Kory had to work in the rain again today and then had to soak his bones in the tub when he got home just to thaw out. The temperatures are dropping around here and it’s downright nippy! (The photo today is of the house he’s building on the island of Giske.)
Kaleb came home with incredible news – Morton actually was nice to him today! During the afterschool program Morton asked Kaleb to sit by him, so Kaleb accepted the offer. Kaleb has surmised that he might like Morton after all if he just looks at him through different eyes. He’s decided that all the hitting Morton does could just be considered “playing rough” and he might just give him a second chance. So I say, HALLELUJAH! Things are looking up. We might even be brave enough to arrange a play date with him sometime soon. (Gotta get while the gettins’ good.) Kaleb spent his entire evening doing homework and doing it well (when the stakes are high enough, the results are there.)
I got a little Norsk test back today that I took before the fall break – and out of 109, I scored 109! It was a listening test where we hear two words that sound similar and then we circle the one we think it is. Well, I have a terrible time distinguishing between the sound an “e” makes and the sound the letter “æ” makes. On previous tests I always get them mixed up, so this time when I took the test, I picked the opposite word from the one I thought it was, resulting in a score of 100%. Whatever works.
We have had a real change lately in the student body of my class. I guess there were some people who paid for just six weeks of the course so their time came to an end at the fall break. But most of the students are new immigrants and they all need to work, so one by one they have been getting jobs and either coming sporadically or not at all because they are working days and had to switch to a night class. It’s sad for me because I liked so many of the students and now I may never see them again. We had a good “feel” to the class, but now there are new students coming in that were not doing well in the next level up so they had to go back to start. Uff da. I don’t think I do well with change. Oh wait, that can’t be true, or I wouldn’t be living here!
I was talking with some fellow classmates today at break and I found out almost all of them work - and they all have the exact same job: cleaning. I was so surprised by that. One cleans offices, one cleans hotel rooms, one cleans houses, one cleans up at a slaughterhouse, one cleans a ferry, one cleans fish, and one cleans at the hospital. I so enjoy how clean Norway is, and I guess if it weren’t for the immigrants, it wouldn’t be so clean! And the fact that the ONLY job someone can get in Norway if they don’t know the language is cleaning – well, that becomes the great motivator for them, and WHY they are in the class – because they don’t want to keep doing what they are doing forever so they need to learn the language. Getting a job in retail would be like a dream come true for most of them but they have to pass a Level 2 Norsk exam and get a certificate before they can get that kind of job. Every job pays a livable wage however, even cleaning jobs, so it’s not the money that makes the big difference here, it’s the job itself. I guess that’s one of the good things about socialism –everyone gets paid about the same (or taxed in such a way that their take home pay is about the same), so they end up doing what they really want to do for a living – not doing something just for the money. (That concept is SO NOT American.) Most people working full time make around fifty grand a year here and about a third of that goes to taxes. And they all live upper-middle class lives compared to Americans (many have cabins, all go on extended vacations every year, most drive new cars, everyone has a nice house). Go figure. But they actually get something for the taxes they pay – they have no medical insurance premiums or expenses (just a $20 co-pay but everything else is covered), they have no property taxes, they don’t have to save for retirement as that is guaranteed by the government, they don’t have to pay for their kid’s education and they don’t have to worry about becoming disabled because everyone is “insured”. When I think about where the bulk of our money goes, and all the uncertainties in rising costs, they are all around medical expenses, Kaleb’s college fund, and property taxes -- so if we removed those things from the monthly budget, we, and most Americans, would have a significantly higher standard of living. But one thing I read today that nearly leveled the playing field with America is the leading cause of deaths in Norway. A whopping 39% of deaths here are cardiovascular related and another 25% are from cancer. That’s 64% of people in Norway dying from either heart attacks or cancer and while that seems incredibly high – the average age of death in Norway is 80.5…. so when you factor in that the bulk of those deaths are from old people, then it’s not such a shocker. And if the only sure things in life are death and taxes, it’s a sure bet that if the taxes in Norway kill you, they will also pay for your funeral.
Kaleb came home with incredible news – Morton actually was nice to him today! During the afterschool program Morton asked Kaleb to sit by him, so Kaleb accepted the offer. Kaleb has surmised that he might like Morton after all if he just looks at him through different eyes. He’s decided that all the hitting Morton does could just be considered “playing rough” and he might just give him a second chance. So I say, HALLELUJAH! Things are looking up. We might even be brave enough to arrange a play date with him sometime soon. (Gotta get while the gettins’ good.) Kaleb spent his entire evening doing homework and doing it well (when the stakes are high enough, the results are there.)
I got a little Norsk test back today that I took before the fall break – and out of 109, I scored 109! It was a listening test where we hear two words that sound similar and then we circle the one we think it is. Well, I have a terrible time distinguishing between the sound an “e” makes and the sound the letter “æ” makes. On previous tests I always get them mixed up, so this time when I took the test, I picked the opposite word from the one I thought it was, resulting in a score of 100%. Whatever works.
We have had a real change lately in the student body of my class. I guess there were some people who paid for just six weeks of the course so their time came to an end at the fall break. But most of the students are new immigrants and they all need to work, so one by one they have been getting jobs and either coming sporadically or not at all because they are working days and had to switch to a night class. It’s sad for me because I liked so many of the students and now I may never see them again. We had a good “feel” to the class, but now there are new students coming in that were not doing well in the next level up so they had to go back to start. Uff da. I don’t think I do well with change. Oh wait, that can’t be true, or I wouldn’t be living here!
I was talking with some fellow classmates today at break and I found out almost all of them work - and they all have the exact same job: cleaning. I was so surprised by that. One cleans offices, one cleans hotel rooms, one cleans houses, one cleans up at a slaughterhouse, one cleans a ferry, one cleans fish, and one cleans at the hospital. I so enjoy how clean Norway is, and I guess if it weren’t for the immigrants, it wouldn’t be so clean! And the fact that the ONLY job someone can get in Norway if they don’t know the language is cleaning – well, that becomes the great motivator for them, and WHY they are in the class – because they don’t want to keep doing what they are doing forever so they need to learn the language. Getting a job in retail would be like a dream come true for most of them but they have to pass a Level 2 Norsk exam and get a certificate before they can get that kind of job. Every job pays a livable wage however, even cleaning jobs, so it’s not the money that makes the big difference here, it’s the job itself. I guess that’s one of the good things about socialism –everyone gets paid about the same (or taxed in such a way that their take home pay is about the same), so they end up doing what they really want to do for a living – not doing something just for the money. (That concept is SO NOT American.) Most people working full time make around fifty grand a year here and about a third of that goes to taxes. And they all live upper-middle class lives compared to Americans (many have cabins, all go on extended vacations every year, most drive new cars, everyone has a nice house). Go figure. But they actually get something for the taxes they pay – they have no medical insurance premiums or expenses (just a $20 co-pay but everything else is covered), they have no property taxes, they don’t have to save for retirement as that is guaranteed by the government, they don’t have to pay for their kid’s education and they don’t have to worry about becoming disabled because everyone is “insured”. When I think about where the bulk of our money goes, and all the uncertainties in rising costs, they are all around medical expenses, Kaleb’s college fund, and property taxes -- so if we removed those things from the monthly budget, we, and most Americans, would have a significantly higher standard of living. But one thing I read today that nearly leveled the playing field with America is the leading cause of deaths in Norway. A whopping 39% of deaths here are cardiovascular related and another 25% are from cancer. That’s 64% of people in Norway dying from either heart attacks or cancer and while that seems incredibly high – the average age of death in Norway is 80.5…. so when you factor in that the bulk of those deaths are from old people, then it’s not such a shocker. And if the only sure things in life are death and taxes, it’s a sure bet that if the taxes in Norway kill you, they will also pay for your funeral.
