Settling In Again!

The big excitement of today was had by Kaleb.  He counted the hours until his friends were out of school.  He put on all his rain gear, got his bike out of storage and pumped up the tires.  He made little gift bags of candy and small gifts for his best of friends at Blindheim barneskole and he took off right after lunch.  It’s over four miles to his old school, but the adrenaline he was pumping got him there in short order.  He hid in the bushes outside the classroom of his friends and waited.  He said his heart was pumping hard the whole time, full of anticipation and excitement since none of them knew the exact day or hour he would show up.  He’s been dropping them hints via e-mail, “It will be on a Tuesday.” “We are coming sooner than we did last year.”  When the class was finally dismissed, he couldn’t wait for them all to file out of the building, so he rushed into the changing room where most of them were putting on their outdoor clothes and the shouts rang out.  Some had been hanging out at school longer on Tuesdays for several weeks now, in anticipation of his arrival.   But ironically, his best friend Toban, got out a few minutes before everyone else so he was gone when Kaleb emerged from the bushes.  When Kaleb didn’t see him, he took off on his bike in the direction he was headed and they had a wonderful reunion out on the road near the school.  They rode their bikes back up to Toban’s house and all the neighborhood kids came over to greet him and hang out.  They bounced from house to house, literally, since they all have trampolines, then after several hours, he rode his bike back home, still full of adrenaline from all the excitement.  The questions everyone kept asking him was how long he was staying and if he was coming back to school again.  Tomorrow he’s going to go earlier and ask his old teacher if he can rejoin the class, so he had to tell them he doesn’t know yet.  Oh, I hope he can.

Kory and I were walking zombies all day.  We both woke up at 2am and never went back to sleep, so that left me with only sleeping about 3 hours total.  To say my brain is fuzzy is an understatement.  I continued to unpack and settle in.  I’m far from done since we had to move so much of our stuff down to the storage unit while we were gone.  At least I found clean underwear and our bedding.

Norwegians have a different bedding system where everyone has their own covers, but Kory and I like the one-cover-fits-all kinda thing so when we left, we had to set our bed up like the Norwegians do, but now we are back into our American style of comfort of being able to snuggle without there being a big crack in the middle of the blankets.

Kory spent the day in non-stop motion.  The battery is dead on our van so he had to hook it up to a battery charger, but in order to find the charger, he had to empty out half our storage unit.  He wasn’t happy about that since he had to go through every box we had in there to find it.  He also put together Kaleb’s new bed, which was taking up much of our storage space.  We’d ordered it last year but there was a strike in the shipping industry so it didn’t come before we left the country.  Cousin Axel picked it up and put it in storage.  It has a double mattress on the bottom and a single on top, so when we get company we can give up our room and go sleep in Kaleb’s room all nice and cozy since his bed now takes up 90% of his total floor space.  Kaleb’s thrilled because he can have his friends sleepover here, since he has the extra bed. (See photo - those closet doors can't even open all the way because his bed is too close... and behind that is the stair step wall Kory built last year to separate off Kaleb's room from the living room.  In the photo, Kaleb is taking a 3D picture of me with his 3DS.)

Tante Kari came by for a visit today while we were in the midst of a mess, but she just sat down anyway and chatted.  I love that woman.  She has the most upbeat personality of anyone I’ve ever met.  Every time she sees us (or anyone she knows for that matter), she throws her arms up in the air while a smile takes over her face and at the same moment screams out “Ha-la!” (the meaning of which has no translation but based on her usage I’m guessing to her it means “thrilled to see you.”)  She’s beautiful, too, and Cousin Odd’s mother.  Her sister Aslaug lives on the other side of us, and Kari lives one floor down.  We are surrounded by family, which is so the opposite of what we have in America.

Tante Kari told us her wallet got stolen two weeks ago while she was shopping next door at the mall.  I guess there’s been a rash of burglaries by Romanians that are here illegally.  The security cameras caught it on tape so they were able to arrest them.  Kari never got her $40 back though and had to cancel all her cards, so she was inconvenienced by it, but still had a smile on her face as she told the story because nothing gets that woman down.  I guess I’ll be more careful now when I’m shopping since they are targeting old ladies, and I’m sure I am one.  I told Kaleb we have some interesting dichotomies between America and Norway.  In America, I would NEVER let him ride his bike four miles from home all alone, but here, it’s safe as can be.  In America, we’ve never had any problems with theft or break-ins, but here, he has to lock up his bike even when it’s right outside our door overnight because our neighborhood is a prime target for theft of all kinds.  Funny.

I was at the store about noon today (see photo of the entrance) to buy bread.  The shelves were already starting to empty out (see photo below), but I managed to score a fresh loaf of wheat bread, which was enjoyed by us all at lunchtime.  I noticed Starbucks has finally arrived in Norway as their iced cappuccinos (see other photo below) were being sold right next to my favorite Norwegian version of the same.   They have some stiff competition to win over Norway’s “Tine” brand. 

Kory and I also went shopping for a few more things at 8pm tonight, mostly as a ploy to stay awake.  We took a walk outside and went to the other huge grocery store across the street.  We were the only ones in there, which was weird, but also nice, so we took our time.  I insisted he only buy things on sale, but he had his mind made up about what he wanted and he wasn’t about to set his future menus based on sale items, like I do.  We’ll be eating a lot of pasta, if I’m doing the cooking.  We’ll be eating pickled herring and caviar when it’s his turn.  Well, to be honest, I’ll probably be out of the room when he’s eating that kind of stuff.

I also stopped at the Telenor Kiosk today to ask about my options for internet service.  I ended up buying a broadband modem that looks a lot like a thumb drive, but it’s actually a telephone, so I can dial up the internet and use it unlimited after 5pm and before 7am and all I want on the weekends, but I can’t transmit more than 5 gig of data a month.  How I’m supposed to figure that out, I’m not sure, but I understood perfectly that I can’t use it during business hours.  It was a steal of a deal at $20 a month, but I did have to cough up $145 for the modem.  The dollar is down to 5.4 Norwegian kroners today so prices are higher than I want to think about when I do the conversions.  But I’m thrilled to not have to sit outside in the wind and rain to catch the wi-fi signal from the library below us in order to post my blog like I did last year.  And, I can cancel the service at the end of three months when we leave, so that was my big thrill for the day, besides of course, hearing from more friends that are glad we are back, and wanting to arrange a time when we can get together.  Oh, how I love this life.

A Day in Stavanger

Stavanger is a VERY cool town. I could SO live here. Kaleb’s already planning his daily activities, should the opportunity ever present itself. It’s obvious it’s a BIG money town, as there are so many cool things here, but our favorite one is the Oil Museum. This town is home to all the off-shore oil businesses. The fact it is BIG business in Stavanger is evidenced by how well this town is maintained, the top notch parks, and the coolest museum I’ve been to in a long time. We stumbled upon it this morning as we were out on our “explore”. The town itself is just adorable with little lakes, harbors, lots of old narrow cobblestone streets, quaint white houses, beautiful churches and charm just oozing out of every nook and cranny. Any one area could draw tourists by the hoards, but there are several attractive areas all lumped into this little piece of heaven. There is water everywhere, in fact, the town is on a big peninsula so it definitely has that “sea town” feel to it. Historically the big industry revolved around the fish canning business, but now, it’s the oil, a new commodity from the sea. We fully understand how it all works now that we spent several hours at the oil museum today. We could have easily spent our whole day at that museum as it was so interesting and very fun, but we hadn’t yet explored all there was to see in town, so we forced ourselves out long before any of us wanted to go. And just outside the museum was the BEST children’s play area/park I’ve ever seen. It was all made from recycled products off an oil rig. I hope someone got a prize for just how clever they were in reusing some of the “junk.” The best idea was taking different sized floats from large ships (that are used as bumpers when they are in port), turning them upside down and securing them somehow underground, adding sand around the base for a little stability and letting them sit there upside down with just the right amount of inflation, and the kids go wild bouncing from one to the other. It was like a 3D trampoline and I even loved it. I could have sat all day watching the kids bouncing around like popcorn kernels exploding out of a kettle. It was just too fun.

Kaleb triple loved this town because besides the museum and park, they had a Sub-way sandwich shop! That’s the first one we’ve seen in Norway, so he was thrilled to be able to order his favorite ham sandwich with all the veggies, complete with honey mustard sauce. They do have a McDonalds and Burger King here, but we don’t eat at those places so they don’t hold much sentiment for him – but the Sub-way, now that was hit (to my wallet, as well.)

We could have spent a whole day just walking around all the narrow streets and checking out the town, but we only had half a day after we left the musuem. Many of the businesses were closed or on shorter hours because it’s Easter holiday, but enough was open to get a good taste of things. There weren’t many people here, which was nice. I don’t think I’d like it as much if it is as crowded as I’m sure it gets in the summer. I think this morning at breakfast in the hotel, there was a total of four people, other than us. People really do head to the mountains for Easter break so it was just us tourists from Great Britian, Germany and America in town today. Because tourism is a big deal, they have a lot of “good food” restaurants, so that made me happy.

Today was the kind of day we didn’t need to wear coats. The sun was shining all day and there was no wind, which is very unusual for this town as I’ve read that the wind is a constant. So once again God blessed us with another incredible day. The only less-than-perfect thing that happened was when Kory was spinning Kaleb around in a big tube at the playground and his hand slipped off and hit a pole. He was sure he broke it as it hurt so badly, but now he thinks he might be okay. It’s bruised and swollen, so we’ll see, but he got pretty crabby after that because he was in so much pain. Poor Kaleb, his parents are so decrepit that we tend to get injured every time we play with him. I guess it’s better than the other way around.

We heard from Turid late last night that Tante Kari finally had surgery to repair her broken hip. She made it through without complications, which was our prayer, and she’s now on the mend, so we are very thankful for that. It’s not like I wish disaster to strike us, but I can never go on a trip of any kind without some level of guilt when I know people are hurting, and I’m just off having a great ol’ time. I’ve yet to justify the “fairness” of all our splurging. What’s up with that? And why do I think everything needs to be fair?