“Yassmin seriously 24 months pursuing an MA…. "OUTSIDE THE UK”?
Actually scrap that I have been travelling for 10 hours and have not slept for 24, I am one suitcase lighter than I was when I left home from North West London because it has been misplaced by Norwegian Air during my journey.
Better still REWIND! I'm at Oslo airport waiting to collect my TWO suitcases from Gatwick to check them in AGAIN for the domestic flight to Trondheim. My connecting flight (after checking in AGAIN) is imminent and one of my suitcases has yet to appear on the conveyor belt, which may I add has now stopped. What to do? Report the missing suitcase and obtain an irregularity report, run like the wind to the check in desk through departure lounge - onto the gates and board the plane to Trondheim. "Argh! My toothbrush and toothpaste minus fluoride is in the other case" fingers crossed my luggage turns up in Trondheim.
No luck! Actually worse still I have met a fellow student at arrivals who has clearly labelled his luggage with our full forwarding address AS ADVISED by the department, swallowing my shame I introduce myself and so I have met one other person on my course. We are collected by more fellow students at the designated bus stop and so the quest for whose whom, interested in what and from where begins. I'm tired, I'm hungry and I really need to eat the ackee/ saltfish and roasted plantain in my hand luggage( Large up my mum who told me to cook and take it with me, it could of got real nasty otherwise).
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| Ackee and saltfish with roast plantain. |
Directly from the airport we are welcomed at the The Institute for Music and Dance, our home for a two week intensive.
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| Dance Studies, Department of Music Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) |
During the days that follow the MA Choreomundus cohort 2 is in full swing, there are numerous journeys being made to bus stops, student travel services and mobile phone shops, basically everything a foreign student needs. From student travel (of which I'm not entitled too!), bed linen, SIM cards, curfew on alcohol sales in supermarkets you name it and someone in the group can give you the details. We are 18 in total, 8 of us will stay in Norway for the academic year and 10 will continue onto France including myself who are housed at 'Roof over you head' in Gina Krogs Veg.
A two week intensive course in dance analysis is upon us by 19th August and for me the honeymoon period is definitely over, we have structural analysis approaches, epistemology and Labanotation coming out of our ears and going over my head. I'M STILL MISSING A SUITCASE and practising the wash and wear technique with one pair of socks. I should be happy for small miracles because at least I left the airport with the suitcase containing my food stock including lactose free bouillon, lactose free chocolate, lemsip and underwear.
13 days later my suitcase arrives, broken but containing everything I left home with. I have a head cold because my winter clothes are in my missing suitcase, I’ve spent too much money on things I already have but which had been delayed and I’ve just realised that Norway is an expensive country. In short both shopping to cook and eating out cost the same EXTORTIONATE. It has been a great three weeks I am sorry to see the back of Norway and the half of our group that will spend the first academic year in Norway, from here on in I will refer to them as the ethnochoreologist (8) and us the dance anthropologists (10) are heading to France.
On 31st August 2013 we 10 board a plane to Paris via Frankfurt, travelling by taxi the Bercy and then by train to Clermont - Ferrand, our home for the next 10 months. I miss everything that I know and welcome the knowledge and experience of everything I don't. If it's true and France is the country for cheese I'm in big trouble.
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| The line for hamburgers outside of Samfundet (Student Union) |
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| MJ alive and well at the crossings in Trondheim, Norway. |
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| A bit of London in Trondheim? |
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| Not sure why I'm smiling, Norway is EXPENSIVE |
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| All students should wear animal onesie's it's fitting. |
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| I finally got to go to the bridge! Great landscape. |
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| The perfect learning environment, dance floor and desks WINNING! |
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| Norwegian homes... bliss. |
MA Choreomundus investigates dance and other movement systems (ritual practices, martial arts, games and physical theatre) as Intangible Cultural Heritage within the broader contexts of Ethnochoreology, the Anthropology of Dance, Dance Studies, and Heritage Studies.
UBP Clermont-Ferrand
University of Szeged Hungary
University of Roehampton UK
As at 9/9/13 http://www.ntnu.edu/studies/choreomundus
