After a very long trip we finally got here yesterday afternoon local time. We were completely beat from having had just about no sleep all night but we're mostly rested up now and enjoying our first full day here. We're in a 10 room dorm which has extremely basic amenities. The kids are all thrilled because there are bunkbeds, and not much else matters beyond that if you're a kid. There are limited washrooms and showers (communal) and our room is directly over the main entrance so it's very noisy. Hopefully, tonight will be quieter as people are settled in more. Oh yeah, the food is really cold for some mysterious reason. The "messebygge" (Mess Hall) is a brand new glass structure with high tech everything so maybe they haven't sorted out the steam tables yet. But......Stavanger is amazingly beautiful and after the jet lag wears off I'm sure we'll settle in to the routine here and be just fine. There are people here from everywhere.... we're sharing our room with people from Herzegovia, Azerbaijhan, some African country yet to be determined as they just arrived and somewhere in Russia near the Ural mountains.
We're visiting the University of Stavanger for the first time today. It's where we'll spend most of our time over the next week. It's very modern and quite a contrast from the military camp where we're sleeping. People watching is proving to be one of the most interesting pastimes as there are people here from literally everywhere. Norway has a familiar feel to it, perhaps a sign I've spent too much time at Ikea over the years. It seems that every Norwegian speaks perfect English, especially if they're under 25, so we're not getting much practice using our three Norwegian words.
The conference itself officially starts tomorrow and I'll try to keep the blog updated with anything interesting. I'll have pictures on the blog when we get home.
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