Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, I hope your Turkey Day was a good one. I hope you know that I give thanks for you all. You may remember me mentioning my dislike for the way that coffee is made here in Norway. I've found something else that I give thanks for. In the main eating area that waffles are served in every Friday, a coffee machine was installed, and it wonderful. It gives you a choice of espresso shots, French or Italian lattes, mochas and hot chocolate. It makes me very happy. Here is a picture of this great machine, and you may notice the mug is a Boeing coffee cup:


I had my own Thanksgiving dinner in Trondheim with my roommates. I was at the store several days before, and saw a meal mix that you cook with water or milk to as well as cooked meat. It was called amerikansk gryte, which as far as I can determine is basically American pot/meal. It looked like nothing from the U.S. that I was familiar with, but I bought it anyways in order to have an ironic Thanksgiving dish. I also wished to have a REAL American food to share with my roommates, because I could not guarantee that the amerikansk gryte would be edible. I made proper macaroni and cheese, with three types of cheese as well as cream, and baked it in the oven. Here is the finished result:


You can see the amerikansk gryte in the pot with the spoon, which we had over rice, and the mac & cheese in the dish above it. The mac & cheese was a huge success, and even though there we were only three people, we nearly finished the huge dish between us. The amerikansk gryte, however, was met with mixed criticism. It was in no way bad, but there was nothing really that great about it. One of my roommates said it reminded him of cafeteria food in middle school, something that they put all the bits of everything that nobody want into and make a stew with. I'm tempted to agree with him. After making it and tasting it, I still am not quite sure what is American about it, the closest thing to it would be chili, but that would be a stretch.


Here are the two roommates and me. Sebastião, from Portugal, is on the left and Henning, from Germany, is on the right. Omid, the third roommate from Iran, was too busy studying to join us for dinner. All classes are done with now and everyone is studying for exams that are happening for the next few weeks.

In terms of my research, I am still playing around with calibration of the material model. I don't quite know everything that I'm doing, so there are many occasions when I'll be working on some aspect of it for a day or two, and after reaching a result, I'll show my results to Tore, my Professor. He will then tell me, no, I am incorrect and show me the proper way to do it, and I will go back and in several short hours i will have the correct result. I don't mind though, this is the way I prefer to learn and I definitely am learning. I would like be working towards some of the physical experiments that will be done, but the lab technicians are very busy, and there are delays. Hopefully in the next week or so we will start breaking things for real. My fingers are crossed.

One other thing that I have done here is look over and correct a few documents for grammar. Being a native English speaker, they wanted me to check them over and make sure everything makes sense. I do not have much input to give them, they're English is impressively good.

It's getting cold here. It's been below freezing here for the last three days, around 20 degrees F. Supposedly it will get above freezing on Wednesday for two hours or so. It snowed last night, leaving three-quarters an inch on the ground. Here is a picture of where I live covered in snow, I took it on the way to school today:

Now that we have entered the Christmas season, people have been counting down to Christmas. One fun surprise has been ths Advent wreath that the SIMLab has:


It is made from square aluminum tubes that have been crushed in an experiment. These four tubes were grouped together during the experiment, and during the impact, became stuck together as they collapsed. The hollow centers have been packed full with metal shavings to make a place for the candles to stand in. I had a grin on my face after seeing it.

Daylight is down to about five and a half hours now. The sunlight always looks like late afternoon, which is a bit disorienting. I'm getting used to the dark.

Farewell, and another update soon!