We have a visitor for the weekend! Kory’s cousin’s grandson, Bent-Jarle Brenne, flew up from Oslo to spend the weekend with us. He has been to our house in America a few times and we stayed with him in Oslo two years ago so we are thrilled he is here with us now. We love that guy. He just turned 30 and is engaged to be married next summer and he loves to travel. He showed us pictures from his recent month-long trip to Thailand and surrounding countries and has many stories to tell of his adventures there. He also loves kids and is a good climbing wall for Kaleb, as he’s nearly a head taller than Kory and quite burly. Kaleb so needs someone to wrestle with. Bent-Jarle flew in this morning so Kory showed him around town while I was in school then we all picked Kaleb up from school and headed down to the beach – Norwegian style- in the pouring rain. (Bent-Jarle was prepared and brought along his rain pants and coat.) The beach is surprisingly wonderful in a downpour. I guess I need to get out more.
Sabina was here within minutes of our return so she and Kaleb used Bent-Jarle as an entertainment center. She stayed for dinner (no surprise there - see photo) and then we all had a rousing game of cards (we played “Golf” - our favorite.) It’s nearly midnight and all is finally quite in the house now but earlier I was sure we might lose the roof or a few windows for all the whooping and hollering that was going on. Uff da. Maybe I AM getting old…
Today in my Norsk class we had a different teacher. I so miss Inga when she’s not there. We continued yet one more day on words for weather. They are really putting an emphasis on this because it’s such a huge topic of conversation around here. They want to be sure we know all the possible ways to say just how horrible of a day we are having. Today we learned the expression to use when it’s raining about as bad as it can rain. In America we might say “It’s raining cats and dogs,” but here they say it’s raining “Trollkjerring” – which literally translated means it’s raining “female trolls.” Ok, then. And then we had to learn all the names for all the possible pieces of clothing you could use in all the different seasons. They even have “fall jackets” – which of course are much different than winter jackets or summer jackets, but I’m not yet convinced there is a huge difference between a fall jacket and a spring jacket – as they both seem to be rain jackets but they do have rain jackets identified as a separate piece of clothing so, I’m not sure. And I learned a new word for that piece of baby clothing that is all one outfit and snaps inside the legs for easy access… they call that a “sparkbukse” – meaning, “kicking pants.” I guess the babies at that age just lay there and kick all day and they had to call that thing something. I’m not sure we even have a name for it, so as silly as it sounds – at least they named it.
The worst part of class today was when the teacher took thirty minutes to teach us that in the written word, to show a direction quotation, you don’t HAVE to use the quote marks, you just put a colon after Mary said: and then we know it’s a quote. But how you know when the quote is over, I have no idea. I guess that concept would have taken too long to explain.
Sabina was here within minutes of our return so she and Kaleb used Bent-Jarle as an entertainment center. She stayed for dinner (no surprise there - see photo) and then we all had a rousing game of cards (we played “Golf” - our favorite.) It’s nearly midnight and all is finally quite in the house now but earlier I was sure we might lose the roof or a few windows for all the whooping and hollering that was going on. Uff da. Maybe I AM getting old…
Today in my Norsk class we had a different teacher. I so miss Inga when she’s not there. We continued yet one more day on words for weather. They are really putting an emphasis on this because it’s such a huge topic of conversation around here. They want to be sure we know all the possible ways to say just how horrible of a day we are having. Today we learned the expression to use when it’s raining about as bad as it can rain. In America we might say “It’s raining cats and dogs,” but here they say it’s raining “Trollkjerring” – which literally translated means it’s raining “female trolls.” Ok, then. And then we had to learn all the names for all the possible pieces of clothing you could use in all the different seasons. They even have “fall jackets” – which of course are much different than winter jackets or summer jackets, but I’m not yet convinced there is a huge difference between a fall jacket and a spring jacket – as they both seem to be rain jackets but they do have rain jackets identified as a separate piece of clothing so, I’m not sure. And I learned a new word for that piece of baby clothing that is all one outfit and snaps inside the legs for easy access… they call that a “sparkbukse” – meaning, “kicking pants.” I guess the babies at that age just lay there and kick all day and they had to call that thing something. I’m not sure we even have a name for it, so as silly as it sounds – at least they named it.
The worst part of class today was when the teacher took thirty minutes to teach us that in the written word, to show a direction quotation, you don’t HAVE to use the quote marks, you just put a colon after Mary said: and then we know it’s a quote. But how you know when the quote is over, I have no idea. I guess that concept would have taken too long to explain.
