There were just a few of us in class today. Friday’s typically have low attendance anyway but it probably didn’t help that it was another gorgeous day. I’m sure everyone would have rather been out walking around in the mountains or down by the sea, than sitting in a class learning about prepositions and adjectives. I went because I am getting too far behind and I’m worried I won’t be able to catch up. I got a test back today and only got 55 out of 80 points, but as always, I learn best from my mistakes. We are learning how to change the endings to some adjectives, because they have to match the gender of the noun. I never did memorize the gender of all the nouns, so naturally I’m not doing well with this new little tidbit of grammar. Some adjectives get even different endings depending on whether the noun they are referring to is identified specifically, or just used in general terms. I hate this stuff. For example, “Maten i Norge er ganske sunn,” means, ”The food in Norway is extremely healthy.” The word “sunn” means “healthy” and it will always end with an “n” when it’s used to describe a noun (mat) that ends with “en” (“en” means “the”.) Because the noun “food” is identified specifically as “the food,” then the ending of the adjective is “n”. But if there is just a general statement like “Mosjon er sunt,” (motion is healthy), then the ending of adjective changes. The word “sunt” (healthy), ends with a “t” here because the word “motion” is just a general word, not specifically identified with “the,” so the ending of the adjective has to be a “t.” This stuff just kills me because not all adjectives use this rule and of course, we must memorize which adjectives do. I haven’t even memorized the rule about changing adjectives to match the gender of the noun, nor do I remember to change the ending of the adjective if the noun is plural. The deeper I go, the scarier it gets.I mostly wanted to cry in class today because it’s all so hard, but I did at least hear something that gave me a good laugh. Most Norwegians identify lemons as a vegetable. I triple checked that fact as it seemed unbelievable to me, but it’s true. They consider it NOT a fruit because it’s not sweet. I argued the point, that it’s grown on a tree, etc., but the teacher said that here, they consider it a vegetable and that’s what they teach the kids in school. Go figure. Then I asked her how they classify avocados, and she said as a vegetable. I had to laugh, as I do too, but it also grows on a tree. A woman in our class from Brazil laughed at me and said that of course avocados are fruit because they grow on a tree… and that got us in to quite the discussion about food, which was the only redeeming thing about going to class today.
We are down to only 13 weekends left here in Norway, so we want to utilize them to the max. We are inviting friends and family to come over as often as there are empty spots on our calendar. We decided tonight was a good night for company so we combined it with Family Game Night and invited over Sabina and her mom, Tone, as well as Tone’s two teenagers, plus Tobias and Inger (cousin Odd’s ex-wife.) Kory has known Inger since he first came to Norway in 1967 so it was nice to have her over. Inger is an artist, as is Tone, so we thought they might like to get to know each other better since Tone hangs some of her art in Inger’s art studio. It was a good choice.
There wasn’t as much time as I would have liked to get the house clean, table set and food made, as I only had a few hours after school to pull the whole thing off, but I did the best I could. Kaleb helped me out and went to the store (by himself!) to get a few things. It was almost a right-of-passage for him as I used to go to our little neighborhood store for my mom when I was a kid (mostly to buy her cigarettes), and now Kaleb gets to do the same (but certainly not to buy me smokes!). He loves that kind of responsibility and I love that I don’t have to worry about him being kidnapped.
The food tonight was yummy and only the teenagers didn’t like it. I made Spaghetti Carbonara and Sabina only ate it after she covered it with catsup. I guess it’s common here that kids squeeze catsup all over any type of pasta dish. The teenagers didn’t even stick around for Blueberry Cobbler and Ice Cream, but at least it was nice to meet them. We’ve lived by them all these months and I’ve only seen the daughter a couple of times, and never the boy. After dessert we all played the card game “Golf.” Kory made Kettle Korn (popcorn with sugar) and after nine rounds of Golf (and I won), we sent the kids to bed at 9:30, then all the adults stayed up playing cards until midnight. One other neighbor came over at ten and joined us, so it was very fun to have a house full of screaming and laughing people, as Golf isn’t for sissies. It’s the ultimate game of chance, with very little skill involved - quite the opposite of the Norwegian language.
