I played around with the panorama mode on my camera this evening. It's not perfect but it's pretty neat.

Another photo from the balcony.

First Week of School

It is official, I have a Norwegian job! I went to work a couple of days during the previous week. Thursday and Friday were teacher work days. Lots of meetings and a bit of time for planning. As the year 10 teacher this year, I am also in charge of the year 10 class room. This means setting up the room, decorating, assigning lockers and desks, etc. The students stay in their classroom for most of the day and teachers move to them. It is certainly going to be strange not having my own classroom this year. Since we don't have classrooms, all the teachers have a desk in a workroom. This is also a bit of a change but hasn't been bad so far.

This past week was my first week at school with students. My normal schedule this year is quite different than I am used to. I have pretty full days on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays are short days though. Students have science only 2 times per week, one double lesson (1 1/2 hours) and one single lesson (45 minutes) each week. I think that is going to take some getting used to!

It was not a 'normal' week though. Monday I spent the first part of the day with my year 10 students, getting to know them, talking about rules and expectations, things like that. After lunch we took the entire middle school (about 55 students) to a local park for the remainder of the day. It turned out to be a really nice, sunny day and the students all seemed to have a good time. Tuesday was a regular day, which for me means a double lesson of year 10 science at 1pm and an after school meeting. A pretty easy Tuesday! On Wednesday, we took the middle school out for their forest day. This involved a 12km round trip hike toward the Bymarka area outside of town. Bymarka is the recreational area nearest to Trondheim. In the summer months a lot of people go hiking in the area. There are also a few small lakes that people go swimming in. In the winter months people ride the tram up and go cross country skiing. The hike up is quite steep but very pretty once you get out of town. The view from the top is supposed to be wonderful. It was really foggy on Wednesday though, so our view was not too great. The students all seemed to have a good time. I was exhausted by the time I got home that night! Thursday and Friday were also 'normal' days. Thursday I have two lessons in the morning, single science lessons for year 9 and year 10. After that I am done for the day! Friday is a bit busier for me, I see my year 10s for religion, supervise study hall for year 9 and then have a triple lesson of home economics with my year 10s. We made rice krispie treats this week! Next week will be a normal week and I will actually see all my classes and be able to start my lessons. The students have been great so far and my class sizes are wonderful! My biggest class has 19 students. They come from all over the world, though many of them have at least one Norwegian parent.

On the way up the hill!

One of the lakes we passed on the way up the hill.

Pretty country side. This was about 40 minutes form the top of the hill.

The "view" from the top. We were actually in the clouds at this point in time.

The sunsets have been magnificent here for the last few days.

The view from our balcony at sunset.

And one more from after the sun actually went away.

Also, last week Becca and I met Miles and Kristin out on Munkholmen (the little island that you can see in the above photo on the right-hand side of the horizon). The island has an interesting history that includes Nazi occupation during World War II. The Nazis stationed anti-aircraft guns on the island and one of them has been left (nearly intact) as a reminder.

It's good to see children exploring history.

The gun itself is gigantic and is very well preserved (this is the back). I can only imagine how loud it must have been inside that metal enclosure every time that thing fired.

There are gunner's seats on both sides. Also, that big wheel is packing some serious math.

Last night we walked up to the Kristiansten fortress and took some pictures at sunset. There is a little cafe there and a Norwegian band was playing lounge music covers of songs like Tangled Up In Blue and Me And Bobby McGee.
 

Kristiansten Fort on a beautiful, sunny day.

Flowers at the fort.

A couple of B+W photos from the yesterday and today:

Becca preparing dinner in our tiny kitchenette.

The ridiculously tasty stout at the mikrobryggeri.

There is a lot of color in Trondheim during the summer. We took these two photos on our walk home from dinner:

Fluffy pink things across the street from the train station.

Strange yellow things down by the ferry.

IKEA and Lasagna

We have been keeping pretty busy these past few days. We *think* that we have all of our necessary paperwork turned in at this point in time, at least everything that we can do right now. We have reported to the police station and have appointments to go back to get our official ID cards. We have also reported to the tax office to apply for our Norwegian tax numbers (like a social security numbers) and our tax cards. These last two are extremely important since we can not get bank accounts or get paid without them. So now we just wait for those...

Yesterday, we went to one of my new colleague's houses for dinner. Karma and her husband were wonderful hosts. We were able to meet several of the other middle school teachers from Birralee and had a great taco dinner. It was nice to be able to ask a few questions and hear about other peoples' experiences moving to Trondheim.

The past few day have been typical Trondheim summer weather (aka intermittent rain and sunshine) so we took the opportunity to explore the bus system. We had a little bit of a learning curve to deal with in the beginning. Tickets can be purchased on the bus however they are cheaper if they are purchased beforehand from a machine or shop. Our local bus stop does not have a ticket machine so we started walking to find one. We made it all the way downtown (thankfully it wasn't raining at the time) before we found a machine.  Who would have thought that the bus ticket machines are the same as the parking ticket machines! We probably passed 20 of these machines on our way downtown! I guess that we know that now. We purchased 24 hour passes in order to head up to Karma's house as well as head to IKEA.

We have been talking about going to IKEA for a few days now. We knew it would require a bus ride though, since hauling whatever we purchased home several miles might prove difficult. Since we had bus passes this morning, we decided to take advantage of the situation. IKEA in Norway is as huge an overwhelming as it is in the US. The main difference is that everything is in a foreign language and currency! We wandered through the top level looking at all the large items and getting ideas for if/when we need to furnish an apartment here. After that we headed downstairs to pick up some necessities. Hooray for having our own towels, pillowcases and blankets! We also purchased some kitchen supplies and other basic goods. Overall it was a good trip, though I am sure we will be making another trip in the near-ish future.

What better day to wander around IKEA than a grey drizzly day!?

Daniel with all of our goods. Towels and bedspreads and alarm clocks, Oh My!

Once we got home we decided that we should break in our new baking dish by making veggie lasanga for dinner. A trip to both the Rema 1000 and the Meny later, we had all the ingredients needed to make dinner. It felt nice to be cooking again, though it is difficult to cook in such a small kitchen! Dinner turned out wonderfully if I do say so myself!

Caprese Salad for an appetizer with green salad and veggie lasagne for dinner! Yumm!

The sun breaking thought the clouds. This was taken at about 8:30 pm. Sunset was more than an hour later.

We get to work!

This morning started with a visit to the police station. We needed to declare that we have entered Norway. We also wanted to check on the status of our visa applications. After a short wait in line, we were informed that our visas have been approved! This means that we are officially able to work in Norway! After a quick happy dance, we headed downtown so we could grab some lunch and go visit my new school. We were able to meet with the principal as well as get a tour of the school. It is a beautiful school. It sounds like I will be the Year 10 class teacher as well as teaching Years 9, 10 and 11 Science, Year 10 Home Economics and Year 10 Religion. I'm sure it will be a fun and eventful school year. School starts for me next Thursday, August 16th but I already have homework to do!

This is my new school, Birralee International School. My classes will be up on the 4th floor. The classroom on the top floor all the way to the right is the Science room!

Hooray! This is where I will be working this year!

Today we woke up at sunrise (5am, jet lag) and then walked to Miles and Kristin's house for a late breakfast. Not only did they serve us an amazing breakfast but it was all home made (cinnamon/raisin bread, bagels, waffles, salmon and potato quiche, granola...) and we also got to meet Miles' friend Cletus and his family. The Fat Man filled our pockets with waffles and bagels before he allowed us to leave. For dinner we had our first taste of authentic Norwegian food and ate waffles with off-brand Nutella!

It was rainy and foggy when we woke up. This is a photo looking towards down town from up on the hill that I'm going to be climbing every morning on my way to work.

Kristin is German so she makes her waffles thin, soft, and sweet. Add some fresh berries or eat them plain.

By the time we got home in the afternoon it was sunny and warm outside. This is the strip of restaurants in Solsiden. Our temporary apartment is only a few blocks from here.

Finally some authentic Norwegian food: frozen pizza. Now we know that the smoke alarm in our temporary apartment works!

We made it to Norway!

We arrived in Trondheim without incident and were greeted by Miles and Kristin in the Solsiden neighborhood. They escorted us to our company-provided apartment that we'll be occupying for approximately the next 2 months. We were pleasantly surprised by both the size and quality of the apartment. It has a couple of rough edges (for example we can't figure out how to get the dish washer to work) but overall it is great. After settling in we did a little bit of grocery shopping and then walked around town on our way to the mikrobryggeri for a sample tray.

The front room/dining room/kitchen.

A small bedroom. That is a full-size bed.

A tiny bathroom.

A cute little balcony.

The view from the balcony (looking toward Solsiden mall).