I’ve been living in Oslo for a few months now and I have gotten to know the city pretty well. The main road in Oslo is the King’s Road that leads right up to the palace (pictured). Parliament and the law school for the University of Oslo are also on this road, along with
the National Theatre and many other shops, hotels and restaurants.

Oslo is usually very safe and the police don’t even carry guns. The only places that do have armed guards are some of the embassies, including the U.S. of course. The homeless have their own system and are actually very organized. There isn’t really any violence. You could literally walk up to the king and start having a pleasant chat with him (you’d have to be searched first of course), which is what a friend of mine did. She didn’t even realize it was the king until after he had introduced himself, but let’s be honest, you don’t
really expect to see the king of your country backstage at a local concert.

Food is still ridiculously expensive, but the price for ice cream went down a little. I jumped for joy a little bit, at least until I saw that I still couldn’t really afford it. Apparently, you can get a lot of stuff for cheap in Sweden, but if you don’t have a car it makes getting there and back a little difficult, especially if you’re just going there to grocery shop. Also, the price for the cheapest haircut at a salon that I could find was at least $100. Long live the American Institution for Hair Salons (and yes, I did just come up with that name).

School has been going pretty well, but I’m actually starting to miss the American secondary education system. I don’t really have any homework, I just have to write a qualification paper for each class so I can take the final exam, attendance is not required for my classes,
and I only have to go to class eight hours a week to receive the equivalent of 12 credit hours. Sounds great, right? Well, not quite. The professors just lecture and you’re supposed to listen for two hours. You have to read the material (a lot of it too) or you’ll
either fail the qualifying paper or the final exam, and you pretty much have to teach yourself the subject. I pulled my first official all-nighter on Thursday when I was already running on about six hours of sleep and I didn’t even go to bed until 2 p.m. on Friday (and it
was not because I had to catch up on the reading). Needless to say, everything that happened from the time I fell asleep to Saturday around noon is either blank or blurry.

lakerlife@lanthorn.com