Høst i Hamar

Hi everyone!
So life has started to settle down a bit in good Ol' Norway, now that we've been here for about 6 weeks. We've had the post-entry euphoria, an exciting week of adventure in the arctic, and now we are back "home" in Hamar...for a little while. On October 5, our week-long mid-semester break will begin, and that will be another adventure in itself.
I use the term adventure loosely, as there has been very little planning as of right now as to where we will be traveling and what exactly we will be doing...adventures await.

After our break, we've got 8 intense weeks of classes, internships, and life ahead of us. I'm starting the first introductions to my field study at the Namibia Association on Tuesday. I'm very excited and little bit nervous. Overall I am anticipating a very positive and exciting experience--I think there is a lot waiting for me to discover at this one!

In the academic arena, we have finished our first module, the Introduction to Norway,and have moved on to Module 2: Democracy and Development. We will be doing some case studies in this module that we get to choose and personalize to our own academic interests, which will be really nice. We met with the president of the regional government (like the mayor of the county of Hedmark) and learned a bit about their regional government. Apparently, the regional level of government receives money to spend on development projects abroad, so I am thinking of doing my case study on that, because it sounds incredibly interesting (to me anyway!).
Today we met with a judge in the regional appeals courts, and that was very interesting as well. Some interesting points about the courts in Norway:
-There is no death or life sentences in Norway. The maximum sentence is 21 years.
-There are no juvenile detention centers. After the age of 15 you can be imprisoned, but that is rare.
-There are no separate courts--all civil cases, criminal cases, family cases, etc. are heard by the same judges.

Those were some of the more interesting things we learned. We also learned that our Professor, Inger, was convicted for a crime while demonstrating against the building of a hydroelectric plant and roads in a nature reserve in the North. What a bad apple.

In the mean time, fall has really started to set in here in Hamar. The colors here are beyond amazing. I could just drink them in. I know I posted a few pictures from Abby's and my bike ride last week, but I was feeling very inspired by my roommate, who has a knack for taking breath-taking pictures, to go out into our neighborhood and photograph some of the beauty surrounding us.
I'm starting to feel that my creative photographical eye is improving ;)