Glaciers and Oslo: Norway

Hallo! 

How are you doing? I’m fantastic! Jonathon and I just got back from a wonderful trip in Norway. Let me tell you, it was SO beautiful. The whole trip our view out of the window was as beautiful as the picture perfect postcard, all ranging from green hills and fjords to snow-covered mountains and glaciers. 

The trip started with a bus ride to Oslo, the country’s capital. It was a bustling town with many cafes and sites to see, so we started with a tour around town. We got to see the opera house (where you can walk all the way up to the roof), the official palace for the royal family, a wonderfully architected Van Gogh Museum, and more. 

The Opera House

Van Gogh Museum

Royal Palace

One thing we learned here was how expensive Norway is! Apparently, it is the most expensive country in the world. :O Whoa. One of the times Jonathon and I bought a fast-food gas station burger and fries each with one water and a bag of chips and it cost us about $35 USD. 

More Oslo pictures

After Oslo we ventured Northwest to Jostedal, which was covered in deep snow, even during the start of May. We stayed at these cute little cabins alongside a river, and we all cooked our meals together. We went on this trip with VIS, or the Vaxjo International Students, with a group of fifty people. We got to meet new people and they helped make our time in Norway so great!

Jostedal cabin

Our big adventure was a hike up one “arm”, which was called the 9 farms glacier. Our guide explained to us that the glacier is built like an octopus with one large head and 27 arms. This glacier, Jostedalsbreen, is the largest in continental Europe, and the small section that we saw of it was stunning. It was a beautiful blue, and crawled down the valley just like an octopus.

To get to this amazing hunk of ice, though, we had to hike through knee-deep snow for a long ways. If you left the guide’s path by even one foot you sometimes fell through to snow as deep as your waist! Once on the glacier we all put on cramp-ons, which are spikes for your shoes, as well as harnesses. We hooked together and climbed up to a high point with a view of the valley that was amazing. 

Then, we rappelled into a cave within the glacier for lunch! We got to sip on hot chocolate in the drippy ice cave on continental Europe’s largest glacier – wow. 


Finally it was time to go back, but not without a few ambush snowball attacks on the other groups. Then, we made our way to a lake below created from glacial runoff. We then kayaked back (as far as we could) and hiked to the vans! My jacket pocket with my phone in it was hanging out of the kayak for a good five minutes before I realized, but luckily I have a handy fiancé and it now works. We may have gotten ourselves stuck in the snowy lake a few times. Then, the hike back was much more difficult, because we were all so tired, but we made it! 

Sadly, our trip was about over. The next day we spent in the bus, from 7 am to 12 am! Finally, Monday we went to class and then packed for an early morning on Tuesday – GERMANY! Yes, there will be a blog post on that trip too ;) It’s extra special because we will be visiting our wonderful friend, Marion, in her hometown! 
See you then,
-Laura. 

Barbeques and Quiz Walks

Hej! Guess what? It's finally becoming spring here in Sweden! Yay! We've gotten to enjoy the outdoors some more, though it is still a bit chilly and rainy some days. I am REALLY looking forward to a beautiful Texas summer and days on the boat with family and friends! But until then, here are some pictures of the last couple weeks in Växjö. 

We met some friends for a picnic at the lake before some geocaching and this cute duck kept following us around! He had come quite a ways by the time I started recording - too cute!

Jonathon and I went to meet some of his friends at a grill near the lake for a barbeque. We got to visit the vegetable market in town that morning, so I made a beautiful kebab :D he, of course, had to have hot dogs. Haha. 

We've been training hard (ish) haha, for the upcoming half marathon. I had to stop and take some pictures of the forest while we were out practicing the course! Look at Jonathon and Sinead go ;) the race is this Friday, ahh! 

My beautiful self-portrait pizza ;)

Jonathon's lovely portrait!

It seems like everything we do revolves around food...so We had a Picasso pizza night: self-portrait edition! Our buddies and some friends on the floor came over and we each made our own pizzas. They weren't so cute...but they tasted yummy! :D 

Photo credit: Jonathon Orwig

Sunday we went on a quiz walk in the woods with our friend family. It was a cold, drizzly day, but we ventured into the forest and tried to decipher Swedish quiz questions. I've never seen this done at home, but basically you go on a 3k or so walk and look for questions. You're given an answer sheet and you record your answers to the trivia questions, then walk until you find the next one and so on. A friend that we made got all of the questions right, whoa! I only got 7/12 haha.

Beautiful trees on the way to town!

Everything in Växjö seems to be blooming; there are colorful flowers everywhere and blooming trees as well!

While most of our experiences here have been great, we have had a couple of not so fun ones. Last weekend my bike was stolen out of the bike cage, and then this weekend Jonathon's was! We've both gotten new ones since, as it is difficult to get to class without them.

In a couple days it'll be Jonathon's birthday! I know he's missing his friends and family, so if you see this, please send him a nice birthday message :)

In a week we will be headed to Norway on our first big travels here so far! After that we will go visit my sweet roommate at SNU in her hometown of Bremen, Germany! I'm sure I will have lots of pictures and separate blog posts for those travels. We are definitely excited for them!

We are getting ready to come home, as we miss all of our friends and family. Only one month and a little less than two weeks! I hope we'll be ready for the Texas sunshine ;D

Sincerely,

Laura.