Raking Crabs

Another uneventful day at school and work for Kory and Kaleb. As for me, we started learning a bit more about the land in which we live. A few interesting facts I was unaware of previously: 25% of Norway’s land is covered in forest and only 3% of the land is tillable soil available for raising crops. So that leaves 72% of the land as solid rock. That seems about right to me. The coastline, if stretched out, would go around the equator one and a half times. Half of Europe’s Atlantic coastline is in Norway. If the country of Norway was spun south, from its southernmost tip, it would reach the city of Rome in Italy. It’s a long country but not that wide. At its narrowest, the country is only six kilometers (about 4miles). So now you know.

What I found funny is what our teacher told us about each area of Norway having their own reputation among other Norwegians. The area where we live is known for two things – the people here are incredibly narrow minded, and very tight with their money (even more so than the typical Norwegians.) That explains a lot, especially since I married a man from here who has those two exact qualities. Our teacher demonstrated by saying that when Ålesunders swim the breast stroke, they don’t push their arms out away from their body, they have their arms out and then pull in everything they can that's close to them. Funny visual, but I get the sense they are proud of that reputation. One thing I love about Norwegians is their ability to laugh at themselves.

Another interesting thing I found out about Ålesund is that they pipe in water from the Gulf Stream that runs along the coast, and run that water through pipes going into an incinerator that burns the city’s trash. That heated water is then piped under the streets in downtown Ålesund in the wintertime to keep them free from snow and ice. They use that heated water as a heat source in a lot of government buildings, including hospitals and old folks homes. Our condo at Moa is also heated by that warm water running under the floorboards so Aunt Ruth doesn’t pay anything for heat, which I think is strange, but I’m not complaining.

Something else I’m not complaining about is the weather today! It was warm and sunny all day and tonight is just gorgeous with a full moon so bright we can see all the snow capped mountains surrounding our area. We decided it was the perfect night for “crab raking” – a local pastime in this neck of the woods. In the months of the year that end with an “R”, it is open season on crabs. No permit required. All that is needed is a flashlight and a rake. Supposedly, after dark, the crabs come up close to the shore and we were told by more than one person we just need to go down to the shore, shine the light, and rake in the crabs. So, we bundled up (it is pretty chilly after dark now), got our flashlights, rake and bucket and headed down to our beach. The moon was so bright it was like having a street light following us the entire way. The water was as still as it could be and absolutely crystal clear. When we shined the light into it we could see all the way to the bottom – which in some places wasn’t that deep but in others, it was at least ten feet down, maybe more. But, the crabs must have heard we were coming because they weren’t just sitting there waiting for us. We saw two small ones but they got away between the tines on the rake. It was still a wonderful night to be out and about and it added just a bit of excitement to our outing thinking we might come home with fresh crab. Oh well, we’ll try again another night.

I got my latest test results back today. Bad news if I were keeping score, as I only got 46.5 points out of 63. I really tanked on the past tense verbs. There are particular rules about whether the verb ends in “et” or “te” and I got them mixed up so I was 100% wrong on that section. Originally, when I was taking the test and realized I couldn’t remember which was which, I did half of them one way and half the other way, figuring I’d work the odds, but then I changed my mind and it wasn’t a good move. But there was also an ungraded section on the test on just writing text and my teacher said my level of writing is higher than “Norsk Prøve 2” – which is a competency test given in February. We are going to take the Norsk Prøve 1 test next week to see how we are doing, so it was a little encouraging that I’m ahead of the game in writing. As my teacher said, who cares how I do on the exercises, it’s being able to clearly communicate in writing and in speech that makes the difference. She was quite proud of me, and as usual, she cheered me on and said I was doing great… my own personal cheerleader. I’ve always wanted one of those.

Art

Today was a fairly ordinary day, except for the weather. It’s been unusually warm and no rain the past several days –NOT at all normal November weather so everyone is talking about it non-stop – oh wait, they do that anyway. Never mind. Other than that - Kaleb went to school, Kory went to work. Both reported uneventful days, as was mine. But Kaleb did get to bring home his work of art today (see photo). His afterschool program had all the kids paint a landscape with acrylic on canvas. Kaleb has been talking about it for weeks as he thinks his is the second best and he’s been so excited to have us see it. He decided to take a few liberties with the view out our living room window, so he painted the mountain tops, as seen through the window, but set against very still water so there is a mirror image (I think he got that idea from several photos I took up in the Lofoten Islands.) It is pretty good, if I do say so myself. And he has been glowing over all the nice compliments he got from kids at school as they had them on display like a real art show. At the end of the “show” all the parents got the opportunity to buy the works of art for 50 kroner (about $10) How clever is that? All the money they raise goes to the children’s wing of the local hospital, so all-in-all, a good idea.

I’m still struggling with school and it does me no good to have Kory help me with my homework. He is “old school” Norske and speaks a different language – literally. I’m learning the new, hip version of Norwegian and nowadays, they do things differently. It’s sad for me on one hand because it would be nice to have help when I need it, but on the other hand, it keeps me from cheating. But I really need a private tutor now or something as the class is zipping right along and I got left in the dust somewhere and I feel like I’m floundering again.

We were discussing this dilemma at dinner tonight and Kaleb was a bit confused as he had yet to figure out there are two versions of Norwegian being taught in schools today. His 4th grade class is broken up into 4 separate groups, two of them are learning “Ny Norske” (the old language that Kory speaks) and two are being taught “Bokmål” (what he and I are learning). He was devastated at the news. He just started crying and said, “But what if you want to become friends with one of the kids in the other class and you won’t be able to communicate with them?!” I agree (but the differences are not HUGE – it’s mostly just spelling and grammatical differences.) But it is the most bass ackwards system anyone could ever think of and it’s starting to get to me. There is one upside though to the two different languages and the 400 different dialects … Norwegians are VERY tolerant of grammatical errors in conversation. They could care less if you speak properly as every pocket of this country has their own bent on the language. Even last night during the sermon at church, the pastor misspoke and then just said it was his “dialect,” as that is the common understanding here when people don’t say something “right” -- it’s just passed off as dialect. But the one thing Norwegians will NOT tolerate, and they think it makes one sound incredibly foreign and just downright stupid, is pronouncing certain letters improperly.

The University of Bergen did a nationwide study a while back and interviewed over 5,000 native Norwegians and the top three things that grate on them the most is the way certain letters are mispronounced – grammar isn't even an issue. So we were warned in class to be sure to say “g”s properly – not a hard “g” like in “get” but like the sound of a “y” like in “yes.” Apparently that is the number one pet peeve. I guess it's similar to the folks in the Northwest hearing someone say Puget Sound as "pug-et" - not "pew-jet" like we say... or hearing Skagit County called "Ska-get"- stuff like that. And the number two irritant is the way some people (German’s mostly) pronounce the “s” like a “z”. At least I don’t have that problem. And the third top sign that marks one as non-native is the way the “r” is pronounced (I guess American's have this problem quite a lot, but at least we can say "r". No one from Asia can even make an American "r" sound.) To say the "r" properly here in Norway, it MUST be rolled and the tip of the tongue must linger at the roof of your mouth til it downright tickles. Kaleb has it down pat. I do OK but still get corrected on occasion. It’s an art form unto itself. So I guess the lesson for me is to pay less attention to my grammatical errors and concentrate more on my pronunciation. One of these days, maybe… one of these days… it will all click.

Friends

The photo today is of Josef and Camille Kløven, our dinner guests this evening. Josef’s dad was pallbearer at Kory’s dad’s funeral in 1968 – long before Josef was even born, but his father was a good friend to Halvor (Kory’s dad). Josef’s parents left Norway and moved to Seattle in 1960. Josef moved here eight years ago to attend Youth with a Mission in Ålesund, and ended up staying on and working for them. He met Camille, who is from Kory’s hometown of Langevåg, and they were married last year. She’s currently going to school to be a nurse but they both work at the café that is run by Youth with a Mission. Josef also has his own coffee bean roasting business on the side so they are two very busy people and we were lucky to find a time they could fit us in their schedule. We just met Josef for the first time briefly last year when we were here visiting, as we’d heard there were some other Seattleites in town so we called him up out of the blue and had coffee with him. Tonight was a quick dinner but it was still great to get to know them and cross generational friendships and it’s always good to meet folks from home. It’s funny that Josef just turned 30 and Kory is soon 65, and their father’s were friends. Josef’s mom celebrated her 75th birthday today and he felt a little sad he couldn’t be home to celebrate with her. (He is a “late in life” baby like Kaleb.) We had a nice visit and we hope to meet up with them again. We did a quick check of the family tree and at this point anyway, it seems Kory isn’t related to either one of them – a rare thing in this neck of the woods.

We double dipped on church today – we went to Filadelfia this morning and to Agape tonight. Agape folks were still recovering from the big concert last night so they delayed their service so they could get the concert hall cleaned up. I wish we could go to both churches every week as we like them both so much but now we have to flip flop back and forth. And therein lies the worst problem we have these days – having to pick which church we go to every Sunday. I actually feel like I have survivor’s guilt or something over how great our life is. This week I’ve gotten e-mail after e-mail from people back home about tragic situations unfolding in their lives and here I sit with nothing to complain about. I’m talking death, cancer, divorce, job loss… big stuff going on with people we love right now and, not that I could do anything about it, or that I have control to fix any of it, but it still feels like it would be nice to be more available. So all I can do is pray. Fortunately, it’s not the LEAST I can do, it’s the MOST I can do, but I still feel guilty that we have it so good. It’s like a little bubble of bliss and it sure is nice. Thank you, Jesus! (It’s not like I haven’t had my share of grief in life. Maybe I’ve just had so much that it’s hard to get used to The Promised Land.)

Marketing

It’s nearly midnight and we just got back from a three hour praise service in downtown Aalesund. Agape Church did an outreach to the community and asked all the other churches in the area to come together to just worship God in the biggest performing arts building in the area. It was a free Christian concert called "Aalesund Unites" where people could invite their friends to come along. The place was packed. They had great music and special effects – it was a huge success. I’m sure we were the oldest ones there as it was mostly teenagers and young people and many made a commitment to live their lives for Jesus. The pastor only spoke for about five minutes in the middle of it all and he started his talk off with: “America just voted in their first black president - history was made this week," (and the audience went wild), "and Obama's slogan was 'it's time for a change,' and that's what I'm asking you all tonight - is it time for a change in your life? Time to accept Jesus as a Savior? Time to surrender and let God be in control?" Interesting marketing. I invited my pal, Vestina, from school, and she came with her boyfriend, so I got to meet him. They both really liked the music but they cut out at the half time break. I’m sure they had their fill, as I went to a church service with them just before the concert. She had told me about a “meeting” she went to a few times in the city, but she was thinking it might be a “cult” so she wanted me to go with her to check it out. So, I took the bus into town late this afternoon and met up with her and we went there. It wasn’t a cult at all, it was just a modern day church. (I saw one of Kory’s cousins’ sons there as well.) It was definitely geared for the younger set with very loud rock music, lights turned out, candles burning, fog machine, the whole nine yards. I’m guessing, based on my experiences tonight, that buying into a company that makes hearing aides will be a good future investment. Come thirty years from now, I’m sure the majority of the population will be deaf or hard of hearing, as my ears are still ringing from all the loud music (I could feel the drums vibrating off my chest and throat).

Kory and Kaleb had a far more interesting day than I did. Kaleb went to yet another birthday party this afternoon then went over to Tobias’ house and watched him assemble a new remote control truck his dad just brought him back from America. He also read a 743 page book in his spare time. Kory spent the whole day over at his cousin Odd’s house putting trim around a door and installing new kitchen countertops. It was a beautiful day today too and I am still feeling guilty about the fact I didn’t even go for a walk outside. I wrote a story for an Advent devotional for our church back home, went grocery shopping, spent a lot of time praying and took a nap. Not exactly my ideal Saturday, but tonight made it a bit more memorable.

Oh, the Ice Cream Truck came around– a combination of our kid’s Ice Cream trucks in America and the Schwanns frozen food home delivery service. The ironic part about the truck here is that it sells food WAY cheaper than it can be bought in a store. One dinky ice cream cone (or popcicle) sells for about 24 kroner in the store (just under $5), but if I buy it from the guy who drives it to my front door, I can get one for less than 5 kroner (under a $1). He also sells frozen “organic” salmon and uncooked shrimp – all much cheaper than the stores. (Buying wild caught salmon is no longer possible in Norway – all the fish is farmed! But now they have “organic” fish farms.) So we pay the highest prices for things when we buy them in a supermarket. If we were to go to all the individual sellers of things (the fish market, the bakery, the butcher), we could buy them all for less money. We pay for the convenience of only having to make one stop, I guess. It’s so opposite of America. But I find that to be true of a lot of things here. In America, the price for electricity goes up in the winter when we use it the most – same with the water prices going up in the summer and then they drop prices in the “off” season. It’s the opposite here – even the price of gasoline goes down every weekend because they know people are more likely to take a road trip then. And the funniest thing is that employee’s paychecks are the fattest when they are on vacation. The government doesn’t tax vacation pay because they know people need a little extra money to spend during that time, so their take home pay is higher when they AREN’T working. What a concept. It’s funny to me, but it’s all very “normal” for Norwegians. I guess we all tend to think what we are used to is normal, and that must be why Vestina thought that church service was a cult – because it isn’t something she is used to. I know Kory is used to me by now, but something tells me he still wouldn’t think of me as “normal.”

Kaleb is 9 and 11/12ths today!

My head hurts. Just when I thought I couldn’t be more confused, I got more confused. Today’s lesson was on prepositional phrases. I know for a fact I can’t identify one of those in English grammar, let alone try to figure out one in Norwegian, and I’m a writer! The reason we need to be able to identify them is because the “ikke” goes in yet a different place in the sentence, if it’s contained within a prepositional phrase. Lord, I need help! “Ikke” is the Norwegian word for NOT, and I need to use it a LOT as I am NOT good at this language, so I really need to know where to put it in a sentence. But at this point, I feel like just saying “ikke” every other word, and somehow I feel like I’ll convey my feelings. Oh wait, they don’t do that here! (convey feelings) I mean “De gjørde IKKE det!” Uff da. I came home from school wanting to bury my head under a pillow and fall asleep. In my dreams might be the only place where I’ll actually be able to speak Norwegian fluently. At least I can dream.

Kaleb dreamed of catching a fish today, but no luck. After school Kory took him to a place nearby and they caught a small one that Kory decided to use as bait. In retelling the story to me, Kaleb cried, as he thought it was so sad that Kory didn’t bonk it on the head and kill it instantly, rather, he kept it on the line til it just gave up the ghost and died. It upset Kaleb terribly. So much for the father/son bonding moment.

Kory had an otherwise relaxing day at home. He made a little reading shelf for Kaleb to use while he takes his nightly bath as that kid can’t even get clean without a book in his hand. And Kory got our “new” Bar-B-Que working so that was his thrill of the day. He’s such a clever guy. I think he should just set up some kind of “fix-it” shop as there’s not a thing he can’t fix. He used to tear apart broken clocks and things as a kid to see how they were put together. He tears apart things with Kaleb sometimes too so I hope the “gift” gets passed down. It’s incredibly handy. Now we can BBQ! Woo hoo.

My thrill for the day came from America. Kory’s second cousin, Bjørn , who lives very near us, just got back from Wichita, Kansas. He has to go there several times a year for training as he is a pilot for an air ambulance company. Ålesund is not a big enough town to have a trauma center at the hospital, so daily he flies patients up to Trondheim or down to Oslo for emergency care (or sometimes out of the country). I gave him some money to make a Sam’s Club run for me (it’s Wal-Mart’s version of Costco) in Wichita and he came over today with about twenty pounds of nuts and chocolate chips! (He used Kory’s Sam’s Club card as there is a lot of family resemblance and the photo is fairly worn down.) Now I can do Christmas baking! I wasn’t going to bake much since nuts are so insanely expensive here and they don’t even have chocolate chips in this country, but Bjørn saved Christmas. Oh, happy day. And I’m thrilled to know I can get a regular “fix” of anything from America. He’s going again in January, and flying the company airplane, so weight won’t even be an issue – double woo hoo.

Just recently the stores started having Christmas things on display. I guess women in this part of the country go crazy with cleaning and preparing for Christmas. Most of the women I’ve talked to just love Christmas. They love the lights, candles, decorations, special foods, visits and traditions. It’s also looked upon as rounding the corner from the very dark days of winter into the longer days of the spring ahead. (The sun is starting to set now around 4:00.) It gives everyone something positive to focus on while the days are getting shorter. Traditionally, gift giving hasn’t been a big part of Christmas in Norway– it’s been mostly visiting friends and relatives and eating special foods that are only available this time of year. That continues to this day, but unfortunately, Norway has sold out to commercialism. We were just talking about that in our class today – how the parents are buying more and more for their children, mostly out of guilt, because both parents work now and have less time for their kids. Our Friday teacher is from Russia and she said she can’t believe how indulged Norwegian children are in all ways – that they have no boundaries as the parents are less and less involved in their lives because they are too busy. It’s sadly become like America – with two cars in every garage and TVs in all the rooms of the house and kids left home alone after school. Twenty years ago when we were here, one of Kory’s cousins was a foster parent. The state took the children away because their parents got a satellite dish and let the kids sit in front of it non-stop. The kids weren’t getting their school work done and social services was called in. My, how things have changed! I’m a bit worried now that they will take Kaleb away due to “neglect” since we DON’T watch TV.

The Challenge

I feel like I’ve moved into the “it’s all Greek to me” mode in trying to learn this language. In Greek, there are many words for something we just have one word for in English. Take LOVE for instance, the Greeks have six different words for it – English just has one. Norwegians have two. We just have one word for “this” or “that” or “them” or “you”, Norwegians have several different words for each of them, and there are very specific rules about when you use which version depending on if you are talking past tense, present tense, future tense, and if it’s the object or subject in the sentence. I have a hard enough time just trying to remember the basic words I need to translate, then TRY to figure out where it’s supposed to go in a sentence let alone think about whether it’s an object or subject – but if I knew, I’d know where they go in the sentence as there are specific rules about that too. (And adjectives are a whole other headache.) A common answer to a question that starts with “Are you … “(fill in the blank, hungry, tired, etc?) is “Nei, det er jeg ikke” – which means “No, I’m not”… but literally translated is “No, that is I not,” – hence the problem I have in constructing a “Norwegian” sentence. It’s all Greek to me.

Kory has set up a contest between Kaleb and I as to who can speak the best Norwegian by Christmas. For a while, I was in the lead, but Kaleb came home today proud as a peacock that he talked for about an hour non-stop– all in Norwegian! He said some girls from the 5th and 6th class found him on the playground and were asking him tons of questions about himself. He was not only able to understand all they said, but he answered back in Norwegian so well that they understood him, too. Yikes. After he got home from school we sat at the table drinking tea and talked about our day – in Norwegian. Kory began to test us and it was clear we each have our strengths and weaknesses. I know more vocabulary words, but Kaleb has the whole sentence structure down, which is my weakest link. Kaleb is determined to win the thousand kroner (the $200 prize) as he wants to buy a Ninetendo DS (a handheld video game.) At one point he was against such things as he felt children were addicted to them because anyone he knew that had one preferred playing with the toy over him whenever he went for a visit. He swore he’d never own one, but now he sees every child in Norway has one, and he’s changed his mind. (He spent a lot of time explaining why it is OK that he changed his mind about that.) I guess it’s easy to be an island when you really are an island – like he was in America being homeschooled and all, but now, he’s in with the masses and has succumbed to the need to fit in. I’m just glad he’s trying to fit in. Therein lies the reason for our living here.

We had cousin Odd over for dinner tonight as his wife, Turid, is on a tour of Israel with her mother and mother-in-law. After dinner Odd spent a great deal of time trying to get our TV working, as it bothers him deeply that we don’t watch the news. He’s sure our Norwegian will kick in once we have the TV going. I couldn’t disagree more, but I let him try nonetheless. He was successful in figuring out Kory’s cabling mistakes but in order to watch TV we must pay big bucks for the “box,” as well as monthly and annual fees. I can think of a host of other things I’d rather do with the money. I hope I don’t get out-voted on that one.

The Morton Report today consisted of Kaleb telling me he actually talked to Morton in Norwegian. This is a huge breakthrough as I was sure part of Morton’s violence toward him is because Morton really does like Kaleb and doesn’t know how to express himself when he can’t use words. Kaleb said today all went well with Morton until he was heading home and Morton asked him if he was going to stay for the afterschool program. Kaleb told him “No” (he only goes Monday to Wednesday) and Morton hauled off and kicked him. So now I’m sure my theory is correct as I remember being in 3rd grade and only kicking the boys I really liked.

(I just read this to Kaleb and he said, “Unfortunately, she still does that.”)

The Day After

My goodness, this country is just downright giddy over the election results. It was the most festive and jubilant day I have experienced since being here. Everyone was congratulating me like I was as happy as they are about Obama being president. I must say, I’m not thrilled, but I wasn’t thrilled with the alternative either. The biggest newspaper in Norway had a full front page photo of George W. biting his lower lip, looking rather sour, and the headlines read: “Ugh! We survived the times worst president.” All the newspapers are full of article after article about the election. One story was a slam against McCain because he had “accused” Obama of being a socialist – as if that were a bad thing. The whole of Norway took offense to that comment, as they are quite proud of their socialism. So Norway has breathed a sigh of relief and they are thrilled that “change” is coming. And most people I talked to today are almost in awe that we have a black president now, as they know for a fact, that wouldn’t happen in Norway. They are still just too prejudice about such things, but they had a woman prime minister decades ago. When my teacher today (a “retired” substitute) asked why I wasn’t as happy as everyone else, I told her about some of Obama’s horrendous policies – like supporting later term abortion and she said, “Oh, that’s murder, that’s not good… but other than that, he’ll be good for America.” Then I told her about him supporting gay marriage and she said, “That’s already legal here,” as if we were behind the times on that one. She said she was worried about McCain becoming president because he’s so old. She said he is the same age as she is and then she confessed that she has a hard enough time running her own life now, let alone a country or the “world.” Honestly, it was a day like no other. Everyone that knew we were Americans only wanted to talk about how happy they are now that things will be different with Obama. I had no idea how our country affects people outside America on such an emotional level. Kinda scary.

Kory started the day off by telling Kaleb what an “abomination” is and how we now have an Obama-nation. Uff da. Kaleb went back to school armed with several packs of Kleenex. Kory was home today and met with a locksmith to break into one of the sinking houses here. The attorney he works for couldn’t find they keys to one house and Kory was worried about frozen pipes, so the attorney said he should call a locksmith. Sure enough, once he got in, there were broken pipes from that deep freeze we had last week. I’m not sure what he does now, but at least he shut off the water and cleaned up the mess.

My girlfriend Jami e-mailed me yesterday to say she heard my name on the radio! Last week I sent an e-mail to KMPS (country station 94.1FM in Seattle) to tell them I listen to them every afternoon when I’m home from school. They have a real “good news” theme going on for their morning talk show so I sent them a copy of a story I wrote that was published in a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book. The story was called “The Monday Good News Lunch Club.” They read it on the air yesterday – the one day I didn’t have the “radio” on because Kaleb was home sick and I was out of my usual routine. But today, one of the DJs e-mailed me a podcast of it and it was very fun to hear them discussing my story. (I tried to upload it to the blog but it wouldn't work.) They even played a snippet of the Beatles’ song “Norwegian Wood” and they said, “This is for you, Mickey!” How fun was that? It was almost the biggest thrill of the day, until…

We got a package in the mail! Our friend Nancy Schaub sent us three pounds of good “American” coffee! For all the coffee Norwegians drink, you’d think they could at least have some decent coffee beans to grind, but they don’t. (Every time we’ve come for a visit in the past, we “bring our own.”) Norway has the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted. We brought along some coffee when we moved here, which lasted until the Schaubs came to visit in September. Then they brought us more and I just ran out THIS morning, of all things. As long as we can get good coffee, I could stay here forever, but when the coffee supply runs out, I might actually get homesick. But for now, I’m good to go for another six weeks or so. Talk about TIMING! I think I now understand the marketing behind Starbucks. A good cup of coffee goes a long way toward starting the day off right – even days when I find out the next “world leader” isn’t someone I voted for.

Election Day

Kaleb woke up with a fever and as much as he wanted to go to school today, he couldn’t muster the strength to get dressed, so he just stayed in bed and moaned. I had to stay home from school with him this time because Kory needed to go to work. It was actually a lovely day for me, as I never got out of my jammies and I had nothing on the agenda. I helped Kaleb with his homework later in the day when he felt better, and we did some birthday party planning for his big 10th birthday coming up next month. Where have the years gone?

Kaleb’s homework now consists of READING. He thinks that’s laughable. They have a big reading challenge going on and he has to read a lot of books in the next five weeks. I usually end up having to curb his reading as “punishment” because sometimes he’ll just sit around and read non-stop and does nothing else (including getting dressed), so he’s in hog heaven these days because he has a lot of homework reading to do! I had to order up some English books from the library in Oslo as he’s already read all the English books in both libraries near us. He is reading Norwegian also, but it’s a slow go and quite painful, but I was impressed today by how much he can translate. One night I was up until 11:30 reading “Matilda” by Roald Dahl (a famous children’s author who is Norwegian but grew up in England – he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and many, many others.) Kaleb’s teacher gave him an English copy of the book to read and it was due back the next day. Then she gave him a Norwegian copy to read so he could compare the languages. Kaleb found the book so exciting he begged me to read it so we could talk about it. Matilda is a very bright little girl who loves to sit and read books all day (Kaleb read that book three times). He always gets a thrill when he finds a character in a book that has some of his same qualities. He’s decided he loves Roald Dahl and has read all his books at least three times each since we’ve been here. That kids loves to read, and now his writing is progressing as well. He said he feels like he might become a writer because he’s always thinking of interesting things in his head, and he’d like to put them on paper. I’m all for that! Today he wrote his first paragraph in Norwegian without any help. I couldn’t believe it – his sentence structure was perfect. I’m jealous. I have a test tomorrow and I’m so not ready for it… if only Kaleb could take it for me….

So the headlines this morning in the local paper said, “Only a Catastrophe Could Stop Obama Now.” All the world is watching. (We sent in our absentee ballots last week.) We will be getting a new President, but they are getting a new world leader that will affect their lives as much as ours. It’s a strange thing. A while ago I went to a special meeting at Filadelfia Kirke. They had a speaker there from Kenya who gave a report on how the Bible school is going in Africa that was started fifty years ago by some Pentecostal missionaries from Scandinavia. (He said they’ve estimated there has been a “harvest” of over three million Pentecostal Christians in Kenya and the surrounding countries from the seeds that were planted fifty years ago.) He was a dynamic speaker and he connected the dots in some Bible passages that I hadn’t made or even heard before so it was very interesting to listen to him (and he spoke in English!). Afterwards we hung around and talked with some other folks there and one guy really bent my ear on the financial crisis that has hit America and how that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what is to come. Not that I disagree with him – I do think that America will fall from their power position in the world someday -- but I’m not sure of his timing. He claims there are several prophecies that say that the next president of America will be the last, and that the year 2012 will be the end of the good old U.S. of A. (whatever that means.) He seemed quite concerned that we are moving back to America next year. He has a brother in Wisconsin that’s stocking up on supplies already. I guess if America does come to an end, I’m not sure there are any supplies I could buy that would really make a difference. I just told him I trust God to supply all my needs and that He daily directs my path, so if California really is going to break off and fall into the ocean, I’m sure I’ll be elsewhere that day… but even if not, heaven ain’t so bad. My future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades. Hallelujah!

Money

In class today we learned all the special words one would want to know if they are pregnant (gravid) in Norway. And the reason they are so important, is because they mean money! I can’t believe it --they actually pay women to have babies, and then they keep paying for those babies until they are 16 years old – no matter who you are or how much money you have. Norway is, I believe, the most progressive country in the world when it comes to maternity leave. All working women get 80% of their pay (fødselspenger) for the first year after they give birth – and their jobs remain secure. If they chose to go NOT go back to work after that first year, they can take another year off and keep their job, but they get no pay during the second year. If the woman was NOT working prior to giving birth, then the government makes a nice one-time deposit into her bank account to help with the expenses of raising a baby (that money is called “engangsstørnad”) – to the tune of 90,000 kroner (about $18,000 – tax free!) And all medical expenses here are paid by the government so it doesn't need to be used for that. The father of the baby also gets a paid maternity leave for eight weeks. And once the baby is born, the government gives the parents several hundred dollars every month until the baby is three years old, and then the amount goes down to about $200 a month until they are 16 years old. All “baby/child” money is tax free and is given for every child in Norway, since the government here realizes that it takes money to raise a child. So we went around the room today and everyone told about the maternity leave policies in their home country. Of course, everyone in the class is from a country where the medical expenses are free or miniscule and several countries had many months of maternity leave. I was embarrassed to tell about the policies in America and how we have none of the above and that I had the privilege of paying over $8,000 to the hospital just to give birth. The gasps were audible -- but I choose to believe you get what you pay for and I have a boy worth every cent – and then some!

Kaleb came home with the sniffles. He had a good day otherwise, but he’s over tired and not feeling well now. He’s determined to go to school tomorrow because he has gym during school and swimming during the afterschool program. I do hope he doesn’t have a fever in the morning. He was home alone for a few hours tonight while we went to a meeting at school and he’s very upset he spent the whole time doing homework and had no time to himself. The meeting was about traffic safety for the kids going to and from school. They made a presentation to the “kommune” (city planners) about the dangerous intersections and paths the kids encounter on their way to school. As advanced as Norway is in so many areas, they are really behind in the area of sidewalks. New neighborhoods being built even now don’t have any sidewalks, so the kids have to walk and ride their bikes to school in the street along with the cars. There was much discussion and emotion around the whole deal even though there have been no accidents. The school wanted the parents to present their case to those who have the power to change some things. It was very interesting for Kory as he loves that kind of stuff, but I should have stayed home and slept.

After class today I took the bus from downtown Aalesund to downtown Sykkylven– a city across the fjord (see the photo I took from the ferry of the mountains around Sykkylven – the snow is almost gone!). Our friend, Ole-Petter, is the manager of Nordea bank over there and we finally decided to put some of our cash in the bank. We’ve been pulling out money from America because the exchange rate is so favorable right now, but it makes me nervous to have too much cash on hand. I went there to set up a CD for three or six months, only to find out they stopped offering them a few weeks ago when the financial markets went crazy (all the banks in Norway did that). The best I can do is a variable rate savings account until the financial world calms down a bit, I guess. Oh well. I opened a savings account anyway and deposited the money. Kory and I had a huge discussion about it because Norway taxes money that is just sitting in the bank to the tune of 2.5% so if the money wasn’t in the bank, we wouldn’t be taxed. We will pay 28% on any interest earned, and 2.5% of the principle amount – but considering the bank pays 7% interest, it still works out to be a better deal than keeping it under the mattress. (I hope!) Kory has an aversion to banks, for some reason, so I’m hoping this was a good move. If it wasn’t, I’m going to apply for some of that money they hand out for all the kids in Norway so I can get back some of those taxes. Money comes and money goes.

A Day of Ministry

Last Friday in class, my partner was telling me that she felt a little sad inside – that nothing was making her happy. I said, “Maybe you’d feel better if you went to church.” And she said, “OK” so this morning we picked her up and brought her with us to Agape Church. She’s new to the Norwegian language like I am and I so appreciate the pastor’s ability to speak the language clearly and slowly enough for me to understand (it’s his second language, too), so I was excited to bring her along. The only problem was, the pastor didn’t preach this morning… a member preached, and he’s a local guy with all the local dialect and he spoke fast and a bit faster than normal because he was nervous. He lost us both. Better luck next time. The music was still good though and afterwards we had her come over for coffee and banana bread and we had a chance to visit and talk about God things. It was all very nice, but she said it didn’t do much for her and it would have been better if she could have understood the message. I guess that was the point of going. Oh well.

One of the leaders of Kaleb’s afterschool program goes to Agape Church. He mentioned a few weeks ago that he’d like Kaleb to meet his little brother, William. They are the same age, but Kaleb is a year behind him in school because of our decision to put him in 4th grade. They met for the first time today as Andreas (the older brother) took them both to a café downtown and then back to his house where they played together all afternoon. Kaleb taught William how to play chess, William showed Kaleb how to play Pokemon on his Nintendo, and Kaleb read the rule book for playing the card game of Pokemon and explained it to William (it was written in English). It was all good – as they both had to work at speaking a foreign language and they both had the exact same interests – and are only a few months apart in age. And best of all, (besides the fact that William has a DOG) is that they live only about a half mile down our street! So the world just opened up for Kaleb today as he finally found a boy his age to hang out with – HALLELUJAH! And they like each other. Imagine that. I’m thrilled beyond words.

While Kaleb was gone today we had over a teenage boy and his mother. This boy has been having lots of bad thoughts lately (suicidal) and we have been praying for him fairly regularly. It occurred to me as I was praying for him one day that he has a lot of unforgiveness in his life, as many people have hurt him over the years. The last time I prayed for him I asked him to make a list of everyone that has hurt him that he hasn’t forgiven. He came today with two pages of names and it took us three hours of praying to get through the list. He had a few other things that came up that he felt he should also ask forgiveness for so it was quite a productive time and we are trusting God to work miracles in his life. He left here feeling much better - Hallelujah! It felt good to feel so useful. I think they were more comfortable coming to us because we are NOT Norwegians. It’s just not the norm here to share your problems with the world, so it was nice that God used our “weakness” (of not being Norwegian) for his strength. The language barrier was a bit of a challenge, but thank goodness for biblegateway.com as I was able to look up appropriate scriptures for him and just with the click of the mouse, pull up the Norwegian translation and show him the verses to memorize. (All the names of the books of the Bible are different in Norwegian – like the book of James is called “Jacobs brev,” so it’s hard to even know where to start when using the Norwegian Bible.)

The photo today was taken a few days ago from the end of my street at school. It was early in the morning so the lighting was very dramatic. I thought for sure a storm was coming that day, as the clouds seemed like a wave, ready to break over the land… but the storm never came. Kind of like tonight -almost. We stayed up until 11:30 – waiting for a SKYPE call from our home fellowship group back home (they were getting together today in Mt. Vernon at 2:00 for a cider pressing and they were going to call then – which was 11pm our time). But the call didn’t come. Then just as we were just heading off to bed –they called! It was so nice to see their smiling faces again! And it was only the baby in the group that made us aware of the passing of time. For the two years we met together every Sunday night for dinner and fellowship, they were all so supportive of Kory and his “heart healthy” diet, but they are now so relieved they can eat fatty foods again. They gave us the run-down on the menu and I think they are making up for lost time. Bon Appétit and thanks for the call!

A Very Social Day

Kaleb got his share of social training today. Sabina was over right after breakfast and then Benjamin came before lunch and they both stayed until long after dinner. Benjamin is a foster son to one of Kaleb’ second cousins. He’s a high needs kid as his parents are drug addicts and his mom was on drugs while she was pregnant with him. He’s a sweet boy though, just requires a lot of tending. He was here for ten hours and the three of those kids got pretty rowdy. We took them to the indoor play land in the area and let them run off some steam as the ground and streets were covered in ice all day. Even though we had beautiful sunshine today, playing outside wasn’t such a good option – too dangerous. So I sat in with the kids while Kory went and picked up a bar-b-que grill that my friend Theresa gave us. And that’s a good story.

When Theresa came over this week for lunch, I was telling her just how God provided all we needed to live here – furniture and everything – via the cousins and some good sales and flea markets. The one thing I hadn’t mentioned was that we really wanted a BBQ but they are super expensive (hundreds and hundreds of dollars). The gas tanks are sold separately and they cost over a hundred dollars themselves, so we gave up on the idea of having one while we are here, but we really do miss it. So while I was bragging that we have all we need, she very politely asked me, “So you don’t need a Bar-B-Que grill?” I told her that was the ONE thing we didn’t have because we couldn’t afford to buy it. She said “Well, I have one that you can have if you want it.” And that’s how our God supplies all our needs. They had just bought a new one and were ready to take the old one to the dump. She said something wasn’t working quite right on it and they wanted a bigger one. I told her Kory can fix anything and we’d love to have it, so today was the day we got it. How amazing is that? I love that God loves me that much that he even supplies a BBQ. And it looks brand new, so Kory is already starting to take it apart to see where the problem lies. We’ll be bar-b-queing out in the garage all winter long, I’m sure. Thank you, Jesus!

Yesterday Kory finally went and bought some tool that was the key to getting the snow tires on – and just in time, too. Today was the deadline and now we are legal. The streets today were like an ice skating rink but tonight things warmed up (it’s gone from 27 degrees at breakfast to 50 degrees after dinner) so tomorrow we’ll just have wet streets back again. I can’t believe people can drive on pure ice like they do, but I guess if they didn’t, the country would cease to exist, as ice is part of life here. When I was taking the bus home yesterday it was slip sliding around on the streets when it tried to stop, even with snow tires, so we might be in for an interesting winter. I’m glad we have car insurance.

Tonight we had Axel and Kari over for dinner. They are the cousins who came to America to be witnesses at our wedding. They live just a few minutes walk from us and we love them dearly. Their daughter is the foster mom to Benjamin so they came over to pick him up and they stayed for dinner. I made fresh salmon that I bought yesterday off the docks in Aalesund. I was so surprised to see salmon for sale because I was told it’s not possible to buy wild salmon here (it’s all farmed). I asked the fisherman if it was farmed fish or caught in the wild – and he said “both.” The hurricane we had last week broke apart one of the fish farms and all the fish went free. It didn’t take long before the area was swarmed with fishing boats, so those fish didn’t enjoy their freedom for too long.

We loved having Axel and Kari here tonight as they are a very calming force and the evening was wonderfully relaxed – even though Kaleb, Sabina and Benjamin were wreaking havoc in Kaleb’s room and they brought their 21 month old grandson along (a total sweetheart, though). Kaleb got several opportunities today to learn patience, forgiveness and tolerance. I love that. But it was also good for Kaleb and I to listen to the kids talking to each other and try to join the conversation. I love hearing Sabina speak English as she uses Norwegian sentence structure, and she gets the tenses of the verbs wrong – just like what I do when I try to speak Norwegian. (“Kaleb, where is you?” or “Now go we.”) Is it possible this is what Jesus was thinking when he said, “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven?” If so, I’m set.

Yappy Howl-een

Big day today for Kaleb (and me). Kaleb got “The Weakly Puppy” finished and delivered, made his Halloween Costume, went to a Halloween birthday party, went to a church Halloween party and went trick-or-treating (sort of). Oh yeah, and we both had school. I had things all scheduled out and then the bus broke down on our way home today so I had to call Kory to come get me and that messed up my timing. Uff da. This afternoon was a bit stressed, but Kaleb made the bulk of his “Ghost Freak” costume (an alien from the “Ben 10” cartoon) and finalized “The Pup” in record time. Sabina has been giving us the daily countdown to Halloween for over a month now as she’s so excited they have such a thing in Norway. I was totally bummed they do, and I’m not the only one. Most families don’t acknowledge it in any way, and there are so few houses around that support the whole idea that Kory and I set up “house” in some of the empty sinking houses here and let Kaleb and Sabina ring the doorbell and get candy from us (more than once) in different houses. Whatever works.

Halloween is very new to Norway and some of the parents at the birthday party were lamenting, “If we had to get a holiday from America – why couldn’t it have been Thanksgiving?” The newspaper did a big two page spread about how to go about trick-or-treating (they call it “Knisk eller Knask” here). My friend, Theresa, thinks the whole thing is despicable and she has several good reasons for thinking so. For one thing, all the costumes for sale in the stores are just downright evil and gory. There are no costumes of flowers or dogs or neutral things, it’s all wicked monsters or ugly witches or butchered faces. Theresa is wondering what will happen if her three year old daughter answers the door and sees that. She also worries about the little children who, up to this point, haven’t been afraid of the dark, but if they are outside and older children are dressed up so horribly and making scary sounds, that it will instill a fear of the dark in them, and so much of the year here is dark, she thinks it’s a horrible thing to bring to Norway. Of course the candy part isn’t something any parent wants in their house either, so she’s against that, too. But the newspaper article did say that houses that don’t have their porch light on will be a sign they do not have candy in the house so don’t even both to knock. So the kids get all pumped up about going out and then the adults are moaning and groaning about it and not answering the door – so it’s a bit different here. I’m glad it’s over.

In Norway at Christmas time there was something similar to Halloween but the reason for it was completely different. All kids are off school for two weeks over Christmas and when they get bored they dress up in silly clothes and go knock on the neighbor’s door then sing a little song. The neighbor invites them in for cookies and a visit. They have a name for it, but I can’t remember right now. It’s been a tradition for many years in Norway, but that seems to be dying out now as the kids don’t get quite as bored with all the televisions and internet connections in everyone’s home. Halloween is a poor replacement for such a sweet thing.

When Kory first moved to America they didn’t know about Halloween. The night of October 31st they were sitting around the dinner table and when the doorbell rang Kory’s dad went to answer it. There was a group of children holding out bags dressed like bums or other such homemade costumes. They said something he didn’t understand – he said something they didn’t understand -- and he slammed the door. He sat down to eat again and it happened again and again. He finally came back to the table and told his boys, “I don’t ever want you to go around begging like that.” No one could figure out what was going on until the next day at school when the boys were clued in. I feel like that about a lot of things around here – I’m mostly clueless as to the “norm” and what is expected, but so far, ignorance is bliss. (And who knows WHAT the locals are thinking about us and our strange ways.) Such is life. Happy Halloween.

The Kaleb Report

(The Photo is of the sunset tonight – just down the street from our house. We see those mountaintops from our living room window, but tonight I wanted a better view, so I trespassed. )

Kaleb has now given title to the list of offenses he receives from Morton – “The Morton Report,” he calls it. So today’s report went something like this: “he threw a chunk of ice at me and missed me by ‘this’ much, he spit on me, and he kicked me in the shin.” I’m always as sympathetic as I can be and usually ask, “So other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” I really want to know about the rest of his day, but The Morton Report always gets top billing. (I had to explain myself to him the first time I asked him that question. He thought my humor was a bit sick, and I agree, but I can’t help myself.)

We had our first parent/teacher conference at school today, so we got The Kaleb Report. Unfortunately, the bulk of the time was spent on The Morton Report – not Kaleb. The teacher is beside herself, and said “medication is hopefully coming soon,” (for Morton, not her) as he’s been diagnosed with ADHD and probably a host of other problems. I feel horrible for her and Morton’s mother. Kaleb is the brunt of most of his “acting-out” but no kid in the class is immune from it. The teacher said Kaleb doesn’t always give her The Morton Report so she asked that we urge him to report all incidents, as she’s trying to get enough “evidence” to support her idea of hiring someone for recess time JUST to follow Morton around and keep an eye on him. Kaleb loved that idea, as recess presents the greatest challenges and they won’t allow the students to stay inside – they must go out, no matter what weather or terror on the playground awaits them. So, hope is on the horizon.

The little time we did talk about Kaleb, his teacher was mostly just questioning us – like have we had him tested and did we know his thinking is so advanced and is it really possible he can read so fast? She saw him read an entire book (“James and the Giant Peach”) during the lunch break and she couldn’t believe it (I do think he reads about 600-700 words a minute – maybe more.) She knows he’s bored in math as he’s doing algebra just for fun at home, and at school they are doing simple carryover addition and borrowing subtraction problems, but I think it’s good for him to do those routine things. He doesn’t really get bored with anything in school because it’s all in Norwegian and he just thinks it’s all fun as he does the math problems in his head. The teacher said she really hopes he gets better at Norwegian soon so all the barriers can come down and he’s able to mix with the children more, but he mostly stays by himself at recess or hangs out with a few American girls. We asked for the names of some boys in his class that might be a good fit for him to have play dates with and she’s going to send us phone numbers so we can work on his male bonding skills a bit more. But overall, we were delighted to hear that she LOVES having him in class and thinks he’s a very good student – respectful, not disruptive, does his work and obeys the rules (once they are explained). She said he’s had a problem a few times when he understood certain rules to be one way and then the kids did something another way and he got very upset and cried. Once she explained things to him he was OK, but he does have a strong need for things to be FAIR and right. She thinks it’s good for the class to have him there also as they are trying to teach “tolerance.” So, we were well pleased with the report we got. I took Kaleb out for pizza afterwards for a special treat as the local pizza joint had an all-you-can eat night for $11 ($15 for me). Can’t beat that.

Kory had a very frustrating day trying to get the snow tires on our van in below zero temperatures (Celsius). It never got above freezing again today. He broke several tools and finally gave up. I guess we pay for it to be done now as the clock is ticking and they must be on by tomorrow or we can’t drive the van! (They are very serious about their laws here.) Tonight Kory went to help his cousin Odd put in a new kitchen floor and that went much better than his day.

As for me, I make little inroads in this new language and get so excited when I can remember certain vocabulary words, and even more excited if I can put them together in some kind of sentence, but then when presented with the next concept in our textbook and how complex it all seems, I just want to bury my head in something and forget the whole deal. But I was a little bit encouraged tonight when Kaleb and I stopped by to visit Tante Kari and Tante Ruth and I was able to converse with them in Norwegian and they understood me perfectly! I must have talked for an hour and was completed exhausted afterwards but I told some good stories and even got the correct responses, so I know I told them right. Tante Kari was thrilled, as her and I have never really been able to talk one-on-one before because she doesn’t understand English, so I felt like it was a major breakthrough. Hallelujah! Imagine what the future would hold if I could just have an hour together with Kory (even speaking English) and he understood me perfectly.

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

The snow stuck around today because the temperature didn’t get above freezing. It was so pretty though, with blue skies and white blankets on all the mountains. Winter is good – even if it does start in October. Kory had to drive Kaleb to school because the streets were just sheets of ice. He was going to put the “pigg dekk” on the van today but didn’t get time (that’s Norsk talk for “snow tires”). Maybe tomorrow. He was busy under the houses, seeing just how much the ground has gone down this month. It never stops! We now even have a sink hole in front of our house, and I’m hoping it doesn’t get big enough to swallow a child. (One of these days Kory will see the logic in me not wanting to buy these “sinking houses.”) But we love living here and it just makes our time in Norway all the more exciting.

We had Mark Wootten, the pastor of Agape Church, and his wife, Unni, over for dinner tonight. He’s from England so it was great to be able to speak English and talk about what God’s doing here in Norway. He said their church has tripled in size in the last year (from 50-150) and they are planning a big expansion project soon and they won’t need to take out a loan. Hallelujah! How cool is that?

And today was a great day for me because the Good Teacher Inga was back in school! She has been gone for the last three classes (well, she’s never there on Friday so that’s normal), and we have missed her terribly. She had to take some test in Bergen so we had a substitute the last two days and none of us do well without Inga. Our substitute teacher made it pretty clear she has some “issues” with this one guy in our class who is from Turkey (and is Muslim). He’s new and I personally don’t like him at all as he’s very disruptive – he talks non-stop to anyone sitting around him, he pays no attention to what is being taught, he clicks his pencil on the table all the time, snaps his gum, and taps his foot on the ground so hard (non-stop) that it shakes the floor – lots of nervous energy. He comes late one hour each day and hits on all the young women during the break. I get a knot in my gut just looking at him so I try to steer clear. He came in an hour late yesterday, as usual, just as the substitute was taking attendance. Each day in class is four hours/lessons, and he/we are required to take 250 hours of Norske lessons in order to stay in Norway - so he’s just there to bide his time so he won’t get kicked out of the country. He could care less about learning the language. This guy cuts one hour from his “obligation” each day by coming in late but the substitute told him she was going to ding him for it (Inga never does). Then he got belligerent with her and said his bus was late and he started making excuses for himself, as if it were the first time. She wasn’t buying it. (I’m sure she’s heard it all before.) It’s the first time I’ve ever heard any student speak out against the teacher. The tattle-tale in me couldn’t resist telling her that he comes in late every day, so not to believe his story. I was quite pleased when she stuck to her guns.

Later when the substitute was teaching us about two different types of pronouns, she asked this guy if he was married to a Norwegian. He said he was, so she wrote on the board, “Hans kone er norsk.” (His wife is Norwegian.) Then she wrote, “Han liker hun.” (“He likes her.”) But just as soon as she wrote it, she said (half under her breath), “I sure hope so.” It was very funny to me because she’s obviously encountered many of these Arab men who come to Norway just to abuse their systems. They marry very “undesirable” women because certain women are so desperate to get married, the men know they are an easy target (usually the women are very overweight, not too attractive or have some kind of handicap). And these guys go after them because if they stay married for three years, they can become permanent residents, complete with all the benefits (even if they get divorced right at the three year mark.) It’s an extremely common practice here and it has even happened to one of Kory’s relatives (who has a little brain damage). This one guy from Jordan started attending church (even though he’s a Muslim…), he met Kory’s relative and married her just a few months later (then stopped going to church). He told her not to tell anyone they were getting married because he knew her parent’s would stop it. Then, right on schedule, he divorced her at the three year mark, and now he never has to leave the country. So the teacher’s disgust is somewhat understandable because most of these men just go on welfare and live off the “system” once they are divorced, or they bring over another woman from their home country and marry them. (One can live a very fine life on welfare in this country.) One of the new classes that just started up on our floor has about 20 Arab men in it. Lord help them if they ever get the substitute we just had.

As the teacher was explaining that there are two different sets of pronouns to be used depending on whether the pronoun refers to the object or the subject in a sentence, my pal, Vestina, leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I feel like I’m deep in a dark forest.” (It’s an unbelievably complicated concept to learn and I’ve yet to figure out how to tell what the “subject” or “object” is – let alone figure out which form of the pronoun to use.) I whispered back, “Well, I feel like I’m deep into something – but it’s sure not as pleasant as a forest.”

Our First Snow!

We got some unexpected weather during the night – IT SNOWED! We woke up to about three inches on the ground and it was still coming down hard. What a shocker. It wasn’t even forecasted as a possibility and I guess it’s pretty early in the year for what’s “normal” around here. The photo shows Kaleb at the bus stop by our house, with our yard and house in the background – at 7:30am. (See how well that reflective gear works?) Downtown Aalesund had less than an inch but a woman on the bus told me that Myrland, where we live, always gets the most when it does snow. Woo hoo! Kaleb was so excited he was out before daylight throwing snow balls around (it was the perfect kind of snow for such things.) Needless to say the bus this morning was crammed packed so I’m glad we live at the beginning of the line or I would have been standing all the way into town. Kaleb rode with me on the bus just a mile down the street as it was impossible to ride his bike (cars were spinning out all over the place). He still had to walk about a half mile to school from there so now he gets that quintessential Norwegian experience of walking through the snow to go to school! And he had so much fun during recess – making snowmen and forts and sledding. Most people thought the snow would be gone by this afternoon once the sun came out, but it stayed on all day and was just beautiful (but it’s cold!). Kory started his day off helping his boss change the tires on the work truck so they could get out to the jobsite. (The laws here state that all vehicles must have winter tires on by November 1st.) After work/school Kory and Kaleb were outside for quite some time having a snowball fight. Sabina brought over her sled and that kicked things up a notch. So the day had quite a bit of excitement to it, and it seems that winter is here and it might last until April. I’m so thankful we aren’t homeless!

Tonight we had some drop in company. A woman that we know from church came by and asked us to pray for her son. We’ve prayed for him before at church so it was a privilege to pray for him again. We both loved being able to help them tonight and we trust God to answer our prayers for them. It was such a cool feeling to have people show up at our door needing us to help them! Hallelujah!

I had Theresa, a new friend, over for lunch today after school. I met her our first day here, as she had a studio apartment for rent in her basement that we looked at but thought it was too small for us. We stayed and had coffee and chatted with her a lot that day. I ran into her again at a flea market and she asked if we could get together sometime, so today was the day. I spoke Norwegian to her and she spoke English to me, so it was fun for both of us to work on our language skills (but she’s WAY better at English than I am at Norwegian.) She is quite interesting and had many thoughtful things to say about life in Norway. She’s lived in Sweden for eight years and in Spain for a year but has never been to America. Having lived outside the country she has made her own observations about Norwegians and why they do what they do. (She chastised me for not speaking more Norwegian at home and said she kicks herself for not learning any Spanish all the time she was in Spain, but it was so easy to just speak English to everyone. She doesn’t want me to make the same mistake while we are here.)

The funniest thing she said was about how Norwegians feel about the food they eat. She said it is very important for them to feel “safe” and in control of what they eat, and they get great comfort from the predictability of it all - having the same foods over and over their entire lives. She said her grandfather who is in his 80s only wants his fish cooked a certain way – boiled in salt water – with no sauces or other flavorings on it. Boy does that sound like Kory! When we were first married I made some kind of blackened fish which I thought was fantastic, but Kory said, “I like my fish to taste like fish.” And so it goes… these Norwegians aren’t much into spices or fancy foods… they just boil something and call it good. Theresa said her grandfather has refused to try any of the “new foods” that have entered the country these past years – like pasta and rice – but she did talk him into having a piece of pizza. She’s sure he only did it because she asked him to eat it, but he never would have done it if his wife had offered it (that also sounds pretty typical for a Norwegian.) I think the food thing here is so weird (and boring), but they obviously got used to some standardized foods and it works for them. In America, we want different things all the time and the packages are always changing because things are “new and improved,” but here, they brag that they DON’T change the food - “original recipe since 1971,” is says on the package. Change is NOT good when it comes to food. They find something they like and they stick with it. I guess it comes from a tradition of not having many options, as it’s only been recently that faster transportation has been able to bring other kinds of foods here… AND change obviously happens slowly when such stubborn people are involved in the process.

Kory was very pleased when I told him what Theresa said today. He felt so validated! But he was even more pleased when I made salmon for dinner with boiled potatoes and carrots using no spices whatsoever. Our marriage is safe.

The Storm Has Passed

The weather finally broke today and we saw patches of blue in the sky. I guess the “storm” we had over the weekend was actually classified as a hurricane Saturday night. The winds were over 100mph. The news doesn’t make a big deal out of it, because not much gets destroyed. Norwegians build things to last, but Kory said on one job site the scaffolding along the side of a house blew several hundred feet down the street and damaged a car along the way. The storm made for good conversation today in class since we have learned all the words in which to carry on a conversation about all kinds of weather… and now I see why it’s so important. Talking about the weather is the number one thing to talk about here in Norway. I guess how a person “feels” about something isn’t as important – unless it’s how they feel about the weather – or global warming. (Norway is seeing some huge changes in their weather patterns because of it.) So much for deep friendships.

Kory worked out on Giske today and Kaleb went to school. Both reported uneventful days, which I take as good news. Kaleb made soup for dinner and Sabina came over just in time to eat with us. Afterwards she helped Kaleb with his homework. The day was fairly normal in all respects.

I ran into Valentina at the bus stop today. She’s the little old Russian lady that WAS in our class. She got flunked back to start a few weeks ago because she just wasn’t “getting it.” No kidding. She speaks no English and very little Norsk. Our conversation in Norwegian went something like this:
M: Hey Valentina! We miss you in class!
V: I go on bus.
M: Are you in a new Norwegian class?
V: I live at Moa.
M: Are you taking the bus to Moa?
V: Chapter 4 in book.
M: Do you like your new class?
V: Inga teach English Friday.
M: It’s not the same in the class without you. Everyone misses you.
V: My husband, he likes boots. I shop at Moa. Shop, shop, shop.
In other words, she didn’t understand a WORD I said. At least I think I got the basic meaning of what she was saying but it was quite the challenge to carry on a conversation with her. I guess Norway can teach them, but can’t make them understand. I know she’s trying… but I’m wondering how she made it to the level of Commanding Officer in the Russian Army as it seems all the lights are on, but no one is home. We have a few more like that in our class even now so I’m wondering how long they will last. I know my brain is getting tired of all the grammar rules but I know I have to press on. I’m sure I sounded just like Valentina when I came here…as I could speak some things, but couldn’t understand much of anything. I am getting better though. I can read the newspaper everyday and understand the basics, which is encouraging for me to see I am making progress.

Reading the newspaper in Norway is right up there with talking about the weather. I read a travel book of Norway while on the ferry a few weeks ago– it was translated to English and it highlighted every town along the coast. Each city’s description started off like this: Aalesund, population: 40,000; newspaper subscriptions: 38,000. Several cities had nearly as many newspaper subscribers as they have residents. I thought about that for a while and wondered how that can be since children wouldn’t be subscribers... but then I figured it out. In just this area alone there are no less than four major newspapers, two local ones and two national ones. Everyone I know reads two or three of them a day. It’s like the national pass-time – reading the news. And the newspapers here aren’t anything at ALL like American ones where the motto is “if it bleeds, it leads.” In fact, Norwegian newspapers are mostly human interest stories and the bad news is buried somewhere in the middle and not at all highlighted. There are very few ads in these papers (the bulk of the pages have no ads whatsoever) and they are all in full color – every page. Of course, each paper costs about $4 a day, but people buy them by the handful and devour them. They have tons of human interest stories and they report on even the slightest of details. A few weeks ago the huge headlines and front page story was on a neighborhood where people weren’t picking up the dog poop. The (translated) headline read “Crap tired of dog sh—“ (only they spelled out the word.) The whole article was how tired this guy was walking around his block seeing all the piles of poop or tossed aside “doggie” bags. And they don’t have nearly the censorship in papers here as they do in America. They don’t censor a word, and swear words are often in the headlines. They also have at least one naked picture a day in the paper as nudity over here is nothing. It’s just the human body and they don’t have any modesty when it comes to that. But the papers are pretty interesting as they highlight a lot of different people and what they are doing in their jobs or with their spare time. I’m sure everyone that lives in Norway has been written up in the paper more than once in their lifetime. I guess it’s the way Norwegians feel connected to one another, without having to talk to each other and dare risk sharing their feelings.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Three months ago today we arrived in Norway! It hardly seems that long, as time just rushes by, but then, it did at home, too. I was thinking the other day as we sat inside our cozy house - protected from the storm, how comfortable and similar that felt – all of us under one roof just doing our own thing. So even though many aspects of our life here are so different from our lives in Mount Vernon, the one thing that’s constant is that we are together and God is with us in all we do. Hallelujah! I think a lot of people suffer from homesickness after three months in a foreign land because they don’t have their whole family with them… and as long as Kory and Kaleb and I are together, life just feels right and “normal.” Sure we miss our friends, but we know we will be together soon enough. And we’ve often gone at least three months without seeing even our closest friends… so the homesickness has not yet settled in for us (maybe a bit for Kaleb, but Kory and I are doing fine.)

The one thing I have been a little discouraged by is that I’m not feeling all that useful for God here yet. I hate to waste even a day and I’ve been wishing I could get plugged in a little quicker. But that feeling didn’t last too long as we went to Agape Church this morning and I felt much better afterwards.

This afternoon I decided to give my new rain gear a workout. It was pouring outside (but the wind let up) so we all got on our warm coats, put our rain jackets and pants on over our regular clothes, put on our boots and reflective vests, pulled up our hoods, put on some gloves and headed out into the wilds of the fall weather in Norway. (It felt much like bundling up for snow.) We tromped around the streets in the pouring rain just to see what it’s like to be a real Norwegian. Kaleb hopped in every puddle he could find and we plodded on. We stopped in to say “hi” to all the relatives in the neighborhood and just to show them we weren’t afraid of the elements. Kory’s 2nd cousin Bjørn is heading to America next week for a flight training session in Wichita and asked if we “needed anything.” I made a list. Then we stopped by cousin Axel and Kari’s house to hear how it went for them the last few weeks on their vacation to Israel. They couldn’t say enough wonderful things about it so we can’t wait to see their pictures. Then we ended up watching a little soccer on TV at Odd and Turid’s house (we’re trying to be as Norwegian as possible here – but I have to admit, we were real good at faking interest in that one.) We got home later than we expected as our little adventure took several hours. It was so liberating to not carry an umbrella and to be nice and snuggly warm while walking around in the rain. Now if I can just figure out how to put little wiperblades on my glasses, I’ll have it made.

Stretching Myself

It’s just after midnight and the wind is whipping outside like we’re in a hurricane or something. The houses are so well built here in Norway, they can take it, but we might lose power. It’s quite the storm. Kind of fun actually, as there are no tall trees around to think about, like at home. I stood right next to our front door that is mostly glass, and didn’t even feel the slightest bit of air coming in anywhere. The houses are sealed up very tight which comes in handy when trying to keep the place warm. Kaleb is in bed, Kory is drawing, the fire is burning, and I’m clicking away on the keyboard. All is right in our cozy little world.

This morning we all slept in then we took Kaleb and his “bodyguard” to Barnaslekerland – a big indoor play area here. I think Tobias was a bit too old for such a thing, but he’s a good sport and ran around with Kaleb nonetheless. One of us had to stay on the premises and since I had a few errands to run, Kory stayed behind. Up until today, I haven’t driven our vehicle. I’m not all that comfortable with the rules of the road here and I especially hate the round-abouts. They are everywhere. In this entire region, I’ve only seen one stop sign and two stop lights – every other intersection is a round-about (some the size of a man-hole cover) and not everyone follows all the rules so they are a tad bit beyond my comfort zone. And everyone coming from the right has the right-of-way even on regular streets so Kory has been driving down the road and some car will come flying out from nowhere right in front of him and he has to slam on his brakes because they came from the right. Bizarre law. (Bigger roads have a special sign to show oncoming cars must yield first… but that panic feeling is always there that someone will nail us if we don’t keep a look-out.) But I stretched myself and just figured one of these days I’m going to have to drive, so I better do it today when the sky looked so threatening it would have been foolish to walk anywhere. And God kept all other cars away and I survived the trip (all ½ mile of it). I feel so accomplished! One of my errands was to buy rain gear, so if I’m not brave enough to drive the next time, I can walk – no matter what the weather looks like.

Tonight we were invited to some friend’s house for dinner on one of the outer islands. The storm was really raging out there but we were warm and toasty in their house. It was fun to watch the waves breaking over the jetty in front of their house and see the spray flying up as high as the street lights. Woo hoo. The guy is actually Kory’s third cousin but we only met him in the last few years so he really is first and foremost a friend. He and his wife are both extremely wonderful people. We had a fantastic evening at their house talking about everything from Norwegian Christmas traditions to the condition of the Norwegian and American stock markets. I love all the formalities Norwegians have … candles throughout the house, fine linens and china, everything so fancy. There’s nothing like it. But when we go to someone’s house we always run the risk of being served some strange food I’ve never eaten and I’m not much of an adventure-in-eating kind of gal. Tonight we were served deer meat for dinner, and so far in my 51 years on this planet, I’ve managed to avoid eating such a thing… but I felt so proud of myself for driving the van today that I thought I’d stretch myself just one more time and take a bite. I took two to be polite, and then when they weren’t looking I put the rest on Kaleb’s plate. That kid will eat anything. Kory said it was super good and he had seconds, but I don't eat much meat … especially from cute animals. I’m glad they didn’t serve the moose they just bought today because that’s one ugly looking critter, but I think I still would have had a hard time taking a bite out of that one.

A Blustery Day

We’ve had a few days of huge wind gusts and off and on downpours, black skies and unfriendly weather. It makes me so glad we have a fireplace and a small house so it doesn’t take much to keep it warm. I’m also thankful I don’t have to be outside! Welcome to the beginning of the winter, as the days get increasingly shorter and the darkness sets in. (The photo today was taken Saturday. I’m sure those peaks have several inches of snow on them by now.)

Kory was inside all day, and not having any other projects to keep him busy, he did housework. What a concept! I came home to floors vacuumed and washed and a clean kitchen. I like it. I love it. I want some more of it! I made him a yummy dinner as reward (and then he cleaned up!) Kaleb had another rough day with Morton and his gang going after him at recess, but he’s making as much sport out of it as he can and at least he’s not crying about the encounters anymore. Sabina was here tonight and we played cards until the two of them got in a squabble. They are starting to act like siblings. Sabina kicked Kaleb under the table then she started messing with the cards and “not following the rules.” Kaleb grabbed her arm to get the cards back and squeezed it more than he should have. She didn’t complain but we called it quits and sent Kaleb to bed. Uff da. So much for my "nice" boy.

I’ve been watching with great interest the last few days the exchange rate between the kroner and the dollar. The dollar was over seven today – meaning we can buy seven kroner with one dollar. Just a month ago we could only buy five kroner with a dollar so this whole financial crisis is still working well for us. This afternoon we went to the bank and converted all the dollars we had left as we feel things might reverse and then we’ll be kicking ourselves. Of course there is no telling what the future holds, but thankfully we know “who holds the future”! It’s so nice to ride out these storms, whether they are financial ones or weather ones, knowing we have nothing to fear.

In my Norwegian class today we learned weird things – common expressions and sayings. After all the work they make us go through to learn the different tenses of verbs, today we find out that if the verb is obvious, you can just skip it altogether. Why in the world you need to leave out a key element in a sentence is beyond me, but maybe the Norwegians think like Kory did as a child. He was required at the dinner table to be quiet so his parents could talk. He thought he wasn’t allowed to speak because there were only so many words that would come out of his mouth in a lifetime, and that he wasn’t supposed to use them all up as a child…. Such is the logic of a young mind, but I have no idea behind the logic in this new rule we have learned. It’s very weird to hear someone say “Jeg kan norske” which means “I can Norwegian.” It’s allowed to leave out the verb “speak” because it’s obvious what goes there (more obvious to some than others, I suppose). So it’s possible to hear people say things like “I will the store” or “I must to class.” Makes no sense. Why not just say “GO” right in there with the sentence, as it’s not a very big word, even in Norwegian. But then, Norwegians are known to be quite the conservers. They don’t even waste a breath, as they often talk while sucking in air. I’ll be talking to someone and it sounds like they just choked on something as they suck in a breath and say “Ja” at the same time. It’s as if what they were agreeing to couldn’t even wait until the next breath was taken and the comment has to come out immediately, even if they are in the middle of breathing in. I don’t get it, but then I don’t get a lot of things Norwegian. Like the expression we learned today, (Kan du slå på tråden?) which word-for-word is translated as: “Can you hit me with a thread?” or “Can you punch me with a string?” – it could go either way as the words used mean both things. That’s the literal translation, but the meaning is something that could never be guessed: “Can you give me a call?” (I’m sure there are weird English expressions as well, but since I’m so used to them they don’t exactly come to mind and it’s not nearly as much fun to point them out.) Can you hit me with a thread? Where do they come up with this stuff?

A Nice Boy

Kaleb is such an inspiration to me. He had another run-in with Morton today and I asked him if he’s getting tired of all this and does he still like school. He shouted his answer to me: “There’s only three people that are a problem – out of a school with more than 100 kids– do you think I’d let those three kids keep me from liking school? HA HA HA HA HA!” So that settles it. He really loves school, and I’m so thankful he doesn’t focus on the negative. Sometimes I think it’s typical for Americans to have 99 things going right and then complain about the one thing that isn’t so well. But that’s not Kaleb at all. Hallelujah!

When Kory picked Kaleb up at school yesterday he ran into one of his teachers and he asked how it was going with him. Her comment was “He’s such a NICE boy!” And then last night I went to a meeting at church and I met a woman that knew Sabina and her mom. She said Sabina’s mom had told her that, “Kaleb is SUCH a NICE boy!” So when we find out he’s being talked about in such a positive way, we have cause to celebrate and we want to reward that kind of behavior. Woo hoo. He gets enough negative consequences with the choices he sometimes makes, so we want to be sure to emphasize the positive as well, and have positive consequences follow good things. Saturday we’ll be taking him and a friend to a local play land here as a special treat (it’s kind of like a huge indoors McDonald’s play area.) He’s excited about that. And we’ll find out more details about how he’s doing in school next week when we have our first parent/teacher conference. (I’m sure glad we don’t have those for my school or Kory would get an earful.)

Today we continued the painful study of past tense verbs, but we also learned all the measurement words, weight, height, width, length, kilometers, etc. We learned that there is such a thing as “a Norwegian mile” – which is quite different from an American mile. A Norwegian mile is 10 kilometers (6.1 miles), so when in Aalesund and someone says it’s 56 miles to Oslo, a little math calculation is in order because it’s really 341 miles. Good to know.

For the past few nights we’ve used the dinner hour as a time to just “snakke norsk.” I thought Kory and I would just speak it, but Kaleb joined right in and then started correcting my sentence structure. So we haven’t even been here three months and already we’re speaking Norwegian at home – which is very exciting for me to see we’re making that kind of progress.

The big news of the day is that we finally got some mail from home! Our house sitters sent us a package over a month ago that has yet to arrive, but the one they sent last week made it. It had all the latest newspapers from LaConner so we can catch up on things over the next few days… but last week’s paper particularly caught my eye because there was mention of Kaleb on the front page! Channel Town Press (now called The LaConner Weekly News) did a front page story on Kaleb in January telling about his weekly dog publication and how he sells subscriptions and all the money he raises goes to dog charities. He’s raised nearly two thousand dollars since he started a year and a half ago (but he now just publishes it monthly since we are in Norway.) Anyhoo… the newspaper submitted their story about Kaleb and “The Weekly Puppy” to some big competition that newspapers across the state enter – and that story won second place in the whole state! So we were all whooping it up here over that bit of news and the local paper was proud to toot their horn as well. Go figure – Kaleb isn’t even in the country and he’s still making the front page. I’ve never seen anyone that’s more of a media magnet than him. I’ve Googled his name before and he has an entire page of “hits.” He’s destined for something beyond comprehension, I’m sure. But I'm just thankful that some days, he really IS a nice boy.