6 June 2013
Kory continued sending messages today to the parking company
that refuses to give him any grace around that stupid parking ticket. It must take Kory an hour to write a simple
e-mail so he’s been glued to his i-pad trying to work modern day
communications. I could help, but I
figured he got himself into the mess by not listening to me in the first place,
so he can figure out how to get out of it.
No grace here, either!
Kaleb did school work until Daniel showed up at our
door. He was happy to have some drop in
company, but since he’s still restricted on electronics, they had to do
something other than sit on the computer together so they headed for the mall
and wrestled around in the house.
I started packing up our condo, taking down all the
decorations. The weather finally
cooperated with a full-on day of rain so I spent several hours in the basement
cleaning out our storage unit first, then came up with boxes and started taking
things off the walls and shelves. I feel
like I’m in prison and it’s more boring here than I can stand. Even Kaleb complained it doesn’t feel like
home anymore! But it’s necessary in
order to rent out the unit. It will take
me a few days to get everything tucked away, but I have time.
Not much else happened today except that Kory helped his
cousin Odd finish up the trim work in his house so he was gone for the bulk of
the day. No resting going on in our
house, that’s for sure. Kory was up at
5am driving our guests to the airport, then promptly went back to bed. We have such a cushy life I can’t stand it!
7 June 2013
Still packing up the house.
The walls are white as white can be and the shelves are just plain
empty. It’s more than boring and has no
pizzazz to it, but it is what it is and we have to look at it for two more
weeks like this. Hopefully someone looking
at it next week once the ad appears in the paper, will think it’s just their
style. Norwegians are so
minimalistic. Yuck.
Kaleb didn’t get dressed until dinnertime. He was busy studying for his second to the
last chapter test on parabolas or some darn thing. It’s so beyond any math I’ve ever done in my
whole life I can’t even understand the concept of what he’s doing. He was moaning himself, wondering what the
point of it all was, but he kept at it.
My friend Kristin stopped in for coffee just after lunch,
bringing me flowers and some treats. She wanted to know if I needed help
packing up. What a treasure she is. I told her to come back in about 10 days when
the real cleaning starts, and she agreed!
We chatted for a while and I told her about this parking ticket. She got me on to a website that’s kind of
like the Better Business Bureau and she wrote in a complaint for me about the
ticket. Not sure how long it takes to
hear back from them, but at least I felt like I did something to keep from
possibly having to pay that ridiculous fee.
A story appeared in the newspaper today that Oslo is the
most expensive city in the world for Americans to visit. No kidding.
Kory left this afternoon for a few hours to meet up with
Vidar, the pastor of the Philadelphia Church.
All the materials are now at the “Miracle House” downtown, so Kory’s
going to start working there Monday, building a wheelchair ramp, a wall, and
hopefully the bathrooms. He’s only got
two weeks to work so we’ll see how much he gets done in that timeframe. He’s excited to be part of this project. And Vidar was elated to have copies of all of
Kory’s artwork of Norway so he can sell them in the house and make some money
for that ministry. What a win/win, and
Kory was kinda thrilled to think his artwork will end up all over the world,
since a lot of people from the cruise ships come for tours there. Very fun stuff. Kory took some photos of the house and will
draw a picture of that place too, to add to his collection. Maybe it will motivate him more for doing
other drawings. Woo hoo.
I met with my Pal Vestina for coffee today and to introduce
her to Svela. I can’t believe she’s
lived in Norway for six years and has never eaten that stuff. It’s a pancake type thing that’s eaten with
the fingers and it’s really good, but it doesn’t taste at all like a
pancake. They put butter and sugar or
jam on the inside and eat it for night food or road trips or coffee
breaks. She loved it and we had a nice
chat for a few hours.
Vestina told me about how she got her current job working in
an office when she had no previous office experience. She just went around to every office she
could find, day after day, month after month, until she hit upon a place
willing to give her a try, since she had no previous office experience and she’s
a foreigner. She now arranges for
shipments of dried fish to places around the world. She orders the containers, the pickup and
deliveries from the factories, and finds a ship to send them out. It’s massive amounts of paperwork so the fish
sellers don’t want to mess with it, so she’s just the middle one helping the
process along. She’s a quick learner so
her boss is well pleased with her. I’m
pretty proud of her and always amazed at how focused she is on getting what she
wants. Nothing keeps her from it.
(Love this re-cycled boat below made into a mail box shelter.)
Tonight Daniel is spending the night with us, actually, the
whole weekend, because his dad is away fishing and his mom is in Oslo at a
Jesus Women conference. Kaleb is
thrilled. The fact it’s his half
birthday weekend is also a bonus as I promised to throw in a few treats
throughout the weekend.
They were both over a Philadelphia Church helping with a kid’s
program over there, so I brought them a party in a box, pizza, pop, chips and
cookies, since they had to leave before I got any dinner ready. Kaleb was beaming when I showed up as he’d
taken the chapter test while I was gone with Vestina, and he got 100% on
it. Incredible. One chapter test to go and his final and he’s
done with that 9 month course in less than 3 months. That kids rocks with math.
8 June 2013
Pretty uneventful day today.
Kory worked all day at Agape, installing insulation in the walls of the
new section of the church and I unpacked more chairs. Kaleb had Daniel here so they were glued to
their computers all day while the rain continued to pour. When I got home I packed up a few more things
and got more banana boxes from the grocery store next door. Kaleb and Daniel went to see the movie EPIC
as a little treat for Kaleb’s half birthday, so that was the only thrill going
on all day. Just winding down, packing
up and getting ready to head out. Pretty
routine stuff. (Where else but Norway would you find flowers on the table at Burger King?)
9 June 2013
At least our day wasn’t just packing up - we had church!
We went to Agape this morning and evening and Mark did a great job
preaching, as usual and the worship band was incredible, as always. I love that church. Mark even had a couple teenage boys preach
for a few minutes this morning, which was awesome.
Daniel was here all day and not too happy we made him go to
church with us this morning. He finds it
all so boring. Kaleb never complains, so
I’m thankful for that.
I’ve been thinking about something Vestina told me the other
day… she said every place she’s lived in Norway, she’s had a knock on the door
by someone from the government, asking her if she owned a TV and wanted to take
a look around inside her place to verify that she didn’t have one.
There is one channel, NRK, that is a public TV channel with
no commercials, so they rely on people “subscribing” to it in order to keep it
running. It’s not voluntary. If you buy a TV, you automatically get signed
up for their annual bill and you must pay it.
If there’s an address out there that’s not registered with them, I guess
the government sends out spies in the land to be sure they really don’t own a
TV. Kinda creepy, but also strange that
we’ve never had such a visit, since we don’t pay that tax. But our address is very vague and we’re in a
security building, so I guess they haven’t figured out how to come to our door
yet, but the day may come. Talk about an
invasion of privacy! But that’s Norway
for ya. (Typical Norwegian roads below...)
I got a few more articles written this weekend and I read a
lot of news over the internet and the big news in our house is that there isn’t
any. Hallelujah for that.
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