Kaleb was up early this morning, anxious for his first day of school (see photo). He left his bike at his friend Andre’s house so he had to take the bus to school then get his bike afterwards. It was pretty quiet when he left the house, but it didn’t take long for Kory and I to head down to the “people register” place to find out what the problem was with not getting the plates on our car.
When we bought our condo in 1999, we were given “people numbers” that identified us as outsiders. When we applied to live here, we were issued new numbers that identified us as residents. We weren’t exactly sure which numbers we should use, but we assumed when we were no longer residents, we should go back to using the old numbers, since we are now outsiders again, but we had no idea.
The “people register” office is the same place that does income taxes, which are due May 1st, so even though we got down there right after they opened, we were number 27 in line, and it was certainly going to be a long wait before we were helped. We decided to use the wait time to walk the mile or so down to the car licensing place to find out exactly what information they needed before they would release the plates. When we got there, it was apparent they didn’t know. They pointed the finger at the “people register,” saying they were the one that had us registered with two different numbers, and the insurance company registered us using a different number than the car. It was one of those situations where no one wanted to take responsibility, just blame the other bureaucracy involved, and we were stuck in the middle with no transportation until the issue got resolved. Honestly, it seemed hopeless. So we prayed and asked God for help.
In another part of the car registration place, Rune (Kory’s cousin)’s girlfriend, Sol, was working. As we were standing there, getting nowhere, I caught her attention just to say HI – since I hadn’t seen her since we arrived. She asked how it was going and we told her about the problem we were having. She called us over to her workstation and tried to find out a solution – but couldn’t. We told her the people register place seemed to be the one that was hanging us up, but there was such a long wait for help, we came down to the car registration place to be sure we had everything else we needed before we got the runaround one more time from them. “Coincidentally,” her sister works at the people registration office, so she called her up and asked if she could help. She said we should come on down, NOT go into the main office but call her on her private line when we were there and she’d meet us in the stairwell and bring us into her office and try to straighten things out. Whew. Sol even offered to loan us her car to get down there quicker because we’d already walked quite a bit.
Sol’s sister took us right into her office and said she had no idea why we were having a problem. She told us never to use our old people numbers again, even though we are still outsiders because those numbers are dead. Good to know. She then entered a few things into the computer, filled out a few forms, had us sign some things, took copies of our passports and then wrote a certified note to the car place. She told us to go back there and see if her paperwork would straighten things out. She wasn’t even sure if it would help, but it did! We got the plates released right away so we now have our car back on the road. Hallelujah! I hope we don’t have this problem again, though, because it was crazy we had to wait a week for all this, and I’m sure we’d still be waiting if we didn’t have those two inside connections. God works in mysterious ways. (The photo below is the view from our deck through the zoom lens on my new camera - :)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch… I got a text message a few days ago from my friend, Kristin, that said, “Haaper du har tid til aa ta en tur paa mandag kl. 11.” Translated that meant to me, “I hope you are free to go on a hike/walk on Monday at 11:00.” I texted back that I was. I was stressed for all the time it was taking this morning with the car, so I headed back early to our condo so I could change into my hiking clothes – I changed my shoes and put on my rain pants and coat, since the weather looked threatening. I put on lightweight gym clothes underneath it all so I wouldn’t over heat. Another friend, Rigmor, picked me up to go to Kristin’s house. I saw Rigmor wasn’t exactly dressed for a hike (or even a casual walk, for that matter) so I asked her if she knew where we were going. She said it was Kristin’s decision. When we got to Kristen’s house, it was obvious we had a translation problem. She had invited me to lunch! Boy, was I ever embarrassed. Apparently, the exact words one uses to invite someone on a hike are the same words people use as a sort of short-hand for inviting someone to lunch. How was I supposed to know that? She never said anything in her message about lunch! I was once again looking like a slob, sitting at a well decked out coffee table with Rigmor and Kristin, having a fancy meal over a long catch-up conversation wearing ¾ length yoga pants and a short sleeved Hawaiian shirt. I felt like such a moron. Rigmor felt silly too since she didn’t know what I was talking about when I said something about a hike. She agreed that Kristin should have spelled out her plans a little bit better, considering I’m not terribly fluent in Norwegian, but it did provide us all with a pretty good laugh and we had a wonderful time visiting just the same. They offered to go on a hike, but I was happy to pass it up and just sit and talk.
Rigmor brought me back home just as Kory was done getting the plates back on the car and firing it up. He’d gotten a text message from Tone, our old neighbor, asking if we could come for coffee when Kaleb was out of school, so we drove our car (!) over to his friend Andre’s house and picked him and his bike up and headed out to our old neighborhood. “Coffee” to Tone meant homemade pizza, cake, coffee and pop. We were there several hours (see photo of her beautiful place), before Kaleb fell asleep on the couch because he was so tired from last night. We visited with Tone and Sabina and invited them to our place next week. Sabina has great memories of playing the card game GOLF with us night after night when we lived here, and eating Kettle Korn popcorn, so Kory promised to make her popcorn next week and we can all play Golf all she wants after dinner. It’s nice she has good memories of us. (See below.)
Our calendar is filling up fast. We got a call tonight from a cousin in Bergen that would like to come up for a few days and visit us, but it’s tough now to find some free time on our schedule. Crazy life.
I was up til midnight trying to get my new Apple laptop to work with the printer I had here. It just isn’t compatible. I even brought my old Dell laptop along just in case that should happen, as we’ll need to print out some of Kaleb’s school work, but after hours of fussing, I couldn’t get that to work either. It was sad to end the day on such a frustrating note, because otherwise, it was a pretty great day.
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