First Day Of School

January 4th, 2010

Day 4

Today I walked.

I walked to the university with Mats and fifteen other exchange students at 8:00 this morning. After orientation and breakfast, I walked with a much larger group of exchange students on a guided tour of the university. Then I walked to the Sia building (the company on campus in charge of my dorm room) to initiate an internet agreement, so that I may get an internet connection in my room as soon as possible. Next I walked to building H (a junction building with the main lobby) to meet my class advisor. Then I walked with Tom (another exchange student from UNO) to the grocery store fifteen minutes away from campus to get the bare essentials. And then finally…I walked ten minutes back to my dorm room carrying three full grocery bags and a box of frozen pizza wedged beneath my arm.

Strange, but few people in Kristiansand actually own cars- life is simpler here. For the next 5 months, I will walk or ride a bicycle everywhere. And for those longer explorative trips, I will have to travel by bus, cab, train or ferry. But I don’t mind, in fact, I even welcome this change. It’s just another one of the many things that will be different and enlightening about my life here in Norway.

The campus of Agder University is much smaller then UNO’s, but it is EXTREMELY nice. Surrounded by small cottages and old churches, the building itself resembles a sort of high tech industrial plant dropped from somewhere in the sky. As I walked in this morning, tall metal walls and machine-like staircases rose up in it's bowels like a factory of education. But unlike the mechanical drones that one might predict running such a place, every person I met in Agder was kind, friendly and comforting to meet.