Routines

We jumped right into our daily routine today. Kory was off to work at 7:00am and Kaleb and I were out the door by 7:30. Kaleb had his first day of “SFO” today, which is the before and after school program for kids with working parents. It’s mostly supervised day-care where the kids play a lot, but that’s OK by me. We live quite a ways from any other kids in his class so this way he gets to hang out with them after school a bit. The fact they don’t speak the same language has yet to be a problem. One little boy, Morton, just lights up when Kaleb is around and he’s thrilled we are putting Kaleb on his soccer team tomorrow.

I got a chance to talk with one of Kaleb’s teachers today and she said, “He is a very nice boy,” so I’m shouting Hallelujah to that! We love getting those kinds of reports. Kory helped Kaleb with his reading homework tonight and Kaleb may not understand all that he is reading but he sure sounds good – he’s getting all the vowel sounds worked out and will probably surpass me in no time.

The photo today is of my school in downtown Aalesund - we meet in the top floor of the yellow building. I can’t even say how much I love learning the language. Others in the class are really struggling but to me it’s just connecting the dots. If I hadn’t been around the language for so long I’m sure I’d be frustrated and quit, like many do, as the class is moving very fast, but it’s just the ticket for me. I am having trouble sleeping though as all the new words keep circling in my head and my brain won’t shut off, so that’s the only problem so far.

Kory was putting a roof on a house today out on a nearby island called Giske – the flattest place around here so the houses are very expensive (the prices of houses is mostly determined by how much sun they get as the steep mountains can leave you “living in the shadows” your entire life). One of his bosses (Jonathan) is from Sweden and he says that Norwegian construction is of the highest quality – higher even than Sweden. He said Norwegians demand the best of everything and I can see that to be true. New houses all have vents in every room to the outside, as do the windows, because they are sealed up so tight they need to breathe somehow. Odd and Turid’s water tank for their toilet is built in behind the wall so that only the toilet bowl sticks out. I asked what happens when it breaks – if they have to knock out the whole wall to fix it – and their answer is – “It won’t break.” Things are built to last and very, very few things around here are made in China. Norwegians pride themselves on Norwegian made products and they are the best you can buy.

Kory also found out today that Jonathan’s father-in-law worked as the machinist on a ship owned by Stanley Langacre that was used to take Russian Jews out of Russia via the Black Sea to Israel after the Cold War. Kory worked for two years on a tug boat for Stanley back in the 1960s. It’s a small world.

The blueberry season is coming to an end. Kaleb found the mother of all blueberry fields about a two minute walk from our house so I’ve been able to get five cups in about 20 minutes. I’ve been going every day as we so enjoy those fresh wild blueberries (the Vanilla Sauce has been running thick in our house.) Tonight we got to share some with cousins Odd and Rune (Odd’s brother) who dropped by to bring us a bigger coffee table than the one we had. They were impressed I picked the blueberries myself (I didn’t tell them I used this nice blueberry comb that just scoops them off the bush and deposits them into a little container.) They were also impressed that I had cut all the grass around here by myself (that WAS impressive, if I do say so myself). They called me a “bonde kjerring” (“old farm woman” )– a tough old broad, in other words. They ain’t seen nothin’ yet.