One Down!

This marks the end of the first week of classes! So far it looks like I've got 3 good ones and one that may be a bit slow, but that's just how it goes. They teach in blocks, so most of my courses only meet twice a week but for 2 or 3 hours. This has been a little rough, but I'm getting used to it. They give us a break every hour so we can step out for 15 min.

In other news, I've been exploring a little more. There's a big mall called City Syd ("City South") where we found a HUGE market - the subtitle on the sign was "Hypermarked". It's a lot like a Super Walmart, actually, though it pains me to say that. The fruits and vegetables were notably cheaper there (only about $3/lb for tomatoes!), so we got some veggies, and Marcio, Aline, and I had a delicious dinner - cheese w/ bread, salad with tomato basil, rice, and salmon. Check it out:

One thing's for sure: I'm learning to cook fish like you wouldn't believe. Land-meat costs a fortune here...

And, having mentioned Aline and Marcio, I'll quickly hash out the people in the program:

Those two are oceanographers from Brazil.

Bojan is a shipping manager from Serbia.

Shirin is an oceanologist from Mexico (Baja)

Ushanth is a CE from Sri Lanka

Lijie is a CE from China

Isabel is a CE from Spain

Rohit and Saud are engineers from India

Dmitry is an engineer from Russia

Fitriani and Sutrisno are engineers from Indonesia.

All told we have 9 engineers, 3 oceanographers, and Bojan for a total of 13.

Thus far much of my activity has been class, cooking/eating (we're trying to cook foods from our native cultures. I'm open for any ideas in the American Food category!), running, and sleeping. It's not a bad life, though it will all be indoors in a few months (which is standard for all but the running).

NTNU Orientation

Orientation week is almost over, but I've done a lot. There were a lot of presentations about how to get set up in Trondheim and groups you could join. The Sports Center (Idrettsbygget) is really cool here. They've got a 30m climbing wall at the Dragvoll campus and a bouldering cave at Golshaugen (it's about 3m tall and across but the floor is covered with crash pads and the walls and ceiling with climbing traverses).

Even cooler are the Cabins owned by NTNUI (the Sports Center Association). They're out in the country or along the fjords, and students can rent them for 30nok per person per night. You can take a bus part way there then hike or ski to the cabins and stay for the weekend. That's pretty much the coolest thing ever.

There seem to be two primary pass times here in Trondheim: Drinking and Hiking. I can't do too much of the former (with beer at 12nok at its cheepest), but I love the latter. People like to get out of town and be in nature, and to illustrate this part of Orientation Week was to hike in Bymarka, the park west of Trondheim. It was muddy (it always rains here), but beautiful nonetheless. We climbed to a ridge overlooking the fjord north of Trondheim:

That was Thursday, and after hiking and dinner I got to go to my FIRST EVER football match! Did you know that in other countries they call soccer football and people play professionally? It's like American football or baseball or something! And it's not just the World Cup; people play all the time! I went to see Rosenborg (the Trondheim club) and Aek (from Cyprus) play a qualifying match for Euroleague. Neither team was very good, but it was fun to go; I've wanted to go to a match for a long time, but they're not so common in the US. Here's me at the game:

Classes start on Monday. I'll be taking "The Marine Physical Environment", "Spreading of Pollution" (is that an Art of... or Practice of... kind of class?), "Port & Coastal Facilities", and either "Safety/Reliability Analysis" or "Dynamic Response of Marine Structures." More on that to come.

Arrival

Hello, there,

So I departed the San Diego Airport at about 2:45 pm on 10 Aug and flew to Chicago. There I had to exit through security, take a tram through all three other terminals (I had already walked through one and I was bound for #5), go back through security (international this time), then board my plane. That flight ran from about 10pm Chicago time (GMT -6) to 1:30 pm Copenhagen time (GMT +1), for a flight time of about 8.5 hrs. THEN I waited for a delayed flight to Trondheim, which eventually got me there at about 6:30pm, Trondheim Time. By 8:00pm I finally got to Moholt student housing. Another of the CoMEM students (Bojan from Serbia) had prepared dinner, so I joined him, Dr. Arnsten, and a number of other CoMEM students (see below) to eat before sleeping on a real bed at least.

It was 23:30 by the time I went to bed, but the sunset had BARELY faded to a dusky blue-purple. At 4:30 in the morning it was already bright enough to call it daylight. This place is crazy; I can only imagine the darkness of Winter.

There are 4 rooms in my suite, but I've only met one of the guys living here. His name is Per, and he's from Norway. He just finished his degree and is hunting for a job. It's nice because he's been living here a while and has collected all the cookware one could need over the past year or so. I've included a couple pictures from the place (including the super-cool fold-away shower!).

I spent today walking the campus and Central Trondheim. Bojan led a bunch of the new arrivals around to different places to take care of a series of upon-arrival tasks, like getting phones, course registration, and bus passes. Along the way we got to see the Cathedral. I know this kind of building is all over Europe, but it's still impressive to me.

Ready! Set! Go!

Alrighty! In a matter of hours this all begins! I'll be flying through Chicago to Copenhagen then on to Trondheim! It'll take about 18 hrs to get there, but most of that is overnight. Everything is packed into 2 bags, though they're QUITE full (see above). One of the other students got there a few days ago, and he's been telling the rest of us what it's like in Trondheim. It sounds nice, if rainy, but I'll actually know when I get there tomorrow afternoon.

Farewell to San Diego, to California, and to the rest of the US. At least for a while.

Back to SD

Howdy!

Last weekend I moved out of Berkeley for good. Wow.

I'm back to San Diego now to pack all my stuff away and pick out the few things I'll be taking to Norway in a week. That's when the real adventure begins.