Lost in Translation

After a week of tiptoeing around on the extremely icy streets, I had my first fall.  It was no big deal, but I am no longer the graceful ice walker I thought.  Many students have bought non-slip covers for their shoes…. I might have to invest in a pair.

My next incident is that I went to the store to buy laundry detergent but instead, came home with fabric softener.  I had a suspicion that I had bought the wrong thing but it wasn’t until I got home to Google translate it, that I realized it was softener.

As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, when I finally did go back and buy the proper laundry detergent I had some issues making the laundry machine work.  I spent about 10 minutes trying to read the machines, gave up and came to get my English-Norwegian dictionary and spent a few more minutes trying to figure it out that way.  Then that wasn’t working so I got the first person I saw, the other Canadian who also doesn’t speak Norwegian, again, we couldn’t figure it out even with the help of the pictures on the machine.  Finally after about 20 minutes of trying to get the washing machine to work, we came and got our Norwegian roommate to translate and tell us how to get it to work.  It was really quite easy, but not being able to read was no fun.  I’ve made it through translating the front cover of my magazine so am making some Norwegian language progress.

For lunch, I spent $25 on a simple sandwich and coke at a café today; lets just say nothing comes cheap in this nation, which is known to be one of the most expensive countries in the world.  Then we went bowling, it was fun!

Today was my first day of classes.  I had an E-Commerce class this morning, it was great.  Seems like similar lecture styles as in Canada but the class was 3 hours long.  I still have to figure out how to buy the overpriced textbook.  Then was a Norwegian and Culture class, slowly but surely learning some language.  Tonight is a “Bad Taste” party where we dress up in poor taste and go to the bar.  I bought some ugly plain flood pants Ill wear with some mismatched top. I hope I get to meet some Norwegians as I’ve been spending most of my time with other International students.