The party continued today for Tante Ruth as she felt so well, she invited her sisters over for coffee and leftover prune cake (she hasn’t done that in over five years). She was still feeling overwhelmed even today with all the good wishes and nice memories people wrote down for her on the pink hearts I cut out and she spent the day going over and over what people had written. The other two aunts thought my “heart” idea was “laughable” and they really didn’t do as I asked because they said, “we don’t do those kinds of things in Norway” – meaning “share feelings” – but when they saw how effective it was at getting Tante Ruth out of the dumps, they had second thoughts and now think I’m a genius. When I heard that Tante Ruth even went out and bought a scrapbook album in which to set the messages in, I got to work on my laptop and fired up Microsoft Publisher. I made five sheets of photos from her party in a sort of scapbooky style and printed them out on photo paper for her to put in the book. I took them over to her this afternoon and she was just downright giddy. Tante Kari thinks I should run for President as she is sure I am capable of doing just about anything. (Those ladies like to gush.) It does my heart good though to hear Tante Ruth is feeling so chipper as she’s been in a dark hole for several years now and her future isn’t too bright.
Kory spent his day at home poking around The Sinking Houses. When I missed my bus late this afternoon by two minutes and the next wasn’t coming for an hour, I called him to come get me. But, he had just taken a few sips of beer and wouldn’t drive. Norway has incredibly strict drunk driving laws and NO ONE would ever get in a vehicle even after one sip or they could lose their license for life, go to jail for at least a year and get a huge fine (thousands of dollars). There is no getting out of drunk driving charges and there is zero tolerance with NO breath limit. In fact, someone can just see you take a sip of alcohol and turn you in and you’re done for. So no one here ever gets behind the wheel after sipping anything alcoholic. We’ve even offered wine at the beginning of a meal, knowing people will stay several hours and it would wear off by the time they have to drive home, and they still won’t risk it. Even our neighbor – half a block away, wouldn’t have any wine when he came for dinner and an evening of playing cards, because he drove here. The law is incredibly effective at keeping the roads safe, and folks get real cozy with their immediate neighbors as they are the only ones they can really sit around and have a drink with. I so wish there was a way to have that whole scenario be part of the American culture, but it would only work if the entire country is full of people with the kind of strong will that the Norwegian people possess.
I had a pretty fun day at school today. We were back on the subject of weather and the seasons. Our teacher, Inga (see photo – the one on the right) told us there are usually just two seasons here in Norway – the white winter and the green winter. I thought that was pretty funny. She also spent a good deal of time being a cheerleader to half the class who are getting homesick and tired of how hard it is to learn Norwegian. She told us it’s hard to move to another country even if you know the language because she lived six years in Ireland and was fluent in English but still had a horrible time adjusting. She’s so good for us. She keeps cheering us on and telling us all we are doing great – even the ones that can’t speak a word of Norwegian. And then she mixed things up a bit and had us change our usual partners (see photo of Vestina, the one on the left – my usual partner). She put me with the little old Russian lady that doesn’t speak much of anything - what a hoot that woman is. You’d swear by looking at her, she is old enough to be my mother, but she’s only five years older than me. (Life must have been hard in Russia.) She told me today (through using her Russian/Norwegian dictionary – and me translating what she said using my Norwegian/English dictionary), that she used to live way up north on the Norwegian/Russian border. We were supposed to talk about the weather in our home countries so she said (also using a lot of hand motions and drawing pictures on paper for clarification) that in the winter, that far north, they would get up and turn on the radio and hear, “Today will be five minutes long,” and the next day, “Today will be ten minutes long,” for that’s how long the sun would barely rise above the horizon around noon. And for those two winter months the whole town would go outside and wait to see that little crack of light and they’d whoop and holler and have a great old time because the sun is still around. I asked what she did up there and she also told me that for seven years she was a General in the Russian army (I didn’t see that one coming). Then she made hand motions like little boys do when they shoot guns and she made all the sound effects that go with it. I got the sense she’s actually shot people. She then looked up the word that meant “secret” and I’m not sure if she meant I was supposed to keep that bit of news a secret, or if she worked for the secret service agency within the army. I guess her secret is out now. (So much for me being President.)
Kory spent his day at home poking around The Sinking Houses. When I missed my bus late this afternoon by two minutes and the next wasn’t coming for an hour, I called him to come get me. But, he had just taken a few sips of beer and wouldn’t drive. Norway has incredibly strict drunk driving laws and NO ONE would ever get in a vehicle even after one sip or they could lose their license for life, go to jail for at least a year and get a huge fine (thousands of dollars). There is no getting out of drunk driving charges and there is zero tolerance with NO breath limit. In fact, someone can just see you take a sip of alcohol and turn you in and you’re done for. So no one here ever gets behind the wheel after sipping anything alcoholic. We’ve even offered wine at the beginning of a meal, knowing people will stay several hours and it would wear off by the time they have to drive home, and they still won’t risk it. Even our neighbor – half a block away, wouldn’t have any wine when he came for dinner and an evening of playing cards, because he drove here. The law is incredibly effective at keeping the roads safe, and folks get real cozy with their immediate neighbors as they are the only ones they can really sit around and have a drink with. I so wish there was a way to have that whole scenario be part of the American culture, but it would only work if the entire country is full of people with the kind of strong will that the Norwegian people possess.
I had a pretty fun day at school today. We were back on the subject of weather and the seasons. Our teacher, Inga (see photo – the one on the right) told us there are usually just two seasons here in Norway – the white winter and the green winter. I thought that was pretty funny. She also spent a good deal of time being a cheerleader to half the class who are getting homesick and tired of how hard it is to learn Norwegian. She told us it’s hard to move to another country even if you know the language because she lived six years in Ireland and was fluent in English but still had a horrible time adjusting. She’s so good for us. She keeps cheering us on and telling us all we are doing great – even the ones that can’t speak a word of Norwegian. And then she mixed things up a bit and had us change our usual partners (see photo of Vestina, the one on the left – my usual partner). She put me with the little old Russian lady that doesn’t speak much of anything - what a hoot that woman is. You’d swear by looking at her, she is old enough to be my mother, but she’s only five years older than me. (Life must have been hard in Russia.) She told me today (through using her Russian/Norwegian dictionary – and me translating what she said using my Norwegian/English dictionary), that she used to live way up north on the Norwegian/Russian border. We were supposed to talk about the weather in our home countries so she said (also using a lot of hand motions and drawing pictures on paper for clarification) that in the winter, that far north, they would get up and turn on the radio and hear, “Today will be five minutes long,” and the next day, “Today will be ten minutes long,” for that’s how long the sun would barely rise above the horizon around noon. And for those two winter months the whole town would go outside and wait to see that little crack of light and they’d whoop and holler and have a great old time because the sun is still around. I asked what she did up there and she also told me that for seven years she was a General in the Russian army (I didn’t see that one coming). Then she made hand motions like little boys do when they shoot guns and she made all the sound effects that go with it. I got the sense she’s actually shot people. She then looked up the word that meant “secret” and I’m not sure if she meant I was supposed to keep that bit of news a secret, or if she worked for the secret service agency within the army. I guess her secret is out now. (So much for me being President.)
