Full House

Two exciting things happened yesterday afternoon.

1) We had a special 'medical students' orientation. This is because medical students start the semester earlier than everyone else (ie. next week is the official O week, but we'll be sitting in a lecture learning about pelvic anatomy and Levator ani). So yesterday we got to see some of the other students who'll be spending the semester with us. Actually, I only realised recently that a lot of the European students come here to do semesters other than Obs/Gynae in UiO med school, such as neurology, ENT, psychiatry, etc. All in Norwegian of course.

2) When I came home from the orientation, I discovered that the final flat-mate of the floor moved in. So officially (unless someone applies for an internal transfer), our floor is composed of a Norwegian guy, a Norwegian girl, a German guy, a German girl, a Swiss guy, and me. It's quite linguistically abundant, with both Norwegians having their own language as well as English, and the same going for the Germans, and then the Swiss guy speaks German anyway, as well as French and English, and then me, who speaks English primarily, but also with all these other random Asian languages that obviously nobody speaks here. And we had a guest from France who speaks French to the Swiss guy and I surprisingly understand ~70% of what they're saying (Goes to show, while I frantically learn Norwegian atm, you can't really replace 6 years of schoolwork). Anyway, it's quite fun to live in a flat where at any one time, there can be 4 languages going on, as if it were just another day in Oslo.

So far, fingers crossed, the floor seems to be working very cohesively. Horror stories are rampant, and one of the girls from Australia is currently living with this crazy old Norwegian lady who hoards newspapers so much that the door to her room can't fully open and occupies one full fridge so that 5 other inhabitants have to share the other one. We also have a particularly nice building, with a clean kitchen. We do, however, lack a microwave and a toaster. The microwave part is rather unfortunate, because it means extra washing and heating-food-on-a-stove time. It feels rather archaic actually, but food is usually warm throughout (unlike when you microwave food and sometimes get hot outer bits and cold centres)

So tonight our semester kicks off with a Welcome Party in this place called Chateau Neuf. They have funniest names here, like Majorstuen (which isn't Major-station as I discovered). I expect to see daggy European dance moves from Abba. No cameras.