Moving to Norway!

Hi there! Both to you reading this and to a new country! How exciting!!

Note: I am posting this on Jan 23 but dating it Jan 15 because that's the day all of this happened... sorry for any confusion this may have caused, believe me, I'm also confused by all of these post-dated posts!

Now to the exciting stuff!

My day started super early with what should be added as a new Olympic sport: carrying two massive and heavy suitcases down the silliest 4 flights of stairs imaginable. I'd watch that. I would hate to have to do it again but I survived to tell the tale! Me and those two massive and heavy suitcases bonded a lot today. I put a lot of miles on those wheels and we went through a lot!

After trams, buses, trains, escalators, elevators and being carried by the nice train conductor, those suitcases and I made it to the Brussels airport! Note: the suitcases were carried by the nice train conductor, I was not. Just to clarify.

I met up with my 8 other classmates who are moving to Norway too at the train station and we took the train together to the airport. This was the start of our long, trying travelling day.

To say this day went smoothly could not be further from the truth. Besides actually missing our flight, every other travel-related mishap happened to someone in our group. I came out unscathed but we had an overweight bag that resulted in repacking in the middle (and I mean the middle) of the airport, a missing bag, a 45-minute security hold-up resulting from the most disorganized people I have ever seen go through security, a group member getting gastro-intestinally sick while wearing 4 layers of pants, an empty bank account, leaving a bag on the bus, and I'm sure more crazy things that I have since suppressed. It was a day. But the important thing is that we all made it.

The flights themselves were easy and pleasant and the views of Norway were spectacular!

Arriving in Trondheim was really nice (despite all of the traumas of the day) and it really felt like arriving in a new home :) We were greeted with -15°C weather, just an added bonus :) The snow was very pretty though and the white mountainside and rooftops really sold the whole "Norway" thing.

A thing I should mention to really set the scene is that my new home is at 63° North. As in 3° South of the Arctic Circle. As in almost 20° North of my hometown of Napanee, Ontario or my previous home of Halifax, Nova Scotia. As in the same latitude of Iqaluit, Nunavut. Trondheim is very North. You can check it out on the "travel tracker" map on the home page. It is very North. This far North sounds pretty chilly and a little scary but one upside is that I should be able to see the Northern Lights! Or at least I better be able to!! I haven't yet but I'll let you know when (not if) I do!!

We took an express bus to our residence neighbourhood, called Moholt, then tried to get as set up as we could at 6 PM on a Monday. I picked up my mattress from the furniture warehouse across the street, which sounds like it should be simple, but picture this: a 5'2" girl carrying a 6' long, 20 lbs heavy log of a rolled-up-mattress over her shoulder while precariously walking through a foot of snow and trying not to slip on ice. I wish I had taken a photo but I probably would've fallen so you'll have to just use your imagination for how silly I looked!

Being the prepared person I am, I ordered some sheets, towels, and other essentials from IKEA so that they would be delivered by the time I arrived in Norway. What I wasn't prepared for was that the box wouldn't arrive before me. So the first few nights I was sleeping on a bare mattress with a tiny, thin blanket and using my puffer vest as a pillow... Not my best sleeps ever but at least I wasn't on the floor so I can't complain!

We headed to the grocery store across the street as well to get some dinner and breakfast for tomorrow and to see just how expensive everything really is. So far, I don't things are too ridiculously expensive. A little bit more expensive than Canada but not that much more than Belgium, so that was a nice finding to end the day:)

This coming week we go straight into meetings & classes starting tomorrow morning at 10 AM so we are hitting the ground running!!