I was kind of afraid to look at the date of my last post when I went to write this. I guess my ideal of a post a week never really happened. Sorry. Now here we are at the end. It is, as always, a beginning as well as an end, but right now I’m feeling the later more sharply. A lot has happened in a month, as usual more than can be told in a short blog post. But we must try!

Last time I was starting the final week of classes. Classes here finished on the fifth of May, with the following week and a half devoted to reading. It’s a strange concept coming from St. Olaf where we get a day to read, and I often spend that playing frisbee! They take their reading days very seriously here, though, and ought to, since the exams last 4 hours and count for 100% of one’s grade. This arrangement does encourage many to do little during the semester and then fill their short-term memory in time for the test. I can’t say I didn’t take advantage of this,  allowing myself to experience more and study less during the semester than I am used to. I had exams on the 18th and 19th of May, and the 2nd and 3rd of June. The 15th and 16th were both math, and I spent most of the time beforehand studying.

There was, however, a small break for festivities on the 17th. For those who aren’t aware, the seventeenth of May is Norway’s national holiday (Did you know it is also Ireland’s Famine Memorial day?). For details I leave you to Wikipedia. It does a much better job than I would, non scholarly though it may be. What I can tell you is that the seventeenth is huge in Norway, rivaling (if not beating flat out) our July celebrations. The main event is a huge parade (bigger still if you get to Oslo, but Trondheim’s was pretty impressive). Mostly this consists of any and every organization in town which feels like walking around. There are also several marching bands, but no firetrucks or floats. Everyone with a bunad (Norway’s national dress. Again, check Wikipedia for details (CAUTION: this article does not cite sources! Don’t use it in your English paper.) wears one, otherwise men all wear black suits and ties, and women, well, it seems all the women have bunads. Together with much flag waving this makes for a very colorful and beautiful event. Virtually the whole city turns out in their finest, if not to walk in the parade, then to line the streets watching and cheering. Before the parade I also went to church in the cathedral, where we sang the national anthem. After the parade we wandered around town a bit, admiring everyone in their finery, though I did sneak home in the afternoon for some studying, as I had an exam at 9 o’clock sharp the next morning.

You might have noticed that there was a 14 day gap in between my finals. I noticed too! Fourteen days seemed like an awfully long time to study, so I planned a 10 day trip to Great Britain in between. There’s no time for details, but the basic route was London, Edinburgh, Pitlochry (highlands), Stirling, Manchester, Peak District (national park – hills and dales), London. Check out the map for the locations of all these places. Highlights included couch surfing in Edinburgh, catching an annual Scottish highland games festival, hiking – quite literally – over hill, over dale, and hearing the St. Olaf choir sing Moses Hogan in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Oh, and seeing A comedy of Errors in the Globe Theater for 5 quid. It was a great trip, and fun to see so many familiar faces in the choir that I hadn’t seen in so long.

It was very hard, though, to come back to the grindstone for three days. I got back on a Sunday morning, and promptly commenced studying for physics (Classical Mechanics) whose exam was the following Tuesday. Then on Wednesday I had an oral exam for literature history, in Norwegian. It went quite well, probably the best of all my subjects this semester. Then I breathed. Actually I did a good bit of sleeping in, because, funny thing, it’s hard to go to bed at night when it’s still light at one in the morning, and you don’t have anything to do the next day. Right now it’s 10:20 and the sky has just barely started to color in preparation for a sunset. OK, now it’s 12:06, and the sky is still blushed from the sun. Though the birds have no intention of sleeping, I do. I hope to post some pictures of Great Britain tomorrow. Trust all is well.