Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
A semester in Norway is now complete for 2009 Gar-Pal High School graduate James Lange, who will be a senior at Linfield College in the fall.
Lange returned June 24 after a month traveling in Europe following his study-abroad semester in “Outdoor Life,” based at the University of Telemark in Bo, Norway, two hours west of Oslo.
A double major in finance and economics, Lange participated in the program which featured two days per week in class and then five to 10 day trips skiing, camping, kayaking and other adventures.
“You learn to not just survive the outdoors but to thrive there,” he said.
The credits count for general education requirements toward graduation at Linfield.
He left on Jan. 5.
“It was a big part of why I wanted to go to Linfield,” Lange said. He spent January 2013 in Australia on another study-abroad trip.
In Norway with just one other student from Linfield who lives in McMinnville, Ore., Lange had a different experience compared to the professor-led excursion to Australia.
“This one was more on your own, self-reliance,” he said.
As for what Lange observed of Norwegians, he noticed a certain state of behavior.
“They’re very reserved. They like to blend in for the most part,” Lange said. “An unspoken law is that you don’t want to stand out and be the showiest person.”
He also indicated that the local citizens were shy toward foreigners.
“They feel like their English isn’t good enough to talk to you,” he said.
Lange lived in student housing at the University of Telemark, with a mix of people in his condominium-like unit from North Dakota, Kenya, Norway, Los Angeles and Lithuania.
Of the 60 students in the university’s outdoor program, five were international students with the two from Linfield, two from Czechoslavakia and one from France.
On one of the group’s trips, they went sea kayaking from a base camp on a professor’s farm.
“Sixty dairy cows, 20 sheep and 12 acres, an average farm for western Norway,” Lange said, who grew up on a family farm near Garfield. His parents are Frank and Patty Lange.
Overall, one sight Lange saw might define Norway, he said, was three-foot long in-line skates which Norwegians use in the summer, with ski poles.
Lange will finish his degree in finance and economics next year after which he has some plans he’d like to pursue.
“I”ll probably work for a year or two somewhere and most likely come back to the farm,” he said.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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