Hi Trondheim!

Hi there! Last post, I landed in Trondheim and now I'm getting to know Trondheim :)

Like I said last time, we hit the ground running upon arrival. Tuesday morning we headed to the Sealab, one of our new campuses to have a "welcome meeting" with our programme director, our study advisor and some of our profs! We got to see the building (which was super cool) and see a little bit of the city centre & waterfront.

But we couldn't stay for too long because we headed back to our main campus (Gløhaugen) to have our first class! This was environmental biotechnology and we missed two lectures last week (because we were writing exams in Belgium) so we are starting out already behind. I'm still not caught up but I'm slowly working on it! This class was pretty interesting and it wasn't too long, which was very nice!!

The rest of the afternoon, I got my room slightly more set up, got some registration stuff done and I unpacked!

Wednesday was an entire day of one class. I'm talking 8 AM - 4:30 PM. Crazy! This class is called "Experts in Teamwork" and it is a requirement for all masters students to take because of feedback that the Norwegian government got that Norwegians aren't good at working in teams. So now, through reflections, check-ins, a semester-long project, and guest lectures, we will ALL become experts in teamwork

We checked out the campus a little bit more and had to see the famous building that people say looks like Hogwarts. PS. I'm currently re-reading the Harry Potter books so to go to school in this building is very on-theme.

PPS. The building that most of my classes are in (not the one shown above) is THE most confusing building in terms of layout and numbering systems ever! The LSC at Dal has nothing on the Realfagbygget at NTNU! I'm almost sure that the staircases in this building move, just like at Hogwarts!

Thursday was a nice day with no classes!! I took this as an opportunity to explore the area a little bit, pick up my IKEA package that finally arrived, set up my room & bed, and study for my exams that I still have to write!

Friday was a day back at Gløhaugen and another environmental biotechnology class! This one was again interesting and now we're starting to get into some more complicated topics (yay). I picked up my student card and activated it so I feel like a real, official NTNU student now!!

That was a really good part of my day but it went downhill when I got back to residence.

Let me give you the timeline of the rest of my day:

12:30 PM: I got home, I tried my key tag on the electronic lock on my door and it didn't work! What's up with that?!

12:40 PM: I remembered an email I got a week ago about how the security company was checking all of the lock pathways and the locks wouldn't be working for part of the day. Hmm, that sucks.

12:41 PM: Hungry, sad, and defeated, I left my building and went to the library cafe to get a snack and do some school work. Ugh.

3:00 PM: Tried my lock because surely they should be done lock testing now.

3:00 (and 10 seconds) PM: Nope, still doesn't work

3:01 PM: Sadder and more defeated, left my building again and went to the student club to read. (Harry Potter, yay!)

4:50 PM: Tried my lock because there's no way that they would be still working on this past the end of the work day.

4:51 PM: Nope, still doesn't work. But at this point (and after asking my neighbour, and his lock working), I called the security firm to ask what was going on.

5:05 PM: I got off the phone with the security firm after being told they don't have anything in their records about doing lock testing today. Great.

5:15 PM: The security firm calls me back and tells me they are sending a security guard who can let me into my room. Yay!!

5:52 PM: The security guard shows up and lets me in! (after trying 59439839 keys to figure out which one is the right one hehe).

5:54 PM: Finally back in my room and can eat lunch!!

6:00 PM: Happily on FaceTime with Camille :)

The outcome of my broken lock was that it can unlock and lock from the inside but from the outside, it won't unlock. So the security guard told me I had to file a maintenance report and someone would come to fix it. The next issue is that the people who fix it don't work on the weekends and I didn't know that yet.

So I spent the weekend pretty much locked in my room because if I left, I had to leave my room wide open and I didn't want to really do that... It's a good thing I had an exam on Monday morning that I needed to study for but being locked in a 20 squared meter studio apartment for 2 days was not going to work for me either. So I did escape my room once or twice with some very creative tape work to keep my door from closing but not make it look like my door was wide open. I also had a backup plan to crawl through my window in case my door did get accidentally closed (the perks of living on the ground floor)!

Monday edit: Maintenance did fix my lock and I can now happily leave my room whenever I please :)

Note: this is what my walks home from school look like :) There are very pretty sunsets and I don't even have to stay up late to see them! This was taken at 3:40 PM! (The perks of having only 5 hours of sunlight per day)