Week 7: Salmon Feast and Lent

This time my blog update is actually on time! I really need to actively stay on top of this, it's the only way not to get overwhelmed I think. So here's how I spent another week in Tromsø.

For starters, on Monday Lyonel cooked me a lovely feast with smoked salmon in a sour cream and caper sauce over mashed potatoes. He had recently received some money and wanted to treat me to a slightly delayed Valentine's dinner. It was fantastic, I haven't had salmon in so long, what a wonderful meal! Not to mention that we also saw some incredible northern lights together that evening and he gave me a few small Valentine's gifts. A home-made card (very cute), a nifty Fatima's hand amulet, and a few packets of seeds (sweet peas and lettuce). I thought it was very sweet, because he said that he wanted to get me flowers at first, but then thought that I would enjoy seeds more since I could grow them myself and the plants would last longer. Very thoughtful and personal gifts, I just adore them. :-)

On Tuesday we had another meeting for the ISU, this time concentrating more specifically on the International Childrens Day that we will be hosting in March. I volunteered to work on the food part, but I really do hope that I manage to find some people with a decent work ethic to help me. We are supposed to serve the kids (they are 5th graders, so not teeny-tiny kids) exotic foods from around the world. We also discussed the planning of the trip to the Kautokeino Easter Festival. I won't be attending that one since I'll be heading home to Finland for Easter, but it seems like a cool event.

On Tuesday I also made pea soup and (tried) to make fastlagsbullar or Shrove buns as they call them in English. It is traditional to celebrate the Tuesday before lent in Finland by a) going sledding, and b) eating pea soup and shrove buns. The pea soup was tasty as always, but the buns didn't rise like they were supposed to, probably due to a yeast malfunction. I figure I should have used fresh yeast like the recipe said, and not dry yeast which I had on hand. Ah well, I will make a second attempt at some point!

As for lent, I have decided to make some Lenten changes in my life. First I totally re-arranged the furniture in my little room for a change of pace. But more seriously, I will be limiting my intake of processed sugar up until Easter. Not really out of religious purposes, more out of health purposes. I don't eat a lot of sugar anyway, but I'm cutting out things like jam, and any processed food with added sugar. I will allow myself a sweet treat on Saturday or Sunday if I happen to have something, I figure you shouldn't deprive yourself of all the joys associated to food. I'm already living on a poor college student's diet of oatmeal, crisp bread, beans and brown rice, carrots, and home-made whole grain muffins. A small indulgence here or there certainly won't hurt me.

The new edition of Utropia came out on Wednesday. My article turned out well and the photos look ok, admittedly not great. I intended to go to the release party this time around but ended up taking an extended nap instead. The editors still owe me a beer, not that I really want a cheap Mack beer anyway.

On Friday I did some microscopy on water samples with Nona. I had collected two water samples out at Telegrafbukta, a lovely beach side park located on the south end of the island. Unfortunately my samples didn't have anything really interesting in them, Nona was much more successful with her aquarium water samples. We will be making a second attempt on Monday, with some water that Nona collected out on Kvaløya somewhere.

Saturday was by far the week's highlight. Josh invited me to go along to a sledding day hosted by the Buddy Tromsø program. We were supposed to meet at the student housing in Prestvannet and then walk to the hill from there. Lyonel came along although he seemed hesitant since he told us he had never really been sledding before, except for one time when he was maybe 10. So we got there, and there was a surprisingly good turnout. The day was lovely, clear and sunny, and only around -11°C, so not terribly cold. Few of us had sleds so we had a bunch of plastic bags with us. Luckily as we walked to the hill we went past an elementary school where there were a bunch of sleds that had been left outside by the kids. We borrowed them for a few hours and that really saved the day. The hill turned out to be fantastic and everyone had a blast. We even had some active photographers along so I hope to get some photos from the day. I wore my Finnish student overalls which were great for sledding. We practically had to drag Lyonel off the hill. He is in love with sledding now it seems, and he begged us to go again next week. I wouldn't mind doing again, but then he needs to dress a bit warmer and definitely wear a hat!

On Saturday evening I went over to Ellen's house (a mutual friend of Josh and Miranda's) and we hung out, had root beer floats, and watched an interesting Native American movie called The Business of Fancydancing.

Then today I went out for a lovely 10km run. The weather was gorgeous again like yesterday, and there were so many people out walking, running, skiing, and exercising their dogs. I do love the Norwegian traditions of going out and exercising on Sundays.