study break!

i made oatmeal raisin cookies last night when my brain stopped working... but they didn't really turn out like they usually do... maybe it was the brown sugar, that isn't really brown sugar (some kind of sticky brown-sugar-in-syrup), or the baking soda that doesn't exist here and was replaced by a tad of "dessert" baking yeast... or my fork that had to take the place of an electric beater... or maybe just that i dont have measuring cups or spoons and i just guestimated everything! but anwyays, my roommates said they were tasty (but perhaps they just didn't want to hurt my feelings!). =)

i took another study break today to go to my mail box on campus, and found myself a happy little surprise (a letter and a CD of music to love jesus with!) from jess wynja, one of my amazing roommies from montreal! =)



especially wonderful cuz i was looking forward to joining a Bible study yesterday but due to me running late, i missed meeting them =(. better planning on my part to be learned!

okay, this was a nice study break too, but i should get back to my paper! another study break for yoga at the gym with 2 of my roommates in an hour or so!

rainbow =)



ps.. my new favourite study snack... brunost and wasa!! (caramelly brown cheese with special (norwegian? maybe not?) crackers!

a real norwegian winter!!

it's been awhile, but i have lots of pictures this time so hopefully it was worth the wait =). okay, so my favourite winter activity of snowboarding has been put on hold since i've arrived, but i guess it's not *too* tragic... considering the amazing alternative norwegian adventures i've had here!

my first cross-country ski experience!! right in our own backyards, literally! ski-in, ski-out into a winter wonderland that goes on for miles on end!


beautiful, n'est-ce pas??


we even tried a train at one point... (not so successful!)

but then.... we got to a huge lake, completely frozen over!!

walking out onto the frozen lake!! (yes, i have to say, i *do* enjoy this -14 degree weather when it's this beautiful!!


and then we met a family... with the dad drilling a hole into the ice...


for... yes, ICE FISHING!!!! =D never imagined myself ice fishing one day!


here's all of us jumping on the count of 3! the water in the fishing hole actually moved when we landed... scary!! =) such a fun adventure!

and just to end off the day...

a hike through the forest back to the lake for a campfire (on the snow, not on the lake)!

and now... im just writing up a paper for my Gender and Development class... i decided afterall to take a look at a book by Jeffrey Sachs, a well-known international economist, and special advisor to the UN secretary general on the Millennium Development Goals, called

"The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time"

which actually i think is a brilliant and compelling book that talks about a global compact for cooperation to realistically end extreme poverty by 2025. i've actually had the book on my shelf for over a year, and haven't had a chance to read it, but brought it with me in case i had some extra time. it's amazing what a little motivation from school can do - i finished it in 3 days! =) anyways, i'm taking a look at it from a "gendered perspective"... i'm not even sure i really know exactly what that means... but will figure out soon, seeing as the paper's due in 2 days! =)

and just one more picture, just cuz i love it!


debbie (from Canada), me and Luca (from Italy)

okay, i think i'll end here for now... hopefully more norwegian adventures to share with you soon! much love! =)

rainbow =)

-14 degrees!

yesss, it was -14 degrees here today... oh so cold for a vancouver girl, but survivable! =)

it was mighty cold in my room today though, cuz i had to leave my window open to air out my room following a laundry disaster last night! aside from the norwegian-only instructions, the washers here are so old apparently breaking down is a regular occasion. Rose, my roommate had to come down and help me figure out how to load my laundry... and when it was done, the door was stuck with my clothes trapped inside! Rose, again, came down with me, and took a butter knife to the door, prying it open... also apparently a regular event!! but it turned out the washer didnt drain either, so i had to wring out all the clothes by hand in the sink... brought me back to my Tanzanian days of hand laundry at the Msimbazi center! anyways, there is only one dryer, which was being used, and my roomies said they usually just hang to dry anyways, and Hema lent me her clothes rack for my room. well... my hand wringing didn't quite do the trick, cuz i woke up this morning with a pot of water (i'd put under part of the rack) and giant puddles on my floor, the windows covered in fog and all the pictures on my wall i'd put up with tape fallen down or curled in wetness!! ai yah... i can hardly wait til next laundry day!



the coldness makes the snow stick around though =)! here's a midnight snowman with my roommies (Hema and me in the picture)!

ouch!

with all this snow, there's only one thing i have in mind!! =) ANDDD coincidentally i found out the name of the closest ski resort today! talking to the computer tech guy that was helping me with my computer and saw my Big White desktop... its not too far, 20 min from Oslo, which is about a half hour away, and acessible by bus!

very exciting considering i keep getting all the snow updates from home... whistler, seymour, and my saterday seymour crew!! (might have to click on the picture to see it bigger)


buuuuuut then i went on the website...

ouch... that hurts!!!

theres maybe a ski trip to a mountain further away in february though... ill keep my fingers crossed!!

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!!

it's a winter wonderland out there!









if you look closely, the guy in this picture is cross-country skiing to class!! and judging from all the ski tracks ive seen in the snow, he's not the only one! =)

life in Pentagon!

ok, as promised, this post will be mostly pictures! =)

Pentagon is the student apartment complex where i'm living - there's 10 apartment buildings, im not sure how many students live here, but it seems like a lot! we are all a couple minutes from each other so it's super nice!



these are the girls in my flat! (not the most attractive picture of any of us, but it was the first time all of us were in the apartment at the same time so we had to seize the moment!). L-R: Shirin from Iran, Rose from Cameroon, Hema from Nepal, Chiara from Italy and me! very international house!! =) we had a "family dinner" a few nights ago, Rose made some sort of African chicken stew with yams. and me and Chiara are going to make dinner for us tomorrow night! the girls are all really great, we've been having an awesome time together so far and im really glad to share the next couple months together!!


and today we had a birthday party for our friends Ola from Norway (left) and Andrew from Canada (right) (abbotsford actually!)!



me, Debbie and Laurent made the cake together!



it's a train!!! isnt it cute?? the front car is a pineapple cake, and the back (of course) is chocolate. one of my prouder moments as a chef! =D

it was a fun get-together, dinner and cake followed by...



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SNOWBALL FIGHT in the courtyard!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we all got ourselves very wet and snowy before we called it quits!! its unfortunate i have no aim when i throw but still very much fun!

and tomorrow, i'm going to check out one more church there is here in town. i've been to the Ås church with mostly older folks, and to the "little red chapel"... a mostly student service, mostly African students. interesting, lots of energy. i've been told there's one more church that meets in the evening in one of the buildings on campus, so i'll go see tomorrow. hopefully i'll find a church to settle in soon. =)

hope you are all doing well. keep me updated with your going-ons back home! im a little sad to be missing the epic snowboard season but lots of great new experiences to be had here too! =)

xox
rainbow =)

OHH and i finally know my address here! it's

Attn: Rainbow Choi
Postboks 582
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB)
NO - 1432 Ås
NORWAY

care packages or letters, or even just a post-it note, always very welcome! =)

School...

well, despite my earlier complaint of too much reading, i really am enjoying school here! the whole issue of gender and development still feels over my head, like i cant really grasp all the ideas & conceptual tools and everything since we cover so much each class, but its really interesting. and its really neat that everyone actually cares about the subject and conversations over lunch and get-togethers often come back to stuff we're talking about in class.

and especially today... we've been talking about gender and policy approaches, gender and resource management, gender and health, gender and power relations... but today we had a guest lecturer come in to talk about gender and RELIGION. interesting for sure!! and charged! the lady, whos an anthropologist whose work is mostly in Islamic communities in east africa (she speaks fluent swahili!)... was talking mostly about a sociological view of religion, that's "separate from the theological view - the question of whether a religion is true"... and how religion is lived out in society is both a model OF a society and a model FOR a society... ie, creates how life, social relations, behaviour, etc, IS and defines how it OUGHT to be. in this view, there is no truth in a text or truth in a religion in and of itself, but truth is in the interpretation of the text (ex. Qu'ran says women are to cover the body can be interpreted to mean completely - head, face, fingers, toes.. or less completely) or cultural interpretation of the religion (although people would believe that the truth comes from something outside human existence), which creates morality, how to live, what to do/not do, values, gender & power relations etc for the society. like general trends of domestic violence against women in Islamic communities.

while i agree with her that society is not static, and interpretation is therefore not static... and yes, religion (as anything else) IS necessarily understood and expressed at anytime through the present culture, im not so sure that a sociological view can really be separated from the theological question of truth though, because to even begin an analysis that a worldview of beliefs is constructed by the culture / cultural interpretation is really founded on the assumption that it isn't true, that there ISNT something outside our human existence that directs our understanding of things like morality.

as andrew, a Christian guy in my class noted, religion from my own life and understanding, IS something in and of itself, not just the fabrication of human experience. and its not primarily about symbolic meaning and moral rights and wrongs, but primarily about a relationship, a personal relationship with Jesus. (a bit of my story) the other things are trimmings that stem from that core of a relationship, but those trimmings themselves aren't what constitutes religion. im nice to people not so much because the Bible tells me not to be mean or my Christian culture tells me not to be mean, but primarily because i have a relationship with a God who is loving, i understand through this relationship what love is (well, still continuig to learn!) and that shapes my relationships with other people. i guess what our lecturer was getting at was that what shapes society at large is the trimmings of the culture of religion, but then... is that really even religion? kind of, when talking about social trends in "religious" communities? maybe it depends on the working definition of religion. hmmm...

anyways, this is getting long and academicky... but a lot of questions to think about, lots of discussions going on over lunch today and im sure more to come! keep me in prayer that ill be able to understand this whole topic a little bit more and maybe have opportunities to share a little bit of the truth of Jesus in my life with my classmates!

---

also on the topic of school, i'm writing a paper (any topic on gender & development) for this class due at the end of the month... i have 2 ideas so far that i think would be kind of neat, but havent decided between them / if i will use either one.

1) looking at HIV/AIDS education / other programs in Uganda, and how a gender approach is used/not used/how it is used. Uganda in particular because a) its one of the countries in Africa that has done the best in reducing spread of HIV, and b) ill be there this summer! downside: i dont think there will be one policy/program approach that represents the work in the whole country, so im not sure if this would work as a 10 pg paper

2) looking at World Vision as an organization and see how they address & approach gender in their programs and projects / how their gender approach could be further improved (although this kinda seems like me with my teensy little understanding of gender might be better than what im sure a million experienced minds have put together!). World Vision, because i've worked with the org a bit in the past and support quite a bit, and it might be interesting to look at how being a Christian faith-based organization influences their approach.

well, i'm not sure yet, but we'll see! anyways, very long and wordy post! ill post more fun pictures next time! =)

Oslo-ian adventures!

the last week has been quite full of school - these intensive classes are really intensive!! i've been working on a group assignment all week, and im quite already behind in my readings. yeeks! but i took the day off on Saturday, and im glad i did!! me & some new friends took the train into Oslo and had ourselves a grand day of exploring adventures...!!



Here we are (well i'm behind the camera!) at a parliament building... from L-R: Laurent from France, Florent from France, Kiara (one of my roommates) from Italy and Emilien from France.


yess we are in norway... complete with vikings and trolls!!



a nice outdoor icerink in the middle of town...



where of course we proceeded to practice some ballerina spins in our shoes! not that we needed to find an ice rink... since



all the roads were complete sheets of ice anyways!! poor Laurent slipped twice before we even got to the train station!



at the king's palace! (we made the guard stifle a chuckle afterwards with our broken norwegian "Hyggelig å møte deg, ha det bra" (it's nice to meet you, have a nice day!)



from an old military area at the top of a hill, kinda like in quebec city. we were really spoiled with some amazing views...






this one was my favourite! just so gorgeous!

we were planning to have a *real* norwegian meal while we were out, but quickly abandoned that idea when we found out that any sit-down restaurant had meals STARTING from about $40 CAD. yikes!! i guess we are in the most expensive city in the world afterall!! but we went to a bagel and smoothie bar which was yummy and more student-budget friendly... and it was the first time that Kiara and the Frenchies had ever seen a bagel!! Florent actually asked the server what a bagel was, and she showed him, before we decided to stay. haha.. they enjoyed it though! =) its funny always being in the company of international students, cuz we're jsut so strange to each other sometimes. Kiara was so excited when she found out that i can make pancakes (which i will maybe next weekend)! she visited Canada (including Vancouver actually!!) once before and she said that pancakes were the most memorable thing from the trip! "There was even a HOUSE OF PANCAKES, it was so great!!!" ahh, yes... good ol' IHOP!

hanging out with the Frenchies has been really fun though, im totally having a chance to improve my french!


here's Emelien and Laurent acting out "le petit chaperon rouge" (little red riding hood) for us, when we asked them to tell us a story in french! they're hilarious!

and finally at the end of the day... back to me & Kiara's apartment for dinner, where she made us *real* Italian spaghetti carbonara. much fun!! i made us a stir fry the other night but ill have to step it up and learn how to cook something really chinese!!



im not actually really looking forward to back-to-school this week cuz by tomorrow i'll be even more behind in readings... but it'll be alright. i just need to better balance my school time, spending time with friends time, trying to get to know roommates better time, cooking and cleaning time, and fun & being active time. i went running with debbie today, on some really nice quiet farm roads.. and the gym here is really great - they have spin classes and yoga and capoeira and volleyball and floor hockey and all sorts of fun things every day! actually last week it'd started to snow when i left the house to go to a spin class, but the gym's so close (5 minutes maybe) that i just ran over in my shorts. but by the time i was coming home, it was blizzarding with a good 2 or 3 inches of snow on the ground... i think people i passed on the way home, bundled up with their parkas and scarfs and toques and mitts must have thought i was crazy jogging by in my shorts!

oh and just one more picture - meredith's roommates GIANT dog!



hehe.. anyways thanks for coming with me on my norwegian adventures with the blog! and thanks for all your emails too!!

much love!
rainbow =)

in the kitchen!

so a couple people have asked me about food here and how im doing cooking so i thought it deserved a post of its own...

okay so first about food here... I don't have any Norwegian roommates yet (there's 4 of us here so far, Rose from Cameroon, Hemma from Nepal and Shirin from Iran and me, 2 more coming later) so I haven't had any really authentic "Norwegian" food yet...

but i DID have my first "brown cheese" experience... a very norwegian food. it's cheese but it's brown and it looks like a big bar of caramel or toffee or something. and then you bite into it... and it TASTES like caramel!! crazy!! it's actually pretty good though, in all its crazy sweet caramelly goodness! (steph hsieh, you'd be lovin it! ;) ) ill have to buy some and get a picture of it!

another crazy norwegian thing...

everything comes in tubes here.. fish, shrimp, bacon, CAVIAR... is pepperoni SUPPOSED to be squeezable?!?

and now me. haha.. as my solin hall friends might know, i'm no martha stewart, but my apron is like Dumbo's feather, when i have it on, i think im invincible! but this whole domestication thing is definitely still a work-in-progress... i just made rice the other day. Take 2 turned out nicely, but as for my first attempt, i was cleaning at the same time & wasnt paying attention... and well, this happened



oops! it took me an hour and a half to scrub it clean again. i tried to redeem myself today by making curry chicken with debbie, but the sauce mix came from a package so im not sure if it really counts! but it was yummy



not quite as related, but still in the kitchen...
i just got this set of bowls from the store tonight... they're so pretty, i love them! haha... maybe i am getting domesticated afterall! (its funny that i say that as im studying the social construction of gender relations!)

anyways, many more adventures to come im sure!

much love!
rainbow =)

ps. if any of you have any yummy and easy recipes for me to try... please send them my way!! =)

Ås by pictures! =)

helloo!! heres some pictures of my norwegian home!

one of the main buildings of the university


my room with bigggggg window. i love it!


view from my window at sunrise! (no i didnt get up early to take this picture... the sun doesnt come up til about 9! and actually it goes down again by 3:30 or 4ish! it makes me sleepy, im exhausted and ready for bed by 7pm!)



on campus after it snowed... apparently theres usually waist-deep snow by this time of year but this year is unseasonably warm, and actually all the snow's already melted and its raining instead now. i think i brought vancouver to norway with me!



the As church i went to on Sunday... there was actually one pew where you can listen to translation in english but i didnt know that til a nice man told me AFTER the service! i caught "jesus" ("yay-soos") and "amen" is still "amen", and enjoyed "o come all ye faithful" in norwegian! =) i was the only asian there and one of the fewer people under about 65... but i talked to one student afterwards that told me about an english service in a small chapel on campus in the evening. so i went to that too... and was the only non-African other than the chaplan! =) it was.. different... but i will come to appreciate it i think. i talked to one student who was from tanzania and got to use a couple words of swahili which was cool.

ooooh and last but certainly not least (and also actually from vancouver!)...



these are my crazy DG (discipleship group) girls from UBC! near the end of last semester, DG Bible study co-leader calls and asks if i can go up to her apartment to help bring some stuff down to bible study, so i head over and we're rushing in cuz we're already late to getting to our bible study, and i run in there, and all my DG girls are there yelling SURPRIIIIIISE!!!! and im just like.. AAAAH!!! WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING HERE?!?!?! and they had thrown me a going-away party!!! complete with a how-well-do-you-know-norway game show (with one exception... who looked up a bunch of stuff about Scottish food by mistake!! hehe, thanks Mel!) and a "globe" piniata they'd made tracking where i was going!! so fun! these girls are so great, God really blessed me with the study last semester, I learned so much from the girls, our study through Galatians together and about discipleship! i miss our study already! i couldn't bring the piniata with me, but i brought the globe card, it's on my wall!! =D

okay... time for me to do my readings and head to bed! i started my classes today. i have just one intensive course in january on Gender and Development, and it looks to be a super interesting class! i also picked up some learn-norwegian books from the library so we'll see how i do with that!

i'm here!!!

after a flight to toronto (where my montreal project friend Chara came to give me a hug at the airport!), a long sleepy flight to frankfurt Germany, then learning my first norwegian words from a norwegian man on a flight from frankfurt to oslo, and getting to practice my french on the bus from oslo to my univeristy with 3 other international students arriving from france, and one lost-but-now-found snowboard... i've arrived safe and sound at my new home for the next couple months! =)

im here in As, Norway, just south of the capital city of Oslo... i'm 9 hours ahead of vancouver here, so 6 ahead of ontario people! =)

what exactly am i doing here? well, i'm not really 100% sure myself! im studying Global Resource Systems at UBC, my home university in Vancouver. its kind of vague what i study, but something along the lines of International Development, in Africa in particular. so i'm here at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences taking some classes in their International Environment and Development Studies program, and will be doing an exchange from here to Uganda, East Africa in August-September. i'm not really sure what to expect, but it'll be fun as I find out!

my first couple days here have been great! my friend Debbie, from SFU now studying here, met me when i arrived and invited me to join her and her sister, who was visiting, for dinner! she made us a big trout (not a delicious bass, but still tasty!) and chocolate cake! and my friend meredith from UBC, who graduated from the GRS program last year and is now doing here masters here, joined us too!! i didnt even know she was here until recently! definitely a very warm welcome! yesterday i wandered the university a bit and did groceries with the 3 french students, and we hung out in the evening playing cards... i practiced my french with them and they practiced their english with me, it was good fun! ive been very blessed

the university seems quite pretty... snow covered, so ive made excellent use of my new (and first ever) winter boots! =) quite a few small ponds/lakes frozen over, saw some people playing hockey on it yesterday! ive got my own cozy little room, in an apartment i share with 5 other girls. ive only met one of them, the others are still away for the holidays, but my roommate Rose seems really fun. she's from cameroon and speaks french too!



it's a pretty small town here, bigger than trois pistoles in quebec where i lived this summer though i think. i found the As church this morning, just a 10ish minute walk from where i live. im pretty sure the service will be in norwegian cuz all the signs were in norwegian, but ill go anyways! its always cool worshipping God in a foreign language! =) i cant get my mouth around most of the norwegian sounds yet... "how are you" is "hvordan gar det". i completely butcher it but will work on it! i've got "tusen takk" for "thank you" down pretty good. its still humbling as new languages always are but fun. i have so much change in my wallet because i never know how much stuff actually costs when the cashier tells me in norwegian, so i just smile and give them a big bill and hope it was enough! im looking forward actually learning the language in the next couple months!

well.. theres some random tidbits of life in norway so far! i've been doing a little bit of exploring and have taken some pictures... i'm using a friend's computer right now but i'll put up some pictures soon when i get internet on my own computer!!

talk to you all soon! and definitely please leave me a msg or drop me an email to keep in touch!! =)

love you all!

rainbow =)