The End of My Rope

It wasn’t one of the best days I’ve had lately. After picking up Kory from the hospital and getting him settled in a bed in Odd and Turid’s living room, and making sure Kaleb had his playdate plans for the day all squared away, I headed into town to face the insurance company to see what I must do about all the messes we’ve created lately. I told the woman about the broken window in the car and what was taken and all she could say was, “Sorry, you aren’t covered for that.” As it turns out, we didn’t pay for damage to any windows – apparently that was one of those fine print things that you don’t know about until you try to file a claim. When I told her they also damaged the locking system to the car trying to jam something in it to get the door opened, she said, “Sorry, you aren’t covered for that.” As that one turns out, in words translated to English, it’s something similar to an “attractive nuisance” – the fact we left something in the car that would make them want to break in, makes it our liability, not the insurance companies, so no compensation for that either. Then when I asked about the contents of what was taken I got, “Sorry, you’re not covered for that. You shouldn’t have left anything in the car.” So there you have it. Of all the differences between America and Norway, it’s at least reassuring to know one thing is the same – insurance companies don’t like to pay out any claims.

When I then told the woman about Kory’s accident and that the doctor said today he can’t travel any sooner than the 16th of August, and we have tickets to fly home Friday that we now can’t use, she referred me to some guy on the telephone that said he would be happy to reimburse us for the cost of the tickets for Friday, but that was it. The fact that the new tickets home the next week cost four times the price we paid for the tickets on Friday, wasn’t his problem - our travel insurance only covers the cost of the tickets we can’t use. I wanted to cry. He then reassured me that all of Kory’s medical expenses were covered, which is a moot point anyway because we are in a socialized country and they pay medical for everyone, regardless of where they come from or whether they have insurance or not.

What fries me the most is when we bought the insurance the woman assured me that if anything went wrong, we’d even be compensated for loss of travel days if we had to come home early, any cancellation fees we might have to pay for hotels, etc., etc., but as it turns out, now that we are no longer legal Norwegian residents, all bets are off and we are on our own. They will only pay the $1,500 for our unused one-way tickets. Tickets the following week will cost $6,000, and we have no credit cards to pay for that because they were stolen. Then when I then told the insurance woman about the car I backed in to in Oslo she was bright and cherry and spouted, “No problem, you are covered for that!” so it was good I gave her something to be proud of.

I walked out of the insurance office and headed to my car, fighting back the feeling of being totally ripped off. We’d paid nearly $400 for that policy just for the road trip and now it seems, we would have been better off without it (except it was required by law since we were traveling out of the country.) I wasn’t that angry about the loss of money, as we came in under budget on the road trip anyway, but I was angry at the deception of it all. I was only half a block away from the insurance office when I ran into My Pal Vestina, sent by God, to cheer me up. She took one look at me and said, “Set your nose up, you look terrible like this,” as she hung her head as low as mine. Her hug did me some good as I then ranted on about the situation with the insurance.

After I got back to Odd and Turid’s house I checked out airline tickets on other airlines, trying to find a ticket for the 16th within a reasonable price range, but couldn’t. Finally, I changed the dates for more than two weeks out and was able to find tickets to Seattle and back again next May for a little over a thousand each. If the insurance company really does reimburse us the $500 per ticket, then that wasn’t too bad of a deal, except I still had no way to order them without a credit card. Fortunately, about that time, Turid came in the door and she called Odd and they let me use their credit to buy the tickets, so now, if everything calms down and Kory can sit by then, we’ll be coming home August 17th.

I needed to calm down a little from my frazzled state so I drove over to a nearby island and visited my friend Melinda from school. She just got married in Romania last month and had the most elaborate wedding I’ve ever seen, so it was good to watch the video and see her photos, as it got my mind on happier things. I told her at least when everything happened on our trip, we were comforted at the time with the THOUGHT that the insurance would cover everything, so it made it more tolerable at that moment to deal with it, even though now it turns out not to be true. Melinda sounded almost disgusted with me when she said, “No matter how bad things are or no matter what happens to you, you always find the bright side.” To which I replied, “It’s the only way to get through it without becoming bitter.”

Sundays in Norway

Kaleb went with us to church today – with three books under his arm. Good thing, as the service was two hours long. An evangelist was visiting Filadelfia Kirke (Church) so there was a lot of time spent in prayer and singing and preaching. The speaker was very good and he even got a few HALLELUJAHs out of Kory --although the guy said they weren’t loud enough. Imagine that - someone around here who welcomes the HALLELUJAHs.

After church we went for a visit to Solevaag (pronounced Soo-la-vogue) to some of Kory’s mom’s cousins. They are such nice people but their Norwegian is so different than anyone else’s that I can never understand a word they say. They slur their words together, have a heavy dialect, and use a lot of local slang so the whole conversation was lost on me. We told them we hope to buy a place just down the street and they were thrilled beyond words. Kaleb is also thrilled as he would be related to so many people in that area that he’d have the run of the place. It really is an ideal setting and would fill Kaleb’s head with many memories of his year in Norway. (The photo above is of Solevaag from a different angle than the one a few days ago. The place we hope to buy is in the distance, smack dab behind the red barn in the middle of the photo. The house where Kory’s mom was born is the white house, toward the right, with the highest pitch.) Instead of being close to all the commercialism (library, swimming pool, shopping mall), where our condo is, we’d be close to the best in nature that Norway has to offer – farms, mountains and the sea.

With everything closed in Norway on Sunday, options are limited, which is probably a good thing. There is a kind of freedom in having limited options that I’m sure I’ll come to enjoy over the year. I wish I could have taken a nap as we are up til after midnight every night (we don’t even eat dinner until around 11pm). The timing of things is very different for me, but it’s more the custom of the cousins we are staying with than all Norwegians. But there are some differences that all Norwegians do – like keeping all the doors to all the rooms closed at all times. Every room has a door (to retain heat in the winter?) and it’s weird to always close the doors behind me. Electricity is very expensive here and most people spend about $600 a month on it, so I can understand retaining the heat, but they do it even in the summer when the heat isn’t on.
Most every bathroom in Norway has a heated floor. The bathroom in our condo at Moa is as big as the bedroom. From looking at floor plans of places for sale around here, that is not uncommon. People have washing machines in the bathroom, but most don’t have dryers (which are very different than ours). The reasons the bathrooms are so large is because everyone has an indoor clothes line and they hang up the clothes to dry – year round. I’m doing a few loads of laundry right now and the clothes have been in the dryer for over two hours… as there is minimal heat to it – it’s more like a water extractor so you have to keep emptying the water bin when it gets full. I guess the design of that kind of dryer works when there is no place to have an outside vent for the heated air. I think it’s a bit strange, but if we don’t get a dryer I think I’ll just be a lazy American and lay all the clothes on the bathroom floor and they’ll be dry in less than two hours, I’m sure.

When people move from place to place here in Norway it’s common to take EVERYTHING with them – all appliances (frig, stove, dishwasher, washing machine), all light fixtures and all heating elements. A central source of heat is unheard of. Each room has a radiant heater that plugs into the wall so they detach easily – as do the ceiling light fixtures (they put plug-ins in the ceiling). So when you buy or rent, you get a place that is stripped naked. It can add thousands and thousands of dollars to the cost of moving when you have to buy all that stuff the first time (most appliances cost around a thousand dollars with today’s exchange rate) and heaters and lamps aren’t cheap either. At this point, I’m getting numb to how much things cost. I just want a place to call our own. Keep praying!