Week 2 in Trondheim: Exams & Settling In!

Hi there! My first whole week in Trondheim has been a big one and I am having the best time!!

Monday, January 22nd, 2024

The week started off with a huge day! Bright and early, I had my 5th Ghent University exam, Fish & Shellfish Immunology. This exam was a big one with tons of content and microscopic details that I most likely will never need to know again but in case you need someone to explain the signal transduction pathway for shrimp to create a clot, I'm your girl.

The exam wasn't even the biggest part of my day because, after the exam, my class and I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon exploring the city centre of Trondheim. We even found a really cool church. Who knew these cool churches aren't just in "mainland" Europe!!

The rest of my class headed back to the dorms but I stayed in the city and wandered around a little bit more. This is one of the biggest tourist destinations in Trondheim: the colourful wooden houses! It looks just like Halifax & St. John's!

Then I had lunch at a really cute cafe and headed slightly out of the city to play tennis! Side note: NTNU has a really cool organization that has clubs for just about any sport you could ever imagine and of course, tennis is one of them! So I signed up for a regular slot on Monday afternoons to go play with 3 other people! This was the first time and it was super fun and it was just me and another new tennis player, Mina!

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024

Tuesday was a pretty mellow day compared to Monday. I had class with an in-class assignment so I finished that up pretty quickly then walked around campus to get some little tasks done and then back to the dorms!

Wednesday, January 24th, 2024

Wednesdays seem to be a big day every week from now on. This is the day that we have our "Experts in Teamwork" class, where we are saving the world. So it's a big day.

Thursday, January 25th, 2024

Thursday was an exciting day! Today I went to my appointment to apply to become a Norwegian resident! How cool! After all of the long processes to become a Belgian resident I was expecting this process to be just as painful, but I was wrong! The immigration woman was so nice and helpful and I've already been approved and should have my residency card in less than 3 weeks (fingers crossed)!

After my appointment I sat in a nice cafe, drinking coffee and looking at the gorgeous view (while also studying, but that's the less exciting part).

Later in the day, on a quick study break, I went on a walk to this really cool church that's just around the corner from my apartment. The only problem is that all of the snow here has recently melted and it's been raining, so then everything froze and my walk was more of a slide-and-hope-to-not-fall.

Friday, January 26th, 2024

Another day and another exam! This time was Microbial Community Management and this exam was a full 4 hours, half of which were dedicated to calculations, oh what fun! But at least this is exam # 6/7 so we are almost there! I finished the exam and my brain was tired so I walked around the city a little bit more then headed back to my apartment and took a much-needed nap. I chatted with Paris for a while on FaceTime, and then I decided I couldn't keep being lazy so I went to the gym and did a little workout and ran on the treadmill.

Saturday, January 27th, 2024

Finally a day with nothing on my schedule. Unfortunately, that means I have to deal with all of the things I've been neglecting this week. While we are writing our exams for our school in Ghent, we are missing classes for our school here in Norway (not an ideal system). So I got all caught up today and started the self-study modules that I have to get done before next week.

Side note: listen to how crazy this is: I have a class that only meets 3 times all semester!! How does that work?? All of the content (all 38 hours worth of lecture videos) is completely "self-study". Then at the end of the semester, we do a group presentation and write an exam. What a course!! But anyway, I am already behind on that but I spent a good chunk of the day getting slightly more caught up!

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

In desperate need to leave my desk, I spent the morning and early afternoon hiking in a nearby park with my friend, Kalani! The park was massive and had a sufficient amount of icy hills. Today, I learned the importance of wearing spikes and Kalani learned the importance of wearing spikes with the pointy side out.

Now (Sunday evening), I'm back at my desk studying for my final Ghent exam (!!!!!!) and I'll leave you with more pictures of the beautiful Norwegian landscape (and me hehe).