What a treat it is to be in a foreign country (Norway) and to be able to BE a foreigner. To not apologize for speaking bad Finnish or failing to intuit unspoken cultural norms. To walk up to a person working the register at a museum and say, in English, that I'd like to buy one ticket. To look confused in public, take out a map, and be a tourist. It's like what it feels like taking your bra off at the end of a long day - I didn't even know I was feeling constrained by a need to fit in in Finland but I guess I was because this feels GOOD.
The conference I'm presenting at is the Norwegian Forum for English for Academic Purposes, hosted by Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. You can see the program and session abstracts here. They know how to welcome the participants in style - last night, they hosted a reception for participants at Oslo City Hall, which is where the Nobel Peace Prize is handed out. We were greeted by the mayor of Oslo (!), fed delicious food, and then given a tour of that historic building. It was like a dream - a super nerdy, academic dream.
The interior of Oslo City Hall.
I did a little sight-seeing on my own yesterday before the reception and saw a beautiful fortress, a military museum, and a museum about the Norwegian resistance movement during World War II. I've been reading up on that last subject so it was fulfilling to see everything in person. It was also fulfilling to choose things to see based on my own interests rather than making concessions to my kids' interests. But then I did find myself taking pictures of things the girls would like to see, especially at the resistance museum since Miriam read Shadow on the Mountain, too. Still, it felt deliciously liberating to walk by a huge temporary exhibition/replica of Noah's Ark docked in the harbor and be like...nope, don't feel like going in there, and I don't have to concede to anyone else's travel opinions, yay!
The hotel I'm staying in is connected to a hospital. The included-breakfast is taken at the hospital cafeteria, which means that I had the pleasure of eating in the same room as half a dozen brand-new babies (it was their mothers who were eating, of course). What a treat! And I can't believe the view from my room:
I literally gasped out loud when I saw it. Just gorgeous. And yes, that is a cemetery...located right next to the hospital...
Norway has been amazing and I still have a whole day to go! I feel so lucky to be here. And I haven't even said a thing about the conference - is there a life where you can just go to conferences all the time? I have taken pages and pages of notes on the presentations and I have so many ideas for things I want to try with my students! Sometimes you get so caught up in work that you don't take the time to step outside and say, what are other people doing? How can I do things differently? What new research has come out since I last read up on x topic? It's brilliant.
