More snow!!!

Playing in the snow

It's been so long since we've been somewhere cold that I feel like a little kid again every time it snows :-) I've stood out on our balcony catching snowflakes on my tongue and love sitting by our fireplace when its cold at night.  Last night was the first time the snow really started to stick around here and Tyler says it should probably snow the next 4 days or so.  We're hoping to go skiing really soon!

Where we live on the coast they have little canals that run through different areas - allowing for more slips for the residents with boats.  The other day it got so cold that the surface of one of the canals had actually frozen into big sheets of ice, cracked apart by the waves of the local ferry that passes nearby.  I tried to take a picture, but the details really didn't show up very well.

More stuff we've learned from Norway:

• They play Real Housewives of NJ and Dynasty on TV.  If that's their idea of Americans, we're screwed...
• There are very few commericals on TV.  Generally one very short break in the middle of the program, then a longer one at the end.
• Beer prices are advertised by the bottle at the store and Budweiser costs $4 a bottle!
• There is no Wal-Mart around the corner, no Best Buy, no Target.  There is Ikea, but there are only two - one on each side of the city - and it takes just over 30 minutes and two buses and the subway to get there from here.  With those restrictions you can only buy so much at a time.  Oh, and here its pronounced "ick-eeya."
• Our neighborhood has its own mall, but its basically all clothing stores, except for one interior decorating store, one florist, and a small kitchenwares store.
• I had to go to 4 different stores just to find pillows for our bed (that didn't cost $100 each) - thank you Ikea!  There were only 8 different color pillowcases to choose from.
• There's another mall nearby called House of Oslo - it has a beer/wine/liquor store that is almost twice the size of our apartment in Texas!  A bottle of Captain Morgan's costs just over $50, but vodka is about half that price.
•  Grocery stores are about the size of a drugstore.  It's still a little difficult pricing things because meats and such are priced in Kroner per kilo, so I have to convert kilos to pounds then factor in the exchange rate.  Fortunately most of the grocers have been very nice when I ask them to give me an idea of exactly how many, say, salmon steaks are in a kilo so I can figure out how good of a deal I'm getting.
• There is a lane on the highway just for buses and cabs.  Makes it VERY nice when you're traveling during rush hour, since you can bypass all the traffic.

We start our Norwegian classes on Monday - we're shooting for two hours a day, three days a week.  More on that later.  I finished unpacking the last box today (yay!) and finally almost have everything arranged the way we want it.  We've officially adopted Rett into our family :-)  The three of us had our first Tex-Mex night this evening; I made hard and soft shell beef tacos plus some Norwegian beer.  Tomorrow we're off to check out a local farmers market that takes place twice a month.  Curious to see just what we'll find there and how much things cost.  Below are a couple videos of the snow, enjoy!