Lillehammer + Ski Jump + Stairs + Field Study + Confusion = Week 9

On Friday we went to Lillehammer,which is about a 45 minute train ride from Hamar. We went to visit the Nansen Dialogue Center, which is where one of our lecturers is from. It is also where Catherine Katie and I are going to be doing our field study here in a few weeks.

It was great, the city is beautiful and we got to meet some actual dialogue workers from Serbia and Kosovo. They talked to us about what Nansen does in the Balkans and what they do while they are there. It was really interesting to hear their different approaches, especially compared to Stienar's (our lecturer) approach because he is not much of a planner and just plays everything by ear.

They not only do work in the Balkans but on occasion they bring people from those countries up to Lillehammer to have conferences and discussions. Part of the conference is touring around the city of Lillehammer, which hosted the 1994 winter Olympic games. This includes walking down the ski jump. Stienar told us that they use this walk as a way to have a common bonding experience. If everyone is sore from walking down a million stairs then you all have something in common to talk about. So we all walked down a million stairs and now have that as a common bonding experience.

The view from the top

View from half way

At the bottom! After 1.2 million stairs

Me+Kate

Yeah, we started at the top

The Olympic touch

Field Study is making me excited. I think that I am going to try to focus my research on the Romani people and how the conflict in the Balkans affected there path to being recognized as an ethnic group. I'm really excited and have started reading some books about it, but here is where the confusion comes in. I'm not sure what exactly i'm looking for, or how to go about finding any of it. Also our trip to the Balkans is not going as well as we were hoping. We were all psyched up and ready to go Belgrade, Serbia until we found out that they don't actually do field work at that office. So now we are hoping to go to Skopje, Macedonia. At that office they do field work and if is a short way from a few other centers that do field work in the area.  Another plus is that we would have our own driver and car to take us around while we are there. However Skopje is really hard to fly into and very expensive. Which is a bummer. So now we are trying to get things worked out there.

So that is the end of week 9 of 18.... Things are great, the people are great, school is great I hope this continue on this path. 

-Noreen

3 Observations of Today 

1.) Family meals, even if you aren't particularly conversing with everyone, are always better. 

2.) Fall is beautiful... It makes up for the cold

3.) I can almost feel winter in the air