Happy Halloween!

Hei hei!

Alright, here's the deal: I completely forgot that we are going to Bergen this weekend!! The schools is sponsering a trip for all the international students to travel to Bergen for the weekend, and do some sight-seeing!
Bergen is on the west coast, among the many fjords. It should be BEAUTIFUL!
So, be expecting lots of pictures! That should make up for the lack there-of lately...

Yesterday we were in Oslo once again.
This time we visited the Hedmark elected members of parliament. That was pretty cool--there are 3 of them: one from the socialist-left party (Karin), one from the labour party (Annette--she's only 28!), and one from the conservative party (Gunnar).

They had some interesting things to say because they are all on different committees.
The rep from the labour party was on the foreign relations and aide committee, and she apparently just got back from Namibia and Angola, which was pretty neat. The Norwegian government is apparently doing some development work with their governments on the fisheries there.

Karin and Annette had some interesting things to say about poverty. Karin emphasized the difference between poverty in Norway (what I say to that: HA, yeah right) and poverty in Africa, or other "third world" locations. She says the difference is that in Norway its more of a social exclusion, because the standard of living is so high and without money you can't participate in society, though you may be able to afford to eat, rather than a matter of living in a place where everyone is excruciatingly poor, and can barely survive, etc. It was a nice socialist perspective..and I probably can't say it quite as eloquently as she did, because I thought it was a bit of a stretch in the first place to claim that there are "impoverished" people in Norway.

The conservative guy, Gunnar, was on the education and church committee, and he informed us that there is debate in the parliament about the continuance of the State church. It is such a long tradition, and it is integrated into the Norwegian constitution, so it is incredibly difficult to get rid of it. They are also worried about what will happen to the old churches in Norway if they separate the Lutheran church from the state. However, he said that the society is no longer a "Christian" society as such, and the views of the society toward having a state church are changing.

So it was an interesting day.

After that lecture, we went to the Supreme Court, and got to talk to one of the justices. Um. It was...cool...maybe...if you're pre-law.
I think the only interesting part about that, to me, was the fact that we were actually able to go into the high courts and talk to a SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. It was ridiculous! I mean, he was a cute little old Norwegian man, very intelligent and such...just not my cup of tea.
I was considering law school for a while there, for international and human rights law...But if I have to suffer through lectures like that day in and day out, I think I'll shrivel up and die before the end of the first semester.

So it was pretty cool that we got to meet with the Norwegian "government".

Halloween tomorrow? Some have asked me if they celebrate Halloween here...I think the Norwegians have discovered the economic impact of Halloween, so they have adopted it into the culture a bit. ;-) The youth have also discovered that Halloween is another excuse to party, so it has definitely been adopted by the college-aged Norwegian population.

There are two nights worth of...festivities, shall we say, planned in our apartment complex. I am anticipating no sleep due to excessive volume from upstairs.
Some friends and I are planning to get cider and candy and watch scary movies at their place, which should be fun :)

So Happy Halloween everyone!

I'll post pictures from Bergen at the end of the weekend!