Kaleb went with us to church today – with three books under his arm. Good thing, as the service was two hours long. An evangelist was visiting Filadelfia Kirke (Church) so there was a lot of time spent in prayer and singing and preaching. The speaker was very good and he even got a few HALLELUJAHs out of Kory --although the guy said they weren’t loud enough. Imagine that - someone around here who welcomes the HALLELUJAHs.
After church we went for a visit to Solevaag (pronounced Soo-la-vogue) to some of Kory’s mom’s cousins. They are such nice people but their Norwegian is so different than anyone else’s that I can never understand a word they say. They slur their words together, have a heavy dialect, and use a lot of local slang so the whole conversation was lost on me. We told them we hope to buy a place just down the street and they were thrilled beyond words. Kaleb is also thrilled as he would be related to so many people in that area that he’d have the run of the place. It really is an ideal setting and would fill Kaleb’s head with many memories of his year in Norway. (The photo above is of Solevaag from a different angle than the one a few days ago. The place we hope to buy is in the distance, smack dab behind the red barn in the middle of the photo. The house where Kory’s mom was born is the white house, toward the right, with the highest pitch.) Instead of being close to all the commercialism (library, swimming pool, shopping mall), where our condo is, we’d be close to the best in nature that Norway has to offer – farms, mountains and the sea.
With everything closed in Norway on Sunday, options are limited, which is probably a good thing. There is a kind of freedom in having limited options that I’m sure I’ll come to enjoy over the year. I wish I could have taken a nap as we are up til after midnight every night (we don’t even eat dinner until around 11pm). The timing of things is very different for me, but it’s more the custom of the cousins we are staying with than all Norwegians. But there are some differences that all Norwegians do – like keeping all the doors to all the rooms closed at all times. Every room has a door (to retain heat in the winter?) and it’s weird to always close the doors behind me. Electricity is very expensive here and most people spend about $600 a month on it, so I can understand retaining the heat, but they do it even in the summer when the heat isn’t on.
Most every bathroom in Norway has a heated floor. The bathroom in our condo at Moa is as big as the bedroom. From looking at floor plans of places for sale around here, that is not uncommon. People have washing machines in the bathroom, but most don’t have dryers (which are very different than ours). The reasons the bathrooms are so large is because everyone has an indoor clothes line and they hang up the clothes to dry – year round. I’m doing a few loads of laundry right now and the clothes have been in the dryer for over two hours… as there is minimal heat to it – it’s more like a water extractor so you have to keep emptying the water bin when it gets full. I guess the design of that kind of dryer works when there is no place to have an outside vent for the heated air. I think it’s a bit strange, but if we don’t get a dryer I think I’ll just be a lazy American and lay all the clothes on the bathroom floor and they’ll be dry in less than two hours, I’m sure.
When people move from place to place here in Norway it’s common to take EVERYTHING with them – all appliances (frig, stove, dishwasher, washing machine), all light fixtures and all heating elements. A central source of heat is unheard of. Each room has a radiant heater that plugs into the wall so they detach easily – as do the ceiling light fixtures (they put plug-ins in the ceiling). So when you buy or rent, you get a place that is stripped naked. It can add thousands and thousands of dollars to the cost of moving when you have to buy all that stuff the first time (most appliances cost around a thousand dollars with today’s exchange rate) and heaters and lamps aren’t cheap either. At this point, I’m getting numb to how much things cost. I just want a place to call our own. Keep praying!
2 comments:
I'm finding your blog fascinating! Thanks for writing every day.
Maybe bathrooms are different in other parts of Norway. All my cousins in Oslo and Trondheim had very small bathrooms (still with the heated floor). My cousins in Trondheim had the toilet in one little room and the bath and sink in another! I'm in love with the heated floor. Such a smart idea. Do all your cousins and friends take their shoes off when they come into the house? Mine all did and they all had wood floors. NO wall to wall yucky carpeting. My cousin in Olso lives in a timber house built by the Nazis! He heats his house with a beautiful wood stove that has unicorns on it. (But the bathroom floor is still heated.) They all opened all the doors as soon as the sun came out. They all ate outside too. We all stayed up until midnight. In Trondheim it didn't get dark until after 11pm and that was in MAY. I can't imagine what it is like to have light all night long in the summer.
I've yet to see a small bathroom here - maybe it's just because everyone lives in newer houses? And yes, everyone has wood floors and a wood burning stove. And YES to the eating outside thing - even if it's raining. If it's summer - they eat outside (everyone has awnings over their decks). I guess if you were cooped up all winter, you'd do the same. It's not getting dark here til about 1am right now.
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