Wednesday night we had a great hardingfele concert. Olav Mjelva and Per Anders Buen Garnås played a concert of solo hardingfele for roughly an hour. They make it look so easy! Their bows teasing the music out of the strings, applying just the right amount of pressure to create a clean crisp sound. Of course, there was a lot of tuning, but it's worth it when the fiddles sing like that!
After the concert, we danced to student musicians; I would rather have had them play the concert again so we could have danced to that! Then of course the party moved up to the studentheim. After a brief tour of my very clean room, we settled on the kitchen with a sofa. The party fell apart when someone broke the sofa (it's been fixed now). One of my friends crashed on the air mattress in my room and I headed off to wash at the dentist's office.
While everyone back home was celebrating Thanksgiving, I celebrated my friend Silke's birthday. We had pizza and cake, wine and conversation. She's from Germany and most of the time we speak English, which makes it easier for me to get in on deep discussions. I tend to understand what's being said in Norwegian, but I'm not quite fast enough to cut in to a conversation and make my point in Norwegian, yet.
Thursdays are also contain one of my favorite classes - Tradisjonskunnskap or Knowledge of Tradition. Ånon makes getting up on Thursday mornings after a late party really worth it. He knows so much about the traditions in Norway and folk music around the world that it's impossible to catch up if you haven't been in class to hear what he's said. He also has a phenomenal sense of humor that is terribly dry and helps keep me on my toes to avoid missing any good one liners.
Friday was a review day in Folk Music and Society. We also determined what our project topics would be for the year. Mine is going to be planning US tours for Norwegian folk musicians. Of course, I'll have to have at least one practical example, so I'll be writing more about that later! We rounded out the afternoon by making waffles and taking naps; it seemed like a practical use of time.
On Friday evening I started back at the hotel. We have a new manager and new coworkers and therefore a new system and new degrees of chaos. Things went surprisingly well, however. Things also went well on Saturday when I worked in the restaurant and then late into the night in the bar. Ironically, the fire alarm went off when we had the county firemen as our guests. Not to worry, it was a false alarm.
The best part of the week was definitely during the day on Saturday. I woke up to an overcast sky that was dumping snow all over our beautiful landscape. It was still snowing at one when we all met at the grocery store to purchase decorations for the gingerbread Nidaros cathedral we were going to help decorate. Then we all walked together out to Nesland in the snow. Once we got there, Hallvard and Ingebjørg got to work putting together the cathedral, the rest of the girls made pepperkaker, and the boys played music. After a while I changed tasks to help the other Ingrid grind the almonds to make marzipan. It was hard to leave such a cozy scene to head to the hotel! And the gingerbread cathedral - WOW!
On Sunday we went for a short walk so we could get a good view of the fresh snow. It's so beautiful here! The sun was shining, the skies were blue, and it was freezing cold. Since we'd gotten about 6 inches of snow the day before, it was easy to walk around again, so we allowed our feet to guide us to the finished gingerbread houses on display at the academy.
Tomorrow we are playing individually for our instructors. We aren't getting grades, but pretty much everyone is totally stressed out. It's terrifying to sit in front of people who really know what good folk music can sound like and play alone. I'm going to try to remember to breathe.
Two Ingrid's grinding nuts:
Hallvard, the architect planning his next move:
The cookie factory:
Getting closer:
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