Farewell Christmas Party. . . .

. . . well not really a party, more of a small gathering for international students. It was nice of the international office to organize this. There were the traditional Norwegian rice porridge, gluh wine, gingersnaps and mandrine oranges. Yes, oranges...seems like our Chinese New Year hur hur.

The Norwegians have a tradition of putting a bowl of rice porridge out in the barn for Father Christmas, or rather a gnome with long beard called Nisse. He is not the commercialized Santa Clause that we know off..Norwegian Christmas has a more traditional touch to it. The story goes like this... Nisse is believed to be a protector of the family farm but he likes to be treated with respect that he deserves and so family always put out a bowl of rice porridge for him..even till today I think.

Anyway, the rice porridge is eaten during Christmas together with other traditional Norwegian Christmas food (think other things besides turkey). I think they don't even serve turkey here. Here's an excerpt of the kind of christmas dinner food I got off the web ....

" The dinner can consist of a rib with a good crackling, ribbe, (served with "cabbage à la norvégienne", surkaal, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, sprouts, prunes and brown sauce), salted and dried ribs of mutton, pinnekjoett, (served with potatoes, carrots and mashed swedes), or lye-treated codfish, lutefisk (served with potatoes, bacon and pea stew). For dessert: rice blended with whipped cream served with a red sauce, riskrem, caramel pudding, cherry mousse, or whipped cream blended with multer (orange, wonderful berries found on the mountain - looks like rasberries)."

We missed the train, so we took the rebound train to the next station ahead which then stop at the station for 10 minutes before going in the rebound direction. Anything beats standing out in the unheated open air station!

And so we took funny photos to entertain ourselves for 10 minutes.

The 'party' was held at the staff cafetaria, on the highest level of BI. BI is made of full length glass windows so there is a nice view.

The gluh wine is actually warm wine but then it doesn't have any alcohol content in it. There seems to be some spices used in it and is served with dried raisins and chopped nuts. It doesn't smell good but taste is quite ok.

Dash some cinnamon poweder and sugar on top and add some butter in the middle. Mix in all up and ta-dah. The rice porridge is cooked with rice (duh!), milk and butter I think. So yah.. you can't have too much at a go else you'll feel queasy.

Those heart-shape cookies are actually gingersnaps.

With the IRO people.

With our gingersnaps

And with my nice plate of rice porridge, which is subsequently being used as a prop for others to take photo...haha!

And each of us were given this pictorial book.

The view of the school from the 7th storey. The super long escalator takes you directly from 2nd to 5th level (where the nice library is)

And also I realized alot of families are putting up some candles and star-shape lights by the window. Must be some Norwegian tradition. It looks so pretty especially since now the sky is totally dark by 4pm and the these lights are flickering. Managed to lift these 2 photos off the web.

/edit. The lights are know as Advent (coming) lights I think.