Da tar vi den rosa sangen dere, den rosa sangen

I walked in to the classroom and sat down at the first free seat. The Slovaki girl next to me had been in Norway for less than two weeks and didn't understand the lecturer's jokes about Norwegian timidness or introvertness. This is because he was speaking in Norwegian, so, naturally, the 15 or so foreign students understood nada.

I tried to remember five years back, to my first day at University of Western Sydney, a chilly August day in 2002. It looked like a crowded and worn-down mental institutions (felt like one too) in the Western Sydney outback, 20 minutes to the nearest train station and you had to walk past low-income housing estates the university warned about strolling through at nighttime. There was a juvenile detention centre close by, and adolescent rapists often went missing from their lock-up. This morning I woke up with a slight hangover, it was 35 minutes to the introduction seminar and I was half an hour bumpy train ride away. Swedish Louise came to my rescure and did the M4 from Parramatta to Penrith in a remarkable 25 minutes. I ran into the lecture hall and sat down in the first free seat. My university career had begun.

After a pretty decent journalism degree I've now begun my first shot at Norwegian education (which is free!!) and joined classes in Nord/Sør Utvikling, Samfunnsgeografi and Sosialantropologi. Trude, who takes 50 studiepoeng in law in addition to work at UD reckons it will be a piece of cake, Stian thought I was an idiot. That was of course only til he realized I would get student discount on Flytoget, freeze the interest on my current mortgage and get cheap beer on uni nights. Then he was impressed, and a little jealous. I wasn't (and am not) really aware of what I'm trying to accomplish this semester, but was told that of universities in Norway, Denmark, Germany and Australia, Australia definitively came out on top as the hardest, toughest and most nazi. I can only hope as I am about to embark on fulltime studies - and fulltime work.

But back to the lecture last week. After the half-arsed introduction in Norwegian followed by an excuse in English and promises of all future lectures beeing in a global understandable language the lecturer started off: "Allright, I will now address some issues in the green book. The green book, guys." I nearly fell of my chair. This was an advanced Human Geography course and the lecturer referred to the academic text we were to read as "the green book." What happened to Potter's Geographies of Development? He kept going in poor English with a heavy Norwegian acccent and reminded everyone several times that a billion is a "milliard" in Norwegian and that there is no such word as "billion" in Norwegian, despite Donald Duck trying to introduce the term through years of comics. "Billiard" is neither a word, no matter how logic it sounds. He also added the fact that if we wanted to we could exclude China from the statistics and that the numbers most likely would become a lot more in our favour if we did.

Exclude the largest nation in the world? Subtract some billion (millard that is in Norwegian) people from the formulas because it makes the stats look more favourable. I know what I will be discussing in the exam. And somehow I am am not so worried, but rather looking forward to the upcoming semester.

And it's not only because of the cheap beer.

King, queen, matching knickers and a fresh start

"You need matching underwear!" Ivy looks at me with a terrified expression in her eyes and true disgust towards my non-similar undies. I look down. Gray cotton panties and a turqoise satin bra does not do the trick and will never solve any of my boy problems, she says. I laugh it off and wonder what would have happened if I wore a gray cotton bra too and she says then I'd probably get lucky tonight. And she adds, if I swap the cotton full stop and go satin all the way I might meet the man of my dreams. I can smile all I want, but she's deadly serious. I've underestimated girl-power, naïve rødstrømpe, notoriously singel. I won't tell you if I got changed.

That's two years ago and Ivy's obsession for similar underwear have resulted in Max and Henrik, (three-month old twins), a Melbourne fiancé and a permanent resident visa to Australia.

The stuff I've learned from my flatmates is unbelievable. I know there has been a previous post about this common phenomenon, but I can't stop thinking about the coincidences that makes strangers drop everything in their hands and suddenly want to live together. How much you can annoy people before they want to bite your head off. How many late nights and early mornings before they tell you to shut up. How much ice cream you can stuff in the freezer before they say stop.

After a year in the same place something tells me to move on, find a new home with a new bathroom to get dressed in, a new kitchen to burn food in, a new tv to watch soapies on and a new key. I've never lived more than one year in any previous flat, but to change routines is good, so there's a new era coming up with, I hope, potential and possibilities.

Maybe I finally should get them photos up on the wall?

But the best thing about roomies must be the priviledge of being a part of their world and share their thoughts and opinions. Kent William recently read up on Congo Zaïre and Congo Brazzaville and eagerly told me the differences. Stina tought me how to make the best kladdkaka (she was Swedish), and Trude told me a lot about laundry (yet never that whites should only be washed with whites). And Ivy of course with her rules and fanatic thoughts about underwear.

I look in the mirror. The black and floral bra I'm wearing is looking suspiciously similar to my underpants. Me and the boyfriend just clocked six months. I must be doing something right.