My New Norwegian Home

Homesickness is a bit unique, isn't it? It comes and goes. There's really nothing to take it away other than "home" itself. You can distract yourself, keep yourself busy, but you know homesickness is there. Possibly even more so during holidays.  Johnny Cash version of My Old Kentucky Home aka the state song  <---- You can listen to this while reading my post if you want to get an extra feel for Kentucky. :-)  It's been over 6 months since my move to Norway and I'm beginning to feel the pangs of homesickness. It's not out of control or anything, but it's well... there. I miss being with family and going to dinner or meeting friends. I miss tickling my little sister, having long talks with my grandparents, visiting and gossiping with my mother or going out for ice cream with my dad. I miss rural Kentucky scenery. I like it here in Norway. I really like it, but really I miss the sights, sounds, smells... so many things about my dear old Kentucky...

I've often times hide my accent when I talk to other Norwegians and other people here in Norway. It's become such a huge habit of mine lately after someone saying to me, "Well, I was expecting you to talk like George W. Bush!" that I realized I've hid my accent so much (and I don't sound like George W. Bush!!!). The reason for me hiding it is because when I did talk without masking that long drawn out southern accent, people would ask me what I said or what I was talking about and I soon pinpointed it not to fluency in English, but just the way I said things. When first meeting even my husband asked me what I was saying at times. After repeating the same word several times I finally began to catch on to why he couldn't understand me. He couldn't understand what I meant with words like "semi", "iron", "oil", "shy" and many other words with an "i" or a "y" somewhere in them. Once I had a cousi...