I like new friends!

So... Thanks for reading the blog! ("welcome back!!" to those that are in the 55 strong, "what took so long?" if this is your first journey).

Since my initial post, I've been flooded with questions.  Though, I guess, the biggest question is what my day-to-day life is like.

I'm not going to lie, I definitely thought I'd stick out on my daily life here, but Oslo has proven to be diverse, and not in the way I originally thought.  So... does that mean its a utopia?  Not quite.  In fact, oddly, it has almost as confusing a grasp on the race relation puzzle as America.  Though, for radically different reasons.

Clearly, America has the whole "260 years of enslavement and another 100 years of second class citizenry of blacks, plus the genocide of an indigenous people, plus the accepted racism against various immigrants" going for it.  Norway, on the other hand, has an extremely apologetic population trying to accommodate people they never really wronged (I suppose one could say the same for most present day white's in America, though, the difference being that present day whites in America, to varying degree, have benefited from the past.  Norway never had a past to benefit from or make amends about).

All pretty confusing, right?

Anyway, like with most european countries, the general population is welcoming, especially towards Americans.  Though, a willingness to try to assimilate is always welcomed and, generally, the only hand wringing I've seen have been in relation to the more extreme forms of Islam.  Though, that's more of a western world, as a whole, problem.  Additionally, Norwegian culture is quite distrusting of strangers, except when they get drunk.

That being said... I'm meeting a lot of new people and having fun over here (I'd say that 2 out of 10 people smile and nod at me, that number jumps to 8-9 when they hear me speaking english... they'll either tell me about some thrilling, American vacation or some insight they have in to American politics.)

All in all, things are good... (as opposed to being bad... meaning bad, not bad meaning good)

Rap lyric I'd incorporate into a song if I were a rapper:
Beer cost almost ten bucks a piece, I still spill more/ Spring must be coming, Sun don't set until four!