Downtown

Kory is an alien in his native land. We officially registered today with the “alien” office downtown Aalesund (at the police station). We also applied to get a new ID number so at least we will be marked as “residents” and can get all the benefits of a full-fledged Norwegian citizen (except vote). I was worried about the rule they have that we need to produce a signed lease within seven days of arriving to show where we are living, but we explained the situation and the woman just nodded her head and said when we find a place, let them know our new address. First miracle of many more to come, I hope. I was worried we’d be tossed out of the country if we didn’t follow the rules to a tee, but apparently there is a heart somewhere in the government here. HALLELUJAH! So the initial pressure is off – Praise God! But we still need to find a place to live before we over-stay our welcome with Odd and Turid.

We left Kaleb in the downtown library for about 40 minutes today. He wasn’t too pleased with their English book selection but he managed to keep himself entertained while we went to the employment agency. (It’s so cool to not worry about someone stealing your kid. Life is definitely different here.) The man at the employment agency seemed rather pleased we came in. He said there is a LOT of work and he perked right up when Kory said he had a background in construction, and also when he heard I had a background in computers. He seemed to think finding work would not be a problem. I think our problem will be that we will need to turn down work as we don’t want to work more than 20 hours a week (maybe 10 for me).

Odd’s brother, Ketil , came over this morning for coffee. We visited with him a while and got to talking about God things. (We were engaged in his house on New Year’s Eve 1990 here in Aalesund.) He used to be on the board of directors at his church but when he got caught embezzling from his company and put in jail… he pretty much gave up on God. He lost everything – including his house and wife… Kory was telling him how godless this country seems to be now and Ketil said if you asked, most people would say they are a Christian but “they don’t take it personally” – meaning they believe in Jesus and the truth of the Bible, but they don’t do anything to live it out. I had to laugh at that expression, “I’m a Christian, but I don’t take it personally.” What a good way to put it, but also, so sad.

We are seriously considering buying a place to live for the year as rental options are just not there. It seems we will pay 10.000nok ($2,000) a month if we rent, and potentially we could pay less than that if we bought something. Even if we had a mortgage of $2,000, we could sell it in a year and at least break even, if not make a little money. So tomorrow we will go look at a few places. There aren’t many houses available within our price range (the cheapest townhouses start at $300,000 and you can’t even touch a stand alone house for under $500,000.)

There is one duplex not far from where we are staying now that we walked over to see. They call it the “sinking house” because, well, the land is sinking all around it. When the builder built it he drove pilings into the bog to keep the house stable and things were fine for a while. (They would never allow building on such wetlands in America.) But later, another builder downhill from there, blasted out some rock to put in a house and apparently the rock was the cork that held back the water table. Water came gushing out of the side of the hill and the bog where the sinking house sits, drained. Now the sinking house is a good four feet above ground as the bog just keeps draining… it’s a funny sight. The house sits on stilts so it isn’t really sinking just yet, but the ground sure is. All geological reports say the ground will never stop sinking so at some point there will be big problems with the building slanting and possibly cracking in half. Naturally, Kory wants to live there. Actually, he wants to buy the place! (He thinks he can fix the problem??!!!) The owners are long gone and the builder had to pay back their money and now some attorney is handling the paperwork. Kory sees opportunities in other people’s disasters (and obviously, it would be cheap), but this is one disaster I’m not feeling too good about. This all reminds me of when Norway was short on housing after World War II because the Germans had bombed out so many buildings and people were living crammed together wherever they could, sloping floors and all. I hope we can do better than to live in a house that needs a new step added every other day just to get in and out the front door. What is he thinking?