Hei fra England.

It feels unreal, to me, that I'm not going back to my little corner of Oslo in Kringsjå, but I'm adjusting. I enjoy being back in England.

My last day in Oslo couldn't have been more perfect, however. I made a point of getting up early to finish tidying up my room, throwing the last of my rubbish into my two (stuffed beyond capacity) suitcases, then began the arduous journey from Kringsjå studentby to Oslo Sentralstasjon. It was quite an ordeal lugging both those heavy cases (one weighing 22 kilos, the other 32 kilos, I later discovered) uphill to the Kringsjå T-bane platform, and in retrospect I find it almost laughable the number of able-bodied people who walked past me without looking at me, much less offering to help. If I'd been in America, I later discussed with a friend at church, I would've had people tripping over themselves to help me, but Norway is a country full of very self-sufficient, independent people, so I wasn't bothered or offended. ...still, it would've been nice to have someone lend a hand.

And someone did! While on the train, I bumped into Mike--no, not Minnesota Mike, but Idaho Mike from St. Edmund's--who very kindly helped me transport my luggage to the storage lockers at central station. After that, we walked to church for my last service at St. Edmund's, where I said my goodbyes to all the parishioners; to Rev. Janet who has been so kind to me, to Shannon and Barbara who have been so good about letting me help out with the tea and coffee, to Trond who I only really started speaking to right towards the end of my stay here (sad!), to Geraldine... Honestly, the list goes on and on. Walking out of that church was so difficult for me, but I know I'll be back.

I spent the rest of the afternoon just going around the city. The day before, I'd taken line 3 to Mortensrud just out of curiosity (and found a very nice baguette shop), and so on Sunday I decided to revisit some of my favorite places throughout the city. I wandered down through Nationaltheatret basking in the sunshine and taking some photographs on my blackberry, since I'd already stowed my camera with my luggage, then headed up Karl Johans gate to the palace. I had quite a lot of time to kill before my flight, so I just... napped in the sunshine in the palace gardens, listening to my iPod and enjoying the sunshine.

My Flytog ride was a little emotional, though I managed to keep from crying--mostly because my luggage kept deciding to roll away from me, and I had to dive out of my seat on multiple occasions to try to stow it better. (The two Danes sitting in the seats across from mine chimed in helpful suggestions in Danish, but I think they were mostly just drunk and wanted a laugh at my expense. Meanies.) But that aside, my flight over was pretty nice and uneventful, and our pilot was pretty cheeky, describing our flight from Oslo to London Heathrow as "one hour and fifty-five minutes of action-packed excitement, starting with this riveting security film provided by BA for your entertainment. And safety as well, I suppose." (A bit paraphrased, but that's the gist of it.) I love flying BA. :)

Also: Sitting next to me on the plane was a young Norwegian boy with his grandmother; this was his first trip out of Norway, so when the plane started making its descent, I offered to switch places with him so he could get his first look at London. I think his grandmother really appreciated the gesture, and it tugged at my heart strings a little bit watching this kid, who was only a little older than I was when I had my first proper visit out of the US and back to England, gazing in awe out the window. Seemed fitting somehow.

Uncle Pete met me at the arrivals gate which was lovely, and I came home and crashed after staying up a bit talking with Aunt Jackie. Today we took a tour of Wisley Gardens, somewhere I will go back to later with my camera so I can photograph everything that stands still long enough, but tomorrow I plan to have a bit of a domestic day just doing laundry and getting myself settled into my room here for the next month. Truly, I am glad to be in England, but I don't expect this ache in my heart for Oslo is going to go away anytime soon. I fell in love with the city.

It's hard not to.

Some thoughts about church.

I argued with myself for a little bit over whether or not this entry was appropriate for a travel blog, but ultimately I have decided that it is if only because this revelation came to me while living in this country, and was ultimately inspired by the church community that has embraced me during my stay here. I don't expect everyone to find this entry as interesting or as meaningful as it will be to a few of you, or as it is to me, and that's all right. Just know that what I'm writing about is very close to my heart, and treat it gently if you want to comment on it.

I won't spend a whole lot of time talking about why I decided to become Episcopal/Anglican/Anglo-Catholic rather than Protestant, because that probably deserves a completely different blog entry with lots of different points that I'm not sure I've got the ecclesiastical vocabulary to cover just yet. (Give me a few more chapters in Aquinas and I'll get back to you.) For now I think it's more than enough to say that of all Christian denominations out there right now, and there are plenty, this is the one that I felt most drawn to and comfortable in, even if according to my Uncle Trace this makes me "stuffy and old fashioned." But even if I feel comfortable within this denomination, within the predictable rituals and hymns and chants and sacrament of communion, it's still not always easy for me to be an educated 21st century woman and a Christian at the same time.

Church life and community has never been something that I've felt a part of in Huntsville, though I'd like to say this isn't for lack of trying. When I was younger I would sometimes go to church with my uncle or grandparents in Birmingham, and although I could tell that everyone around me felt moved and inspired by the minister's passion, no amount of contemporary Christian rock or enthusiastic shouting really made me feel connected to any divine presence, within me or without. I mostly just felt like I stood out by being too reserved and clearly uncomfortable. For a while I stopped bothering even going to church on Sundays, even after I was baptized and supposedly committed to a life that was considered appropriate in the eyes of some church community, somewhere, but I didn't really feel it. I suppose in a way anyone who claims that they do feel it completely is probably deluding themselves, because anyone who has faith of any kind in anything constantly struggles with issues of doubt and skepticism. We're analytical creatures with analytical minds, and sometimes reconciling what we see in front of us with what we feel surrounding and filling us can be a daunting struggle. I feel my emotions intensely; I love intensely, I believe intensely, and conversely, I doubt intensely as well. This is a struggle that I grapple with daily both in Huntsville and here in Oslo, and I don't suppose that faith will ever, or should ever, be something that comes easily to me.

At home in Alabama, a part of the United States that is supposedly very Christian-centric and friendly towards "believers" (I hate that term), it felt almost as difficult as pulling teeth to carve out a niche for myself in a Christian community. I felt a bit at war with myself, if I'm being totally honest. Around my educated university friends, I felt as though my faith was a curiosity, something harmless if a bit peculiar that didn't quite fit into the image of the researcher student I was trying to cultivate--and conversely, I always felt at odds with whatever church community I warmed up to, possibly because I couldn't quite feel the same blind faith as other parishioners, or because my faith seemed so different and somehow unusual compared to theirs. (Which was sort of arrogant thinking at the time, since I now believe that no two practitioners of any religion have identical beliefs about anything!) It was like walking the line between the secular and spiritual worlds, when never the twain should meet, which strikes me now as ultimately not at all what my life should feel like. I shouldn't feel the need to 'turn off' the spiritual part of my life whenever I delved into the secular, and vice versa, but before now I couldn't figure out a way to bring the two together in a harmonious fashion. A good deal of that confusion stemmed from my own fear of acceptance or rejection either from my friends or whatever church I was trying to hold onto. This fear kept me from fully exploring my own faith and skepticism, and also letting my friends see just how big a part of my life my spirituality really is. For that, I'm sorry both to my friends for keeping this from them, and to myself for bottling it up for so long.

Something about leaving Huntsville and all of the frightening expectations of church life and community there, and delving head first into my church community in Oslo has opened up my heart and my mind to a different kind of belief that isn't just cerebral, which I'd more or less damned myself to in Huntsville by hiding from the other parishioners and priests, and only getting involved in church life to the extent that I attended mass occasionally on Wednesdays as well as Sundays. The Church of the Nativity Episcopal in Huntsville felt like a place that I visited with affection, but inevitably left me uncomfortable and even wracked with guilt if I should happen to accidentally track mud inside the chapel on Wednesday or Sunday mornings. At St. Edmund's my faith feels like a tangible thing I work at with my hands, and I feel this has everything to do with my decision to get personally involved immediately upon setting foot in the church.

The solution to my fear and anxiety was so simple, really: I serve tea and coffee.

Having never done any sort of missionary work which undoubtedly requires a much stronger test of faith than to merely ask the rota committee if they'd like another volunteer on Sunday mornings, I can only guess that this feeling might be similar to what missionaries feel when they leave their home church communities and go elsewhere into the world to do good works. For me, I can't even personally say that I have a home church, and that is my own fault, something I will talk about soon. Nativity Episcopal has been a church that I have enjoyed visiting, but even after two solid years of going there multiple times a month, that is still exactly what I feel like inside the church: a visitor. At St. Edmund's, I have only attended five church services (missing two Sundays because of Jennifer's visit, and then because of a tourist opportunity throughout the city), and yet I know when I step inside those old doors, the smiling face who hands me the hymnal, book of common prayer, and program for the day is going to know who I am, and ask me kindly, "Welcome back, Elisabeth, how was your week?" No one at Nativity has ever offered to drive me home from service because it was raining, and yet today my fellow parishioner John did just that, and drove me home to Kringsjå so I wouldn't have to wait for the tram in the rain. I didn't even have to ask, and didn't even think to ask, and felt humbled and grateful all the same.

If I had stayed at home in Huntsville and continued struggling with my relationship to Nativity, I think I would have completely given up entirely and resolved to just stay home on every Sunday from then on. But leaving home and coming to stay here in Oslo has been like my own little missionary excursion just for myself; the good works I'm doing are for my own spiritual growth as a Christian and Anglo-Catholic, something I can say without arrogance or conceit, and I know now that St. Edmund's has not been the solution to my "church problem," but my catalyst for solving it. I had to completely remove myself from the South and all of my preconceived notions of what it meant to be a Christian in the South, and an educated student in the "Bible Belt," in order to see what good could be done for myself, as well as for these people whose lives I touch only briefly every Sunday, by getting involved no matter where I am. It sounds trivial, but by helping Geraldine set up for coffee in the mornings, or remembering that Rev. Sammy can't take milk in his tea, or that Andrew and his wife always have two coffees a piece, I strengthen not only my connection to my fellow parishioners, but my faith in the divine as well.

Having gotten to this point in my introspective blog entry, I'm not entirely sure how to end it. I've shared a lot of very personal and private thoughts with all of you that I hope has been revealing about me as a person in lots of positive ways. I hope you don't walk away from this entry feeling as though I've done nothing but wax sanctimonious at you for however long it took you to read from start to finish, because really, this is just a testimony of what has helped strengthen my faith in a way nothing else has.

Sometimes the first step really is as simple as washing out a teapot.

Of Easter eggs and other silly things.

Two blog updates in one day! An unprecedented event, to be sure, but one that is absolutely necessary if I want to avoid falling behind on my blogging--again, not that I expect many people aside from my dear father and a few other loyal readers might notice. You all get cookies when I get home, but only if you start commenting. :P ...seriously, I will distribute cookies. I might even bake them myself.

Saturday morning after our return to Oslo started off with a bang, since the fire alarm went off and woke us up far too early, but aside from that momentary hiccup, it was a very pleasing day. Tim and I walked down to Sogn again to paint easter eggs with Damon and a few of his friends and classmates, and we even improvised on making a very delicious chocolate cake essentially out of nothing. We also watched a very odd Norwegian film called "Budbringeren," a story about a very bizarre (and unhygienic) postman infatuated with a woman involved in some sort of illicit dealings in Oslo's darker side. Actually, that was a detail that we all spent most of our time chuckling over and scratching our heads, because really, I hardly recognized the Oslo in this film at all. I always feel safe in this city almost without exception, and yet the Oslo of "Budbringeren" made me wonder if I shouldn't be more careful when waiting at the T-bane stations late at night.

Sunday morning was Easter, of course, and I finally made the venture down to St. Edmund's Anglican Church, which is actually close to Grunnerløkka and thus very near to Blå. Mike accompanied me, and I have to say, the Easter service was very upbeat and exciting, incorporating a lot of African musical elements right alongside the more traditional, subdued English standard. I introduced myself to Rev. Janet after the service and have officially become a St. Edmund's volunteer, something I'm quite excited about since I was starting to feel a bit guilty about not going to church on Sundays; and really, I don't do anything on Sunday mornings except sleep in. I'll be distributing tea and coffee to thirsty patrons after Sunday service from now on, and hopefully will do a bit of networking within the English speaking community of Oslo. If I decide to stay here after my program ends, it will be nice to have some friends outside of UiO since I am already a bit depressed by the thought of being here by myself without Tim and Mike to keep me company. Anyway, that evening we (myself, Tim and Mike) had a lovely dinner at our friend Patricia's flat, then spent the rest of the night chatting away and blaring our own music in Velferden. A grand way to end Easter if I don't say so myself!

I passed Monday in a rather lethargic fashion that doesn't bear much remarking; Tim and I went over to Mike's with every intention of watching the Vålerenga match, only to discover that it wasn't televised! ): It's for the best, since they lost, so we ended up going back early to cook dinner and watch a hilarious boy band parody film leant to me by Damon called "Boyzvoiced." I was actually impressed by how catchy some of the songs actually were! But most of it was a spoof documentary, and this was one of the funnier exchanges:

I didn't realize comprehension of English was a desirable quality in Norwegian men. The more you know~

Probably my favorite song from the whole documentary, and it is, delightfully enough, the first one you hear!

Today was an unexpected adventure, actually. I met up with Tim and Damon at Forskningsparken and took the tram into Grunnarløkka again, where I found Le Palais des Thés, a tea shop recommended to me some time ago that I've only just now got round to visiting. I ended up buying a lovely package of chai tea, along with some peach tea... and then, apparently, we decided to head over to IKEA again, mainly for the Swedish meatballs you can buy in the cafeteria there. Second silly purchase of the day: a plant I have affectionately named Halliburton 2, successor to Halliburton 1, a plant that may or may not be dying in Ray's flat, I'm not sure. Anyway, H2 is currently sunning herself (yes, it is a she I have decided) beneath my lamp, and I just hope I won't kill her before it's time to fly home. ): I suppose at that point I'll donate her to someone else who plans on sticking around for a while.

Whew! That was a lot of writing. Hopefully that brings me up to speed on all of my adventures since leaving for Copenhagen. Hadet!