My New Norwegian Home

My husband had a very special birthday. He turned 30 years old. I've known him since he was 27, but it was also the first of his birthdays we've spent in person so I wanted to make his day more special than it usually would have been. So, I had to document many parts of his birthday. While he was sleeping on Saturday morning, I wanted to prank him, but I wanted to do something that was more or less a clean prank - nothing that would ruin his day. In order to do so I had to hide the supplies for this prank  (as well as his birthday gift) in our storage room. His clear warning sign on the door. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  So I went outside and placed wet cotton balls on his car.  I made him his favorite food - cheese fries made from sliced potatoes.   I baked a chocolate cake from scratch and added sprinkles because sprinkles make everything taste better! If the cake didn't taste great then, hey at least the cake had sprinkles! And because 30 lit cand...

Winter is well on its way. For the first time in nine long dark, dreary, cold, foggy, rainy, gloomy days we've had sunshine. :-) I've been preparing for this winter, so on nice days I try to take advantage of, like today. I went on a walk to embrace the sunlight. With it getting colder, you see many Norwegians looking very, well, Norwegian in their knitted clothing they sport so well. I've recently taken up knitting as a new hobby. Every time I go to a friend's house when we're gathered around and talking, they will bring out their knitting and knit while talking. It almost seems socially awkward to sit without knitting. Personally, I never thought I would ever enjoy anything like that because I've always thought of knitting as way too feminine and old-fashioned for my taste, but it turns out I like it - or I just like scarves. When I first moved here, Arild and I walked around a park and walked into this building which also had a kiosk (tiny cafeteria) a...

Since moving here I've been trying many new foods. I'm still skeptical of meat (leverpostei and stuff in a tube DOES NOT tickle my fancy) but I've tried moose and if I didn't know better I'd have thought it was beef. My biggest norsk mat (Norwegian food) fascination is lefse. When I was first introduced to it, I couldn't stop eating it. I ate lefse everyday when I first moved here to Norway. Even that is sounding strange now because it's been 5 months since my move and I'm realizing there's been some history since my move. My favorite lefse is Vestlands lefsa. I think it was around August I couldn't find it - in any store - anywhere. By September I began to really wonder what happened to the lefse. I mean, this is Norway. Lefse is a staple just like flour, bread or sugar. It turns out, there was a lefse shortage due to the company relocating. Thankfully production is back to normal and lefse is back! I think I have an undying love for No...

In Oslo, part of the streets have snowflakes in them!  Since I was on høstferie (fall break) this week, I was able to go to Oslo. I visited Oslo in January during my trip to Norway, but it was the coldest day during my stay, it was dark and I was freezing so bad I was beginning to feel very unwell. I had the chance to go back to Oslo and experience a few of the things we didn't get to do earlier in the year.  It was still cold, of course, but hey, it's Norway and I don't think there's really any escaping the cold. First stop (other than IKEA) was the Nobel Peace Center. Norway is a rather peaceful country though they're not a neutral country. I think that's a common misconception.  Global Peace Index  <---This year, Norway is in 18th place which has put them back several spaces in former years, but generally they usually fall under the top 10 if not top 5 most peaceful countries. However, they are responsible for handling the Nobel Peace Prize. Aril...

A couple of weeks ago, my mother-in-law told me a typical Norwegian quote, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing!" I still have no idea how to dress and when I came here with all my "Kentucky clothes" as I call them now, I wasn't prepared at all for Norwegian weather. I just love a quote from one of the Alt for Norge contestants, "The Norwegian weather hates you!"   That really sums it up! :-) When I first arrived here to a very rainy and cool summer, my husband asked, "Where's your raincoat?" I told him, "I've never had one." He looked at me like I was crazy and asked, "What did you do in Kentucky when it rains?" I explained to him if it rained, it would dry soon. Kentucky weather changes from hour to hour, so a raincoat never mattered much to me anyways. And honestly, I've never had much use for umbrellas and raincoats. I hate wearing layers of clothing and I hate clothing (like...

While there are political issues in America (and I feel a much deeper attachment to America than Norway) like healthcare, economy and unemployment, women's issues (though this has been a huge debate throughout the entire campaign, neither of our opponents even mentioned it in this last debate) and many other concerns, I'm NOT going to talk about my political views or anything of the sort because I think that either makes people like you a little less or a little more and really, I'd like people to just like me for what's beyond the person I vote for. And although here on Norway time our presidential debates don't come on the television until 3 in the morning, I just go to this website the morning after rather than confuse myself with listening to each party's exaggerations....  Fact Check! With our upcoming election I wanted to exercise my right to vote. What I had to do was send in an absentee ballot request to the county clerk's office of the previous...

I can't believe I haven't said anything about this when it happened as it's a huge part of being an expatriate in Norway ..... my application has been approved! Now that it's not a worry anymore I guess posting to tell about it slipped my mind. It only took 2 weeks at that! After reading some things other expatriates have said about their own horror stories with getting the residency application approved, I was expecting things to take no less than 6 months. However, the problem we had was getting my correct birth certificate, which took many tries. First, I did the search over the phone and the gentleman over the phone sent the search to the wrong state - I later got an email saying they failed to find my birth certificate and when I called back I was told the money was not refundable. The second time, I was sent the WRONG birth certificate. The third time, I was sent the correct birth certificate, but we had to also send a pre-posted envelope with it to the Secr...

For me there are 3 things I think are the most difficult to learn. I even have a bet going on with the hubs that I will become fluent in Norwegian before learning any of these 3 things. The thing number 1) The metric system. When you really start to think about America and its relationship with the world or if you compare America to our Western friends, you begin to see that America just HAS to be different. America has rejected the metric system, though we do use it occasionally - in hospitals, in science or when fixing your car. I admit, the metric system really does make more sense. Things are counted in 10s and 100s and 1000s rather than 12 inches in 1 foot, 4 cups in a quart, 16 ounces (abbreviated as "oz.") in 1 pound (abbreviated as "lb.") and a normal body temperature is 98.6 F, water freezes at 32 F and boils at 212 F all of which really makes very little sense and it wasn't until just a few years ago I was able to memorize all of our crazy measur...