Edinburgh Exchanges

So another week has passed and I have to ask myself again where exactly it has gone! I think this week has marked a turning point for me with regards to settling in here; since classes have started and the group I've found myself in becomes ever more comfortable with each other, I have really started to feel at home. The strange thing is that the more I feel at home here the more I miss Scotland. I have to explain here that I am really attached to Scotland and I love all of its traditions, the people, the landscape, the dialect - everything! So even though I've settled into something very much resembling my life at home (only without the presence of my family and Scottish friends) I feel an increased need to eat shortbread, read Burns and ceilidh dance just to feel closer to my homeland. This feeling is amplified by the conversations surrounding everyone's own countries - their politics and traditions - which occur often.

Othr than that, this week has been mostly taken up by classes which became gradually easier as the week went on, especially after I acquired a dictaphone to record them - something which I think allowed me to relax into it more, worry less about understanding everything, and taking really good notes in German, and so I was able to understand almost everything of the last lecture. I think I can see my language skills slowly improving but I still take ages to do any reading and I find it so frustrating when I know the answer but just don't have the words to express it. I keep telling myself to be more patient with regards to language acquisition but I really just wish I could swallow a dictionary (and my grammar book). I had my first language lesson today and it went really well - the class is really targeting the aspects I find most difficult which after paying 250 Euros for it I'm glad of! There is a lot of homework though and on top of the reading for my other classes I'm beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed by it all- knowing that if I had to do the same work in English I would be thoroughly underwhelmed doesn't help either.

Before I move on to the more fun aspects of my week I will explain the title of the blog. Here I'm taking four classes (not including the 6 hours of language lessons); 3 Vorlesungen (lectures) and 1 Proseminare. The lectures are all assessed by a final exam - either written or oral, and so there are no assignments throughout the year, just reading. The Proseminare is slightly different, like tutorials here, they're in smaller groups and generally have assignments, however the one that I'm taking only has one 5-10,000 word essay. After discussing it with the tutor, I've decided to write my essay on Roland Barthes and haikus; it frustrates me a little that if I was writing this essay in English I'd actually be really looking forward to tackling the topic, instead I'm just worried about writing such a huge amount in German! However, it is still something I'm very interested in so hopefully that will come across even if the language isn't quite perfect.

Other than classes and finally managing to attain my student ID card and bank card (thus getting a semester public transport ticket and the ability to do washing), there were a few nights out. Thursday was Sarah's birthday and so we celebrated by hitting Charlie P's karaoke night (I can feel a birthday tradition in the making)- it was a great night, made better by the fact that I only had to crawl across the road to get home (unlike Sarah who spent 2 hours trying to work the nightbuses but managed to get home fine with a few stories to tell! ;-) Friday was the official erasmus opening party which I didn't enjoy so much. A combination of being overlytired and the fact that it was incredibly hot and overcrowded with pushy, drunk people meant that I would rather have stayed at home, but it was good banter with the people we were with and we still managed to catch the last ubahn home.

On Saturday I went to Schoenbrunn zoo and gardens with two friends and it was an awesome day! We bought a ticket for 16 Euros which let us into the zoo, the greenhouse and the desert house (I can't think of a better english translation than that!). The zoo was founded in 1752 and so is the oldest zoo in the world (according to wikipedia, although I'm only sure that it's the oldest in Europe) and this made it all the more interesting. A lot of the smaller animals like lizards, bats and peacocks were free to wander around which was cool but also made for a number of 'scream as a bat flies at you' moments which we laughed about later! It was a really relaxing trip and we all ended up reverting to our childhood as we wandered around such a traditional zoo, taking pictures and talking about disney films.

Saturday night there was a big pyjama party in our halls. A couple of guys organised the first major get-together for everyone in one of the kitchens - it was nice to be able to chat to more people, also wearing pyjamas to party is one of my favourite things ever!

This week I'll be spending most of my time trying to get on top of reading for lectures before we head off to Salzburg this weekend - which I'm really excited about as a few of my friends went last week (I had lectures and so unfortunately couldn't go) and loved it. I've also just been informed that one of them has bought 'Sound of Music' on dvd which we'll definitely be watching before we go!

So until then...

This week has been miles, miles better than last week. Why? I don't know really. The only difference has been that I've got rid of that one course, and somehow the workload has seemed more copeable-with. This was the last week of Catalan Intensive Basic 1, we had the exam on Friday. It went pretty well I think, it was all multiple choice except for at the end where we had to write a paragraph or so. The thing about multiple choice exams is that you never really know how you got on, because every answer is made to look like the right answer! Catalan Basic 2 starts on Wednesday, which should be good because it focuses much more on being able to speak conversationally.

Anyway after the exam most of the class went to the pub for a wee celebration, it's a really nice international group, with people from every corner of the globe. I'm the only real English-speaker, and there's even one German guy who doesn't speak Castillian Spanish already, he's just learning Catalan and that's that. So we all speak a mixture of Spanish and Catalan, and then the German guy speaks to me in English when he doesn't know the Catalan words!

Later on Friday I went to a birthday party in Gràcia with one of my Erasmus buds, we walked round in circles, lost... and then realised we were in the right place all along. It was a good party, although most of his birthday presents were ladies' underwear and plants! Very random! Then even later that night I went down to Ciutat Vella to meet up with other people. After the bar, we went to a very odd nightclub where we were like in a very dim room upstairs... there was nobody else there and no music (?!?!) so we promptly trotted off to another club, and then another one a while after that. It was an eventful Friday night... my liver was probably a bit busier than it had been the rest of the week, but that's what it's there for!

Saturday was, as you'd expect, a bit of a write-off. Didn't really get that much work done. Thankfully I didn't stay in all day, at night I went round to a friend's flat for a while and then we headed off to L'Eixample to go to a bar called El Gato Negro (the Black Cat).

This pub had the largest menu of chupitos (shots) I've ever seen in my life. Think A1 sized posters... like outside a cinema. And then write the names of shots in columns. There were 4 of these things on the wall, all with funny names. One example (which I'm not going to translate!) was Mi Polla En Tu Boca. I'm sure you can figure it out! So when you get asked “what would you like?”, you have to tell them! In the end we settled for Harry Potters on a recommendation. Then they were set on fire, drenched in sugar and oranges and whatever, yum yum yum.

After zat, we went to a small discoteca, it was certainly not a touristy place. They played Toxic and Hung Up though, so I wasn't totally lost! All the rest of the time I was like “what's this song called?” So on Sunday I was downloading lots of music which I'm used to hearing in the clubs so I can try to understand the lyrics and stuff. It's better to be able to sing along! ;-)

The rest of Sunday was spent working. I manged to write my program in Miranda for LP, and my bash script for SO... and spent even more time pondering the mysteries of threads in Java.

The weather is still good, by the way. It's like shorts weather most of the time (although not for lectures), but there was rain one afternoon.

I don't know why but I think I'm looking less like a tourist, people automatically speak to me in Spanish now! Actually the other day I was approached by some annoying charity people in Plaça de Catalunya (you know, like the kind you get on Princes Street... please give £20 a month so that we can give free bibles to private school children, etc etc). Anyway they started asking me for money so I just put on my tourist face and said “sorry, I don't speak Spanish”. Hehe, yes I know I'm going to hell, but it worked...

It would be impossible for me not to acknowledge this worldwide finance crisis, despite how depressing the subject is. Norway has remained rather our of the bubble for the most part, thankfully, with many here not even knowing that such a crisis was taking place (that is a fact, one person needed to have the whole thing brought to their attention.) I have been doing all I can to not think about it, despite the fact that a very gradual rising panic is setting in regarding prices of living back home in my final year. Therefore, it was with glee that I received the email the other day informing me of the imminent payment of my ERASMUS grant: life here is so excessively expensive that I have reached the point where I no longer even realize the vast amounts of cash that I am spending! Budgeting is an absolute no-no if want to avoid inducing a mammoth panic attack, and food/drink bills are probably my biggest monthly expense (as an example, six cans of cider sets me back around 200 kroner, approximately £20, though would be even more expensive in any bar, explaining the popularity of pre-party drinks in this country).

Also on a finance-crisis-ey niote, the current hostile situation between Britain and Iceland makes me slightly coy about my nationality when considering the close nature of the Scandinavian lands. Newspapers last week ran the headline “Finance War: Iceland’s Prime Minister Geir Haarde is furious following British colleague Gordon Brown’s use of terror laws to secure the money that Brits have saved in Icelandic banks.” Whilst I’d be foolish to believe everything that I read, Britain’s actions certainly throws a spanner in the works with regards to Alex Salmond’s constant lauding of the successes of independent lands such as Norway and Iceland, and desire to reflect their success in the future, should Scotland become independent. I am forced to think about where my ‘loyalities’ lie in such times: the finance crisis has so far made little impact upon my life in Norway, which enjoys a stable economy, but Iceland’s situation is beginning to unsettle Norway ever so slightly. I have no great political agenda, but cannot deny that since my arrival, I have constantly identified myself as “Scottish” rather than “British,” and am always careful to address the difference for anybody who struggles to understand. Moves such as Gordon Brown’s last week affirm my decision to do this, with Britain not identified as number one bestie in the European stakes, I’m sure most people would agree. Becoming an international student has absolutely played a part in addressing my national pride in a way that I never imagined, but has also created confusion for me: whilst proud to be Scottish, there are many, many things that I wish that I could change within society at home, and would hate for people to associate with me on the basis of my nationality (this stretches beyond people’s initial drug-andswearing-fuelled connections to the film Trainspotting, by the way). However, with the current instability of more than just finances across the world at the moment, many things are likely to change in the near future, and everything has become impossible to predict. I continue to be a Scottish ERASMUS student until further notice, and this will continue to cause slight problems at parties with our English friend who wishes she could identify herself as British but feels that she can’t once myself and our friend C say Scottish: these are the ridiculously trivial things that I’d identify as the politics of ERASMUS, the little issues that raise their ugly heads frequently, considering that everybody’s second question upon meeting after asking your name is asking where you come from. However, please don’t get me wrong: it’s mid-term now, and things in Oslo are generally looking rosy, hideous finances aside.

I’m writing a bit late this week, it’s Sunday but the internet still isn’t working at Eiffel, I’m still holding out a little hope but it’s not looking good, so I’ll be posting this from the lab again.

After the cheese and wine party last Friday (was that only last week? Time seems to be going strange) the weekend continued in the same vein, no work and lots of socialising. A girly shopping trip to Lille on Saturday with Rachel and Sarah was just what we needed after the night before and we sat outside ‘La Presidente’ café with hot chocolate enjoying the autumnal sunshine.

Sunday we went to the ‘Palais des Beaux Arts’, it was free (the first weekend in the month) so almost every other Erasmus student was there too, a lot of them we knew and it seemed odd to know people in Lille. It’s worth a visit there are a lot of sculptures and paintings but mainly I enjoyed seeing the building, it’s like Beasts castle- maybe I’ve mentioned it before…

We attempted to do some work on the Sunday evening… its very hard to get yourself into work mode because although I’m in lab all day everyday and when I’m not I’m in lectures, it still doesn’t feel like Uni. Not proper Uni, I can’t quite convince myself of how important this year is and subsequently am now building up quite a pile of stuff to do. Add onto that my voluntary move to do a French test (why?) and learn Japanese I’m thinking maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.
Well, I like making things difficult.

Japanese started on Monday in frighteningly fast French, which I mostly understood, the emphasis in the class is equally on written and spoken Japanese; I would choose a language with four alphabets… I really enjoyed it though and will definitely be making a large effort to keep up with both the French and the Japanese. Talking of French, I’m now pretty sure my French teacher hates me, Andy moved to my class this week and she loved him, just to make the difference more obvious! I was politely brushed over again and again; this may be a good thing- less talking, but also less learning.

I think I got a bit further in labs but I sort of feel I’m going backwards as one of my experiments didn’t work, can’t understand this as it worked before, and some of my analysis has been a bit off… I have been feeling a bit ill as well so have put off practical work in favour of writing up and writing a ‘proposition’ for my literature survey, yet again biting off more than I can chew by writing it in French.

On Tuesday we partook of more culture by attending a concert held by the university orchestra in which Sarah was performing, she plays Flute, I thoroughly enjoying it but then again I have the musical prowess of a teaspoon so I wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t perfect, besides they played Pirates of the Caribbean, I adore the music so I was happy. Also free wine and food was offered after so we could stand around looking arty and, in my case, pretending to know something about music.

I am learning though- Andy gave me a piano lesson this week, theory (sort of) and all, I don’t think I’m a natural and it takes every ounce of concentration but I enjoyed it and hope to carry on but I haven’t practiced- I hope he doesn’t tell me off…

I got trapped in ‘Le Furet Du Nord’ (bookshop) again, and I only went to the small one at V2 (shopping centre), I only wanted to buy a Japanese book in case I couldn’t keep up with the French but ended up buying a fiction (an English fiction (mainly because it was eight Euros cheaper) book which is bad because when I read I tend to leave reality and get less done than usual.

What this means is that I now have an even bigger pile of work to do, since this weekend I’ve been out with my parents and tonight am hosting a film watching session involving nachos cooked courtesy of my newly acquired (thank you Mum and Dad) microwave and possibly wine…
Oops, work is going to have to wait… ‘Til tomorrow at least; arg another week with more lectures but on the upside I have Japanese again and there will only be one week until half term! Yay.

Oh well here goes, until next time…