I just had to go buy one of those electric candle sets to put in the window today. I was starting to feel like a freak by not having one. Good thing it was only five bucks. I’m sure the electricity will cost more than that to keep it going this month, but Advent is here and we must light the way. I found out in class today that Advent means “to wait.” I don’t know why I didn’t see that one coming, as “vent” in Norwegian is “wait.” Now I know. The Good Teacher Inga is finally back in our classroom after a two week absence. She was wearing purple (the color of Advent) and she brought a purple candle to light. She had to be sure we all knew about this tradition. The one difference I notice here in their advent candles is that they only have four and they are all purple. I told someone about our American version which has three purple, one pink and one white, and they looked at me like I was from another planet. That is NOT proper Advent protocol in Norway, so I best do it as the Norwegians do.
Kaleb was up at six this morning wondering if an Advent gift was awaiting him. He only saw the piece of candy dangling from the Advent hook, and failed to look at the clue underneath it so he was disappointed but didn’t say anything. When I got up I asked him if he was going to look for his gift and he was so surprised he got something more than licorice. I got him a book called, “Why Dog’s Noses are Always Wet.” He loves those kinds of trivia fact books, which is good, because he’s getting a lot of them for Advent this year (I brought them with us).
Kory worked today out on the island of Giske. He found out that the house he is building is owned by Morten’s aunt (Kaleb’s nemesis at school.) It’s a small world.
We got part of our Norse Prøve 1 test back today and I did OK. I missed 4 out of 38 on the part we got back. The toughest part we’ve yet to see, but we will review it tomorrow. I can’t even emphasize enough how tired I am of not being able to speak this language. It feels like I’ll never master it as I still can’t remember the first lesson we had months ago – to put the stupid verb in the second position of every sentence! I so want to say “Can you do that?” rather than “Can do you that?” It just goes against every fiber of my being to make a sentence that sounds so ridiculous, but that’s how these people talk so I’m the one that sounds like a fool when I speak with English sentence structure. Ugh. (Kory takes great pleasure in the fact I’m struggling, as I’ve spent years correcting his English and now he’s got a sadistic streak in gloating over my “challenges.”) Some of the other rules are starting to sink into my brain a bit though, like the past tense verbs and genderizing the nouns, but I feel hopeless when it comes to those sentences. And when someone is talking, I feel much like the dinosaur that gets his tail stepped on and it takes a complete minute for that information to travel to his brain before he can say "OUCH". Once someone says something to me, they need to stop and give me a minute to process all the words to see if I can figure out what they just said. But no, they just keep on talking and I’m lost in a blur of syllables that go up and down with a rhythmic pattern so sing-songy it could almost put a person to sleep. No one said it would be easy. It just kills me though because I’m used to being the best student in class, and now I’m not. There are women in our class, fresh out of high school, so their brains are still in the soaking-it-up mode and they are kicking my butt in terms of learning the language. The student that’s doing the best is from South America, and she’s sweet as pie but my nature is to not like her because she’s better than me. But I sit and console myself all day when I listen to her speak because she has such a horrible lisp that I just tell myself no matter how much she knows this language, no one will ever be able to understand her speaking it. (And it makes me so thankful for speech therapy for Kaleb because he had a little of the same problem but it’s so much better now.) The only good news today was that I got a better score than Vestina, and she’s an excellent student. (She’s my partner at school and I love her dearly but she’s always beating me at EVERYTHING as she gets perfect scores on all her homework assignments and I never do.) So apparently this class is not so much about me learning or not learning the language as much as it is about me being competitive and petty! Go figure. (The photo today is the view out my classroom window.)
After school today I worked on Kaleb’s birthday party – hanging stars from the ceiling above the dining table and making portraits to hang on the walls. I’m trying to “set the stage” as much as possible with the limited resources I have here. Based on Tobias’ reaction to the plans he’s seen so far, I think it will be a hit. I may not be the best foreign Norwegian speaker in this country, but the award for best kid birthday parties is all mine.
Kory worked today out on the island of Giske. He found out that the house he is building is owned by Morten’s aunt (Kaleb’s nemesis at school.) It’s a small world.
We got part of our Norse Prøve 1 test back today and I did OK. I missed 4 out of 38 on the part we got back. The toughest part we’ve yet to see, but we will review it tomorrow. I can’t even emphasize enough how tired I am of not being able to speak this language. It feels like I’ll never master it as I still can’t remember the first lesson we had months ago – to put the stupid verb in the second position of every sentence! I so want to say “Can you do that?” rather than “Can do you that?” It just goes against every fiber of my being to make a sentence that sounds so ridiculous, but that’s how these people talk so I’m the one that sounds like a fool when I speak with English sentence structure. Ugh. (Kory takes great pleasure in the fact I’m struggling, as I’ve spent years correcting his English and now he’s got a sadistic streak in gloating over my “challenges.”) Some of the other rules are starting to sink into my brain a bit though, like the past tense verbs and genderizing the nouns, but I feel hopeless when it comes to those sentences. And when someone is talking, I feel much like the dinosaur that gets his tail stepped on and it takes a complete minute for that information to travel to his brain before he can say "OUCH". Once someone says something to me, they need to stop and give me a minute to process all the words to see if I can figure out what they just said. But no, they just keep on talking and I’m lost in a blur of syllables that go up and down with a rhythmic pattern so sing-songy it could almost put a person to sleep. No one said it would be easy. It just kills me though because I’m used to being the best student in class, and now I’m not. There are women in our class, fresh out of high school, so their brains are still in the soaking-it-up mode and they are kicking my butt in terms of learning the language. The student that’s doing the best is from South America, and she’s sweet as pie but my nature is to not like her because she’s better than me. But I sit and console myself all day when I listen to her speak because she has such a horrible lisp that I just tell myself no matter how much she knows this language, no one will ever be able to understand her speaking it. (And it makes me so thankful for speech therapy for Kaleb because he had a little of the same problem but it’s so much better now.) The only good news today was that I got a better score than Vestina, and she’s an excellent student. (She’s my partner at school and I love her dearly but she’s always beating me at EVERYTHING as she gets perfect scores on all her homework assignments and I never do.) So apparently this class is not so much about me learning or not learning the language as much as it is about me being competitive and petty! Go figure. (The photo today is the view out my classroom window.)
After school today I worked on Kaleb’s birthday party – hanging stars from the ceiling above the dining table and making portraits to hang on the walls. I’m trying to “set the stage” as much as possible with the limited resources I have here. Based on Tobias’ reaction to the plans he’s seen so far, I think it will be a hit. I may not be the best foreign Norwegian speaker in this country, but the award for best kid birthday parties is all mine.
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