The celebration continues. We had our genuine American Christmas morning today when we all woke up at 10:30 (Kory and I were up until 2:30 last night so we were happy to sleep in.) Kaleb was chomping at the bit to open the presents under the tree and he wasn’t the least bit disappointed. We got him a few books and science kits, a few games and movies, but the best gift of all was a new laptop. I can’t believe it myself, but I have had it in the closet for months now as it was a FREE gift to us when we signed up for internet service here. The internet provider had a special promotion for first time subscribers, and since it was “back to school” time they offered this amazing laptop, complete with Norwegian keyboard, for FREE. I could hardly contain myself as Kaleb is so often wanting to use my computer to go to his favorite game websites, but he’s hard pressed to get me off mine. So now, we will have dueling computers and poor Kory will just have to sit and listen to the silence. Kaleb said more than once today that this was the most incredible month of his life, since he got a Nintendo for his birthday and a computer for Christmas, a dog to dog-sit and on Saturday we’re going on a dog sled ride. It just doesn’t get any better. So we have one very happy little boy and that was good enough for both of us. Kory and I gave to charities for our gifts to each other, but he also framed one of his drawings for me so I could hang it on the wall and I gave him a picture book of the buildings in downtown Aalesund so he could draw more pictures of them. At least we were on the same page. We had a late breakfast then Sabina came over for a while and Kaleb showed her all his stuff. He so wanted Tobias to come over too but he had to wait until later in the day for that to happen.
It was nearly a blue sky day today and we were all sad that our hometown got more snow overnight and had a genuine White Christmas, and we didn’t. We spent time looking at all the photos our friends have posted on Facebook and oohing and aahing over the snow forts and igloos and Winter Wonderland shots. It’s a good thing we love it here so much or we might just be wishing we were back home again.
Around here they have “Christmas” on Christmas Eve; the FIRST day of Christmas on the 25th and the Second day of Christmas, will be tomorrow. These three days of Christmas all come with their own traditions, so when in Norway, do as the Norwegians do. Often, on the First day of Christmas, people eat leftovers from the big dinner the night before and “slappe av” (relax). Everyone I talked to thinks everything tastes better the second day. So this afternoon we headed over to Odd and Turids for another grand eating extravaganza. All of Odd and Turid’s grown children were there, as well as both of their mother’s and us, so they had a house full. Odd was so proud of the free tree he got from some guy’s farm this year (he got permission), that I had to take a photo of him standing next to it (see photo). I told him it was a genuine “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree and within minutes one kid had Googled it and another had a photo of it on their cell phone, as they all wanted to know what I was talking about. I told him it had a lot of character. When they saw the picture of Charlie Brown’s tree, then they knew. Apparently, Odd is more like Kory than I realized, as he put up that tree about ten minutes before we got there, just to get a reaction out of us. He let me go on for quite some time before he revealed that it really hadn’t been their Christmas tree – just a joke. Ha ha, he got me good. (The real tree was tossed over the balcony to get rid of the evidence.)
After dinner we had the big contest that Kory set up many months ago. He told both Kaleb and I that whoever spoke the best Norwegian by Christmas would get a thousand kroner (about $150-$200 depending on the exchange rate). I knew I’d win, but he took all the words for the test out of Kaleb’s homework books, not mine, so I didn’t know many of them. I knew the test would be rigged in one way or another and I am competitive enough that it ticked me off. Kory didn’t have the scoring system figured out too well and here we were with about ten judges in front of us and none of them understood fully what the “deal” was. We had to translate words from Norwegian to English, we had to read text to see how our pronunciation was and then we had to answer a question about what we do on a normal day. When Kory gave me the words to translate, he gave me no reference for them so I failed that section miserably. But when he gave the words to Kaleb, he gave them to him in a sentence, so whether Kaleb knew the word or not, it was very easy to just guess what it was from the context. That ticked me off but good as I am all about playing fair. But, after all the judges tallied all their points (we had points taken off if we mispronounced words when we were reading, so this is where I gained some momentum), I WON! It was pretty close, or so said the judges, but I was clearly the winner and gladly accepted my thousand kroner prize. Then Kory gave Kaleb an envelope for the second place prize and he too got a thousand kroner. That is SO Norwegian like – to make everyone the winner. I’ve got just enough “American” in me to think that wasn’t a good idea, but Kaleb sure enjoyed it, even though he said he doesn’t know what to do with the money since he has everything he wants. That’s my boy! I’m going to spend my money on a massage. The stress of it all was just too much.
It was nearly a blue sky day today and we were all sad that our hometown got more snow overnight and had a genuine White Christmas, and we didn’t. We spent time looking at all the photos our friends have posted on Facebook and oohing and aahing over the snow forts and igloos and Winter Wonderland shots. It’s a good thing we love it here so much or we might just be wishing we were back home again.
Around here they have “Christmas” on Christmas Eve; the FIRST day of Christmas on the 25th and the Second day of Christmas, will be tomorrow. These three days of Christmas all come with their own traditions, so when in Norway, do as the Norwegians do. Often, on the First day of Christmas, people eat leftovers from the big dinner the night before and “slappe av” (relax). Everyone I talked to thinks everything tastes better the second day. So this afternoon we headed over to Odd and Turids for another grand eating extravaganza. All of Odd and Turid’s grown children were there, as well as both of their mother’s and us, so they had a house full. Odd was so proud of the free tree he got from some guy’s farm this year (he got permission), that I had to take a photo of him standing next to it (see photo). I told him it was a genuine “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree and within minutes one kid had Googled it and another had a photo of it on their cell phone, as they all wanted to know what I was talking about. I told him it had a lot of character. When they saw the picture of Charlie Brown’s tree, then they knew. Apparently, Odd is more like Kory than I realized, as he put up that tree about ten minutes before we got there, just to get a reaction out of us. He let me go on for quite some time before he revealed that it really hadn’t been their Christmas tree – just a joke. Ha ha, he got me good. (The real tree was tossed over the balcony to get rid of the evidence.)
After dinner we had the big contest that Kory set up many months ago. He told both Kaleb and I that whoever spoke the best Norwegian by Christmas would get a thousand kroner (about $150-$200 depending on the exchange rate). I knew I’d win, but he took all the words for the test out of Kaleb’s homework books, not mine, so I didn’t know many of them. I knew the test would be rigged in one way or another and I am competitive enough that it ticked me off. Kory didn’t have the scoring system figured out too well and here we were with about ten judges in front of us and none of them understood fully what the “deal” was. We had to translate words from Norwegian to English, we had to read text to see how our pronunciation was and then we had to answer a question about what we do on a normal day. When Kory gave me the words to translate, he gave me no reference for them so I failed that section miserably. But when he gave the words to Kaleb, he gave them to him in a sentence, so whether Kaleb knew the word or not, it was very easy to just guess what it was from the context. That ticked me off but good as I am all about playing fair. But, after all the judges tallied all their points (we had points taken off if we mispronounced words when we were reading, so this is where I gained some momentum), I WON! It was pretty close, or so said the judges, but I was clearly the winner and gladly accepted my thousand kroner prize. Then Kory gave Kaleb an envelope for the second place prize and he too got a thousand kroner. That is SO Norwegian like – to make everyone the winner. I’ve got just enough “American” in me to think that wasn’t a good idea, but Kaleb sure enjoyed it, even though he said he doesn’t know what to do with the money since he has everything he wants. That’s my boy! I’m going to spend my money on a massage. The stress of it all was just too much.
