My New Norwegian Home

Just a quick post as I'm in the middle of exams, papers, projects, work, etc. etc. and hyped up on chocolate cake and my first Mountain Dew in like a year! I've recently read a blog of an expat who dropped from language classes. Arild also told me a story someone told him at work of an American woman who was deported because she refused to take her required language classes. In her situation, she and her husband remained married, but lived in different countries. In some ways this worries me. Will I give up too? Will I lack motivation? Are the classes really that hard? Do I have the ability to learn a foreign language? In other ways, I just want to smack these people with a Norwegian language book and tell them, "What's the matter with you? Learn this stuff!" I really think this is partially because everyone going into Norway knows the majority are fluent in English and maybe think they don't have to learn a new language. I do not want to be that person....

Long story short, man and  his mom are in a rental car in Arizona, they get lost and start going down a one-way street... the wrong way. There's a festival of sorts going on which they disturb, the man rolls down his car window and gets punched in the nose, so he drives away and drives over a person's foot. The police are called and he and his mother are arrested, the mother was released, but he is sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. Why? The court says he had a deadly weapon. What is the deadly weapon? The car.  Either this has been severely blown out of proportion or something in this story is missing. Norwegian Man Sentenced to 7.5 Years in Arizona Prison  <---- a Norwegian site Same as above just an Arizona news site I'm of course not going to spend my posts on here writing about Breivik for a couple of reasons, 1- I've recently been reading up on these people who actually exist to my disbelief who share his same mentality and think he's done the right ...

Ah, so picking up from where I left off… counting down the days… We soon decided on this next trip in order to be a normal couple we needed to do a proper proposal. So we ordered our engagement rings. I ordered his and he ordered mine. Everything in our relationship has been planned and documented, so there are no surprises and that has included engagement as well. During this harsh waiting period one Saturday night (Saturday has and probably always will be our night for quality time. It’s the night we sit and talk, hang out, watch movies or TV shows, play games, whatever) he thought it would be fun to look for tips on how to be more of a normal couple in long distance relationships. Loving from a Distance <--- here’s the site we visited Now, being 6 time zones away is quite difficult, but he has always been a bit difficult with sleep and when we started our relationship he suggested if anyone screws their sleep up it would be him as I have school and a changing wor...

Here's an interesting video I found concerning kindergarten in Norway. When I first heard about this I was thinking, "How on Earth can they let babies play outside like that!!??!?! They'd get sick! What are they thinking!?!?!" I think that would be the reaction of a lot of Americans and teachers would have to deal with listening to complaints of angry parents, but now after reading up on this and watching videos about these children I understand more about why children are more or less outside to explore and prevented from being sheltered the way indoor classrooms allow. Norsk Kindergarten  <---- You can see here how different the kindergarten is in Norway from the kindergarten in America. Longer Video on Norsk Kindergarten  <---- This video is longer, but goes more in depth about the kindergartens.

Continuing from the last post…. I think I'll break this down into 3 parts and this will probably be my only post this week due to being crushed with papers for school. So for now, here's a short one. First to update on a few things: Wedding: Just a few more things to wrap blue ribbon around and I'm done for now, Arild has made our CD  for the walking down the aisle song as well as another CD for background noise at the reception. Arild's wedding band came in and so far so good we just hope it fits him! Moving: Stella has one ticket bought now, but I have to contact the PetSafe agency again and purchase her other ticket from New York to Oslo. There's been so much calling this place and that place and trying to get everything set up so we have no mistakes later I really can't keep up with everything. I do go on May 31st to sign up for my language classes!!! :-) Apparently this requires testing for placement. Sounds like fun! I'm also down to my last...

I recently had an idea for helping me learn the language. I thought reading Norwegian children's books would benefit me. After a conversation with Arild where we were discussing the names of Disney characters and comparing their English and Norwegian names, he was explaining to me how Donald Duck is more popular than Mickey Mouse in Scandinavia. Which I've read about the popularity in Scandinavia of Donald Duck comics written by Don Rosa (a Kentucky native!) so I am already familiar with this. Arild as a child reading these comics on a beach in Denmark. He told me some childhood stories of how his dad would buy a Donald Duck comic once a week for he and his younger brother to read and they'd fight over who got to read it first. He also told me he used to fall asleep reading Donald Duck comics in bed throughout the week. So the two ideas clicked. Reading something simple like Norsk children's books to help me learn the language and something I'm already fami...

I just have to say, I'm getting a few e-mails from my readers and it's a very bizarre moment for me to realize I'm openly writing about the craziest thing I've ever decided to do with my life and receive e-mails from other people in similar situations. I greatly enjoy talking to others in situations like mine! It's very hopeful and relieving! I understand when people read blogs like mine, this is the sort of thing they're looking for. I've purposely made this particular blog extremely personal just for this matter. I guess I'll have to start off by saying I would never jump out of a plane without a parachute. I've done research on Norway and have spent countless hours talking to Arild. Being a high-anxiety person in general, I think this is a crazy crazy thing to do, but I am so happy and so excited to be able to experience this! I'm often asked if I'm scared doing this. I'm not. Not at all. I'm scared of falling off the bed in my s...

I was looking at holiday recipes in my Norsk cookbook and found an Easter dessert. I had to see what it looked like so I went here --->  Fastelavnsboller (Fastelavn Buns)  and it's similar to a chocolate eclair I'm assuming. There is a recipe on the link, but I'll post the one from the book as well. What I like about this particular cookbook, Tastes & Tales of Norway is that the author ties in a lot of stories of Norsk culture and history as to why certain foods are popular. What's interesting is a lot of popular Norsk foods were what fueled Vikings and it's just kind of stuck with the culture. I found this very interesting and I have to mention the history of this dessert as the book states, "Easter is a time for fastelavns...Children celebrate fastelavns the only day of year when they are allowed to spank their parents. They tie birch branches and colorful feathers together for the spanking." (Tastes & Tales of Norway, S.Doub 2002) Granted...

With Easter approaching, I've noticed more and more differences between the two countries. America celebrates it on Sunday and maybe, MAYBE on Good Friday. Norwegian citizens get 1/2 day Wednesday off work, and everything shuts down Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday of course, and Monday. For true Norwegians this means a great time to welcome spring and finally being without snow (maybe), so they go up into the mountains and go skiing with friends or family and enjoy more snow. Easter is still celebrated the same of course, but more or less reserved for more time away from work. God påske! This also puts me in mind to say unlike America, Sundays in Norway are days where nearly everything shuts down with the exception of restaurants, gas stations, cinemas, bowling arenas and small grocery stores. I actually like this. I've worked maybe every weekend since I even began working and I really like the idea of having basically an entire society set aside one day to rest and catch ...

I'm trying so hard to concentrate on a paper due Thursday, but my mind is in no way wanting to write about child abuse in the media right now. The classes I take are interesting (Relationship and Family Violence for example) and always have been, but some are extremely realistic and with that comes a lot of sadness as you know there are people who are involved and live in these situations. I am itching to write though (and think happy thoughts) so I'll just write a quick blog here for now! Today was a great day and I have to say, I love rural Kentucky scenery! It's most certainly the beginning of spring though we've been having summer-like temperatures (minus all the dreadful humidity!). A few weeks ago I was taking pictures of cherry blossoms and now everything is extremely green. Birds are chirping at 5 in the morning. And I wake up having to turn on the air-conditioner. If ever given the chance to drive through Kentucky I suggest rural areas just simply because i...

I was just going through old emails from Arild the other day and found this video he sent me maybe a month after we met. It's a promotional video on moving to the Grenland area in Norge. Of course, he cartainly wasn't trying to persuade me into moving to Norway after just a month of knowing me, but we were normal penpals and we were in the stage of saying, "Kentucky is like this." and "Norway is like that." He was just simply showing me what area of Norway he lives in. It's interesting to watch now because I've actually been to some of the places in this video. :-) Hva er Grenland? (What is Grenland?) Arild found this article the other day and sent this to me to read as it has something we have personally found as a cultural difference. Is it Cruel to Keep Cats Inside? When we were still in the stage of getting to know one another Arild asked me all sorts of questions about Stella. Some of them concerning why I never let her outside and he thoug...