recieved our individual welcome packs insert theatrical woooooo.
I was introduced to 'the other brit' Peter and we all made our way into the auditorium which was shaped like a huge egg and suspended above the reception. vair snazzy and space age for a lecture on important things to know in Norway.

here is what i leant about living in Norway;

• Norwegians like to use interpretive dance  when showing off thier city. men in suits especially enjoy this method explanation.
• How to log on to various websites. a great source of difficulty for us in the internet generation!
• a student ID card can be used as surprise surprise an ID card!
• I get a free lunch yay!
• All of the information in this epically long lecture is in the 'semester start' guide they gave us before we walked in and which i read in the first 5mins of this 2 hour battle to stay awake!FML
• some bergeners prounounce kroner like crown er this is wrong i have checked with many a reliable souce- mainly drunk norwegians and very very off putting.

so there you have it the essential information that i shall need to survive in this very confusing city.

After the lecture we went to collect our free lunch yay! which i have to say was pretty good compared to the 'free lunches' you get in england which consist of a stale sandwich and a penguin bar. i got a huuuge mozarella and salad baguette, a bottle of fizzy water annd some norwegian chocolate. score!
the other brit  and i got chatting and i have to say it was nice to have someone i could speak fast with and have a good ol british moan with. we had to wait around untill 3pm for a meeting about mentor week which is hard to do when all you want to do is sleep. i entertained myself buy browsing the uni book shop and buying a uni stationary pack which was crazy good value 100kr (£10) for 3 notebooks, a folder, nice pens, pencils, a special white lines notebook, post its, file dividers, plastic wallets and a doccument holder. i think thats the first time i can ever say i bought something in norway which would have cost more in the UK!!

finally 3 o clock rolled around and the humanties faculty were herded into the auditorium and split into groups, each group was given a mentor (fadder) who will guide us for the next week. Peter was in my group and our fadder is called Hanne. after giving us a little bergen tour Hanne told us to meet her and the other humanities students at a park at 5 so we could pre drink before heading to a pub for a huuge quiz.
the other two students in our group dissapeared so peter and i headed for rema1000 to buy beer and food before settling into the park.
at 5 hanne found us and led us to a huuge group of students (maybe 20) of which we were the only international ones, and we got talking and drinking. all most of the norwegians were super friendly and again it was nice to talk to people who didn't need me to slow down too much!
Soon it was time for the pub quiz and we all headed to the pub next to the park called ricks, hanne and i had to finish our drinks so we were the last in, luckily some of the norwegians had saved me a seat. on our table and in our awesome quiz team Team fucking fantastic was Peter, Therese, Tom Ian, Ida, Jenette, Armin and Myself. we did pretty well in the quiz with only a few minor obvious mistakes.  no selina there are not 26km in a marathon that would be stupid!
after the quiz a band played so we drank more beer and danced a lot it was super fun!

Jeanette and Therese

me, ida and tom ian (being super japanese i think)

better picture!

group photo!

and then i managed to catch the last bybanen home and met a very drunken Kati and David.