SNOW!!!

Hi sweeties,
we had a lot of snow the past days here in Norway... It´s just great! 3 days ago I took a walk around a lake which is located very close to Fantoft. It was beautiful, the sun was out and I really enjoyed the quiet and peaceful atmosphere (see pictures). People from Bergen told me that we have been really lucky with the weather these days, because usually the snow is not staying very long in Bergen, because of the "mild" climate. But right now it´s not mild at all... sooo cold!
Tonight I went to a Chinese restaurant in town with a group of other students and the food was really delicious... ;-) The first picture on the top of the page shows Amanda & me. She is a very sweet girl, also living in Fantoft and she studies in Hong Kong and Canada and we got along very well from the very first moment we met each other :-)
I am fully enjoying my student life right now - it´s so nice to study in such a beautiful university. The buildings are amazing and the campus is located on a hill and surrounded by mountains. Nearly as beautiful as my home university...haha just kidding! So when I sit in the library or in one of the cafeterias I always look at these beautiful mountains...
What I like to about the academic life in Norway is that classes are really small, usually 10 to maximum 25 people and the contact between students and teachers is a lot closer than in Germany. (which I really like, because it makes it more fun to study) Class hours are also different than back home: A lesson starts -for example- at 10.15 and runs until 12 o´clock, but there is a 15 min break in between that gives you some time to buy more coffee...(as it is really essential for Norwegians and now also for me...)
I simply love the teacher of my American literature class - she is from the States and is married to a Norwegian man and together they live in the States. I think I have never seen such an enthusiastic, motivated and dedicated teacher like her. She is awesome! Basically knows everything about American literature and her English is so good...she sometimes uses words that I have never heard of before, which can be hard at times...but at least it´s pretty challenging for me!
Jeg heter Katharina og jeg kommer fra Tyskland og snakker tysk, men na jeg bur i Bergen. ;-)
As you can maybe guess I am enjoying my Norwegian language class... It´s twice a week and it´s fun to learn a new language from scratch...although I have to admit that there are a lot of similarities between Norwegian and German. I hope to be able to speak the basic stuff in 2 months. But the point is, that every little village in Norway has its own dialect, which makes it pretty difficult to understand people who are not coming from Bergen or Oslo. But actually even people from these 2 cities are using different words sometimes. Well, hope to be able to grasp most of it soon :)
I also love to sit in the local student cafe for hours and just read all that stuff which is on my reading list (it´s actually a lot) or talk with friends. Life is really relaxed in this city... People like to stay inside, because of the cold and they don´t stress too much about things... I wonder how it´s going to be when I am back in London for some days in February. Life is so different in Norway, but I am really happy to be here, because I feel it was just the right thing to do!
Tomorrow Anne is coming to visit me here and I am so much looking forward to have her here!!! Can´t wait to see here...Just hope it won´t rain too much, because I wanted to go up Floyen (a mountain) on Sunday, but with rain it´s actually no fun.

Hope you are all doing great in Germany - good luck for all the upcoming exams!!! I cross my fingers for you guys!
Speak soon - 1 mio kisses
MUA
xxx