My New Norwegian Home

I'm sure in times to come I'll update quite a bit about Norwegian courses. I really like being in the class. I love talking to people of different backgrounds in my class and a lot of my curiosity and questions get answered about other parts of the world. Not to mention I'm learning Norwegian at a fast pace and it wasn't until this week I've actually realized I've been progressing in Norwegian since my husband and I had our first, second and third ongoing conversations in Norwegian that didn't consist of the basics. Part of being in Norsk kurs is about helping us foreigners - that word sounds so strange to me - integrate into society. We recently took a hiking trip and the point of which was to teach us about mushrooms. Here in Norway, the early fall is a popular time to go into the forest and pluck mushrooms to eat. However, recently it's been in the news of people being hospitalized due to plucking the wrong mushrooms and consuming them. About 50% o...

Though I'm only in school 17 hours a week, I feel like learning the language is consuming a lot more of my time as I do a lot of reading and writing and trying to speak Norwegian to my husband at least outside of school. I'm really trying to put my entire self into this, so I'm giving this language learning a lot of energy. I enjoy going to class, I love it really, but I am so frustrated because I feel like I'm so limited in everything. Every day this week I've cried and sobbed to my husband over my frustration and it usually goes something like, "I don't understand why I can't understand what people say!? I have to ask people to repeat everything or speak slower! What's wrong with me!?" or, "Ugh, I have to get away from words today... English, Norweigan, whatever." I've never been so nervous, anxious, upset or frustrated about anything academic related before, so why now? I'm not even getting graded on these language clas...

When I meet someone new of Arild's friends one of the first things they tell me is, "You're very brave." I don't think that at all. I'm still extremely dependent on Arild and I try very hard for that to not let me down. He is very supportive, which makes a huge difference and I'm very appreciative for having an extremely laid-back and supportive husband, but I miss my independence. The day I get my independence back I am going to do one hell of a victory dance, but it will take baby steps to get there. I'm scared to go into public alone because I'm afraid people will talk to me and I have no idea what they say or say back to them. Any time I have ventured off on my own this has never happened, so it's really just an irrational fear. The times I have had to speak English to people they've almost always spoken English back. I''m learning how to drive a manual car. The first 3 months an American is in Norway they can drive with ...