We’ve had a few days of huge wind gusts and off and on downpours, black skies and unfriendly weather. It makes me so glad we have a fireplace and a small house so it doesn’t take much to keep it warm. I’m also thankful I don’t have to be outside! Welcome to the beginning of the winter, as the days get increasingly shorter and the darkness sets in. (The photo today was taken Saturday. I’m sure those peaks have several inches of snow on them by now.)
Kory was inside all day, and not having any other projects to keep him busy, he did housework. What a concept! I came home to floors vacuumed and washed and a clean kitchen. I like it. I love it. I want some more of it! I made him a yummy dinner as reward (and then he cleaned up!) Kaleb had another rough day with Morton and his gang going after him at recess, but he’s making as much sport out of it as he can and at least he’s not crying about the encounters anymore. Sabina was here tonight and we played cards until the two of them got in a squabble. They are starting to act like siblings. Sabina kicked Kaleb under the table then she started messing with the cards and “not following the rules.” Kaleb grabbed her arm to get the cards back and squeezed it more than he should have. She didn’t complain but we called it quits and sent Kaleb to bed. Uff da. So much for my "nice" boy.
I’ve been watching with great interest the last few days the exchange rate between the kroner and the dollar. The dollar was over seven today – meaning we can buy seven kroner with one dollar. Just a month ago we could only buy five kroner with a dollar so this whole financial crisis is still working well for us. This afternoon we went to the bank and converted all the dollars we had left as we feel things might reverse and then we’ll be kicking ourselves. Of course there is no telling what the future holds, but thankfully we know “who holds the future”! It’s so nice to ride out these storms, whether they are financial ones or weather ones, knowing we have nothing to fear.
In my Norwegian class today we learned weird things – common expressions and sayings. After all the work they make us go through to learn the different tenses of verbs, today we find out that if the verb is obvious, you can just skip it altogether. Why in the world you need to leave out a key element in a sentence is beyond me, but maybe the Norwegians think like Kory did as a child. He was required at the dinner table to be quiet so his parents could talk. He thought he wasn’t allowed to speak because there were only so many words that would come out of his mouth in a lifetime, and that he wasn’t supposed to use them all up as a child…. Such is the logic of a young mind, but I have no idea behind the logic in this new rule we have learned. It’s very weird to hear someone say “Jeg kan norske” which means “I can Norwegian.” It’s allowed to leave out the verb “speak” because it’s obvious what goes there (more obvious to some than others, I suppose). So it’s possible to hear people say things like “I will the store” or “I must to class.” Makes no sense. Why not just say “GO” right in there with the sentence, as it’s not a very big word, even in Norwegian. But then, Norwegians are known to be quite the conservers. They don’t even waste a breath, as they often talk while sucking in air. I’ll be talking to someone and it sounds like they just choked on something as they suck in a breath and say “Ja” at the same time. It’s as if what they were agreeing to couldn’t even wait until the next breath was taken and the comment has to come out immediately, even if they are in the middle of breathing in. I don’t get it, but then I don’t get a lot of things Norwegian. Like the expression we learned today, (Kan du slå på tråden?) which word-for-word is translated as: “Can you hit me with a thread?” or “Can you punch me with a string?” – it could go either way as the words used mean both things. That’s the literal translation, but the meaning is something that could never be guessed: “Can you give me a call?” (I’m sure there are weird English expressions as well, but since I’m so used to them they don’t exactly come to mind and it’s not nearly as much fun to point them out.) Can you hit me with a thread? Where do they come up with this stuff?
Kory was inside all day, and not having any other projects to keep him busy, he did housework. What a concept! I came home to floors vacuumed and washed and a clean kitchen. I like it. I love it. I want some more of it! I made him a yummy dinner as reward (and then he cleaned up!) Kaleb had another rough day with Morton and his gang going after him at recess, but he’s making as much sport out of it as he can and at least he’s not crying about the encounters anymore. Sabina was here tonight and we played cards until the two of them got in a squabble. They are starting to act like siblings. Sabina kicked Kaleb under the table then she started messing with the cards and “not following the rules.” Kaleb grabbed her arm to get the cards back and squeezed it more than he should have. She didn’t complain but we called it quits and sent Kaleb to bed. Uff da. So much for my "nice" boy.
I’ve been watching with great interest the last few days the exchange rate between the kroner and the dollar. The dollar was over seven today – meaning we can buy seven kroner with one dollar. Just a month ago we could only buy five kroner with a dollar so this whole financial crisis is still working well for us. This afternoon we went to the bank and converted all the dollars we had left as we feel things might reverse and then we’ll be kicking ourselves. Of course there is no telling what the future holds, but thankfully we know “who holds the future”! It’s so nice to ride out these storms, whether they are financial ones or weather ones, knowing we have nothing to fear.
In my Norwegian class today we learned weird things – common expressions and sayings. After all the work they make us go through to learn the different tenses of verbs, today we find out that if the verb is obvious, you can just skip it altogether. Why in the world you need to leave out a key element in a sentence is beyond me, but maybe the Norwegians think like Kory did as a child. He was required at the dinner table to be quiet so his parents could talk. He thought he wasn’t allowed to speak because there were only so many words that would come out of his mouth in a lifetime, and that he wasn’t supposed to use them all up as a child…. Such is the logic of a young mind, but I have no idea behind the logic in this new rule we have learned. It’s very weird to hear someone say “Jeg kan norske” which means “I can Norwegian.” It’s allowed to leave out the verb “speak” because it’s obvious what goes there (more obvious to some than others, I suppose). So it’s possible to hear people say things like “I will the store” or “I must to class.” Makes no sense. Why not just say “GO” right in there with the sentence, as it’s not a very big word, even in Norwegian. But then, Norwegians are known to be quite the conservers. They don’t even waste a breath, as they often talk while sucking in air. I’ll be talking to someone and it sounds like they just choked on something as they suck in a breath and say “Ja” at the same time. It’s as if what they were agreeing to couldn’t even wait until the next breath was taken and the comment has to come out immediately, even if they are in the middle of breathing in. I don’t get it, but then I don’t get a lot of things Norwegian. Like the expression we learned today, (Kan du slå på tråden?) which word-for-word is translated as: “Can you hit me with a thread?” or “Can you punch me with a string?” – it could go either way as the words used mean both things. That’s the literal translation, but the meaning is something that could never be guessed: “Can you give me a call?” (I’m sure there are weird English expressions as well, but since I’m so used to them they don’t exactly come to mind and it’s not nearly as much fun to point them out.) Can you hit me with a thread? Where do they come up with this stuff?
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