Kaviar is Caviar (We've Come to Norway, part 4)

It is 11:45pm here and we are supposed to meet someone with all of our luggage around the corner at 6:45am tomorrow after breakfast. Ahh!

So, what we did today from 9:00 to 3:00 was sit in a room at Det teologiske Menighetsfakultet (if your tried to pronounce that, welcome to our last four days) with 25-30 other people - some were academics working on youth ministry projects and some were practitioners of youth ministry in Norwegian churches and organizations. We heard four research papers presented and discussed them. Don't be misled when I say "we." I heard, but, as I am neither an academic nor a practitioner, I kept my thoughts to myself. Even so, it was an interesting day filled with a whole lot of coffee. (I've had more black coffee and americanos here than in the rest of my life combined.)

This is what we had for lunch. It was a piece of bread topped with a kind of mayonaise, and kind of mayonaise-y cold slaw, tiny shrimp, lettuce, cucumber, lemon, dill, locks, ham, roast beef, pickle, tomato, red pepper, red onion, grapes, and maybe coriander. Delicious and nutso.

 Here are Alaina and Hans Kristian (He's the reason we're here, by the way. Thanks, Hans!)

After the seminar, Alaina found a grocery store online and we walked there. It was interesting. Foreign grocery stores are always interesting, but even moreso when you don't know the language. There was a line of products that said Kaviar, we weren't sure what they were because some were pink and we thought that caviar was black. We found out later that they were, in fact, tubes of caviar. We've seen them at our hotel breakfast, too, so I guess it's a popular item. Lots of things come in tubes here. 

We bought a small jar of pickles, a small jar of jam, chocolate, cookies, ten slices of cheese, a small baguette, sugar snap peas, and carrots all for the small fee of 206.20 kroners or 36.38 dollars. That's grocery shopping in the most expensive city in the world, folks!

We carried our items back to the hotel and ate them while watching Gone Baby Gone, which is very intense, in case you were wondering.

At 7:45pm, one of our new friends Hans (a different Hans than pictured above) picked us up and brought us to what we didn't know was another dinner party with some of the same people plus a couple of Americans, so that was fun. We skipped dinner (full of pickles and whatnot), but ate ice cream and drank americanos. It was fun. We've been blessed by wonderful hosts here in Norway, which more than makes up for the expensive groceries.