the place where i belong

I love traveling. And usually when I go places, I'm pretty proud to be able to tell people that I'm Norwegian. I am a real patriot and I love Norway. Of course Norway isn't perfect (except for maybe the nature, haha!), and it has it faults like every other country, but all in all I have to say that I consider myself pretty freaking lucky to have grown up in this amazing country.

So what makes Norway so great?
- Like I already mentioned, I love the nature
- The seasons. How they are so different, but still all really nice
- The educational system. That the state gives us loans so that everyone has the opportunity to go to university, no matter how much money you have (AND universitys owned by the state don't really cost anything..)

One thing I think is very interesting is trying to find out what other people think about Norway and Norwegians. The other day I was at my cousin's place(she made us Christmas dinner, it was very nice), and we talked a little bit about this. One of my other relatives who were there has a Swedish boyfriend and she was talking about how they see Norwegians. That roused my curiosity, so since I didn't have much else to do tonight I decided to use one of my favourite webpages (called google) to try to find out what other people think about Norwegians. Here's some of what I found out!

http://lowrylore.wordpress.com/
This is the blog of an American couple that was living in Norway for a year. Their most recents posts are not about this, but on the right side menu you can click a link called "Life In Norway" and read their blogs from this time. I thought it was really interesting because they see our culture from an outside perspective but still seem to have understood a lot about it. (After all they only lived here for a year!) Make sure you read this post with fun facts about Norway!

Global etiquette -Norway profile
This was mostly funny. They actually have one quote in Norwegian, and this is wrong! They wrote "Takk for matten" and said it's supposed tp mean "thank you for the food", but in fact it does not. It means "thank you for the mat" or "thank you for the math". The real expression is "Takk for maten" with only one t, which in Norwegian is pronounced quite differently. Way to go, teaching business men to say the wrong thing! :P

Funny facts about Norway
So this was actually written by a Norwegian, but it's still great reading just because it's so true. For instance, at the bottom he(/she?) writes this:

"Strangers.

Most Norwegians think it is odd when someone start talking or smiling to them on the bus."

I don't know, but that might sound familiar to those of you who have read my blog for a little while... Reading that totally cracked me up! (HINT) (I have to add that some of the things written there are very clearly influenced by his(/her?) views on things..)

I hope someone enjoyed this, even though I suspect that this might be more fun for me than everyone else, since I am Norwegian myself and can relate to so many of the things written about "my" country.. I hope that some of my American/Canadian/latin friends are reading this. You should come visit me one day, then you can see for yourself if (/that) all of this is true!