We’ve been gone from “home” for ten days now so we were in desperate need for some of life’s little maintenances. We thought about going into the center of Oslo to a museum this morning but we all opted instead to stay put and get a few things done – like laundry and paying bills. It’s so awful to even think about doing those things when we are on vacation, but the length of this one precipitates the need to stay on top of dirty underwear and unpaid phone bills. So it was that today we just hung out for the morning after Jens-Frederik and Anne-Marie went to work. We had the house to ourselves and we all enjoyed the break. Kaleb played non-stop on his Nintendo, Kory sorted out his vitamins for the next two weeks and I paid bills, organized photos, read e-mails, and did two loads of clothes. There are worse ways to spend a day.Jens-Frederik and Anne-Marie’s oldest daughter, Angelica, lives about five minutes away and she called and invited us over for lunch. We attended her wedding near St. Louis two years ago when she got married to Christopher, an American. On the 17th of May, this year, they had a baby boy they named Zion. Angelica and Chris are both rap artists so Kaleb was almost giddy to see them again as he plays their CD over and over and loves their music. He and his friend Timothy might be some of their biggest fans. Angelica is on maternity leave and Christopher also took the day off because his grandparents are here visiting from Venezuela. He grew up in Florida but his father is from Venezuela so Spanish is his native tongue. His grandmother offered to make us one of her favorite dishes from Venezuela so we were treated to an incredibly tasty meal. We also had a nice time visiting with them. Kory had much to talk about, as usual, and Chris acted as the interpreter when needed. Kory so impressed me with how much Spanish he remembers (Chris’ grandparents don’t speak a word of English). Kory lived in Paraguay for a year about forty years ago and worked at a mission station there building a medical clinic. He has many good stories about the primitive life he lived, so he was telling many of them today. I understood a lot of what was being said because I took years of Spanish in high school and college, but I’ll be darned if I couldn’t even think of one word to say. It’s like the Norwegian language erased the part of my brain that was storing all the Spanish and I couldn’t come up with a single word. It was embarrassing. I thought it was Spanish, but it came out Norwegian. And why I could understand Spanish, but not speak it, was a strange phenomenon. My brain is definitely on the down slide…
After much visiting we left Angelica’s place to drive into the center of Oslo to meet her brother, Bent-Jarle and his new wife, Birgitta, for dinner. They are still entertaining guests from around the world that came for the wedding so they’ve had a very busy week, but we didn’t want to miss the chance to greet them and take them out to dinner. Birgitta is a junior high school teacher in English, Norwegian and French. She sounds very prim and proper when she talks because she speaks British English as she lived in England for three years. She told us the school where she teaches is celebrating their 150 year anniversary so the school offered to take the staff out to have a celebratory dinner at a restaurant in Oslo. Then someone at the school figured out just how expensive that dinner would be (VERY expensive, as eating out in Norway is not for the weak hearted), and they came up with Plan B, not to save money, but to have more fun. For the same price as dinner and wine at a restaurant in Oslo, they could buy airplane tickets and two nights at a hotel in Estonia. They thought the staff could have a little weekend getaway to Estonia for the same price, if the staff would buy their own meals there (which are very cheap). Everyone loved the idea, so she is soon off on that trip with her co-workers. Now if that doesn’t say something about how expensive it is to eat out in Norway, I don’t know what does. When it’s cheaper to fly across the Baltic Sea for the weekend than to buy one meal at a restaurant here, I think there is something wrong.
Tonight we had our final chat with Anne-Marie and Jens-Frederik – two of our favorite relatives (see photo of them at Bent-Jarle’s wedding last week). Anne-Marie had a tough day at work because so many old people died over the weekend from the heat, (she works at a funeral home.) Jens-Frederik recently quit his job as pastor of a State Church and is now a State Church prison chaplain so his days are always interesting and varied. They are a lovely couple and wonderful servants of God. I love their tradition of praying together (even with guests) before they retire for the night. What a great send-off, for tomorrow, we hit the road again heading south.
