I remember where I was a year ago. I had already long committed to studying the coming semester in Norway. All the forms were signed, and I was planning on traveling to Oslo in just a few weeks.

I watched from the desk at my summer job, then later from home, as these chaotic scenes developed in this place that I had never been, yet already felt a connection to. I've never been on a London bus, nor to the commuter trains of Madrid, nor anywhere in the Middle East. There are always far distant places touched by similar acts of senseless violence, but Oslo on the 22nd of July was different.

Of course, I'm from New York, and I lived through September 11th, but I even though I remember where I was, and what I was doing on that day, I still wasn't old enough to feel the gravity of those events, or to suspect that what occurred on that day would dominate the world in which my generation has grown up in.

The events of 7/22 in Oslo were tremendously sad, and for the first time, I was more directly touched by them than simply watching from afar. A few weeks later, I walked past the fences that surrounded the government bloc, and I saw the shattered windows and wilting roses in front of the National Cathedral. This was just the bomb; I never came near to Utøya. I saw the 1 month memorial service on TV, I saw the roses slowly cleared, even though they appeared spontaneously in the fountain opposite the cathedral every time I passed. The beginnings of Breivik's trial were going on when I was in Oslo, and I've followed them from the US.

One year on, I've heard the fences have been removed and that Oslo is healing physically. I'm not Norwegian, so I can't speak to whether Norway has changed, whether it's learned, and whether things will work out for the better in terms of the tension between ethnic Norwegians and immigrants, which led Breivik to carry out his mad plans.

I hope so.