Norwegian Classes + A Beautiful Roller Ski

My Norwegian course has now started, and I am really excited about it. I have a 3 hour block of it twice a week with a smallish group (around 20) as well as a 2 hour lecture once a week with all of the Norwegian 2 students. The professor for my small section is really fun and excited about grammar. She studied Norwegian literature at the university and now seems to mostly do language teaching here, at the summer school and in Sweden. I think that I am the youngest person in the class, with most of the others being either grad students or people who immigrated to Norway and are trying to improve their Norwegian. It is a really interesting group of people. There are 4 of us from the U.S., 4 from Iran, and people from all sorts of other countries including the Netherlands, Korea, Indonesia and Germany. Many of them are trying to stay in Norway. One thing that is interesting about the class is that the "secondary" teaching language is English. Imagining having a new foreign language clarified for you in another foreign language gives me a lot of respect for those in the class that come from non-English speaking foreign countries, and makes me feel really lucky. I'm hoping that through about 8 hours a week of being in Norwegian classes I will start gaining enough confidence in my speaking ability to start actually using Norwegian in my daily life. As it stands, I understand enough to mostly know what is going on around my when people are talking to each other in Norwegian, but keep responding in English and having conversations in English.
I have been doing more workouts with the nordic ski club, which has been so fun. Yesterday I went on a roller ski that lasted almost 3 hours when all was said and done and brought us up to a road called Maridalsveien, which was a super popular place for people working out, there were so many cyclists and roller skiers! Why it is so popular was pretty obvious, the road was filled with gentle hills and went through this beautiful green farm land surrounded by mountains (maybe large hills by Norwegian standards, but mountains by my Minnesotan standards). Over the course of my roller ski, I saw sheep, horses and moose crossing signs. I wish I had pictures to display, but alas, I was roller skiing! I also felt like my technique was finally coming back to me, which was refreshing. When I came home I was really hungry and ate a lot of bread with brunøst and lingonberry jam, so delicious!
Also, my plans to go to Copenhagen and to visit a Torstenson relative named Ingeborg in Tønsberg are now cemented!