It is now my third official week in Bergen and, aside from a cold that just will not quit, all is very well. Everyone in both families has had this strange cough that starts with a sore throat and I finally succumbed to it on Sunday so I spent the day in bed. My theory is that we all caught it from Theio and his chronic snotty-ness. Monday after work Helene and I, inspired by our sushi extravaganza on Saturday, decided we’d attempt home-made sushi. It wasn’t half bad Norwegian sushi and it turned out to be a lot of fun! Aside from my daily jobs I had one afternoon to myself that I spent exploring a part of the city I hadn’t been to yet and one evening which I made a point of taking off to attend Helene’s sister’s birthday party. Family had come from all over the country to surprise her and partake in a traditional Norwegian meal and some good family time. After the many differences I’ve encountered here I have found family time to be one thing that is essentially the same: the same teasing and joking, goofy uncles, doting mothers, and hyper-active cousins. I’m still not sure if it’s just the Norwegian way or if I got extremely lucky but the families that I live and work with have all of these crazy family nuances and they’ve thrown me right into the middle of all of it. I run errands and grocery shop with them, we have a Friday night dinner and a movie tradition, we walk the dog, visit family and the whole time I feel like we’ve been doing this for years. The best part has been the joking and laughing we do. They all have this crude sarcastic kind of humor, which I find hysterical so it was easy to join in, and it has become quite entertaining. We have vocab lessons where they teach me all the unimportant/useless words like the word for bellybutton fuzz and swimming cap, ‘affectionate’ nicknames, and tons of running jokes all of which has made it seem more and more like home and less like a foreign country. They’ve also been really great about teaching me the useful facts as well. They put up with my incessant questions and without really knowing it they have been the best cultural teachers. They’ve given me quite the collection of notable ‘Norwegianisms.’ Here are just a few:
-Horse salami is a common lunch meat
-Kids love Kaviar from a tube
- They have pre-parties called vorspiel (foreplay) before they go out
- Almost every family skis both downhill and cross-country
-The word for desk and the word for sex are exactly the same (with just a slight change in pronunciation): pult
-The big song right now is “Beggin’” by a Norwegian band called Madcon (they mistakenly sing ‘beggin’ beggin’ boo’ which is actually ‘beggin’ beggin’ you’)
-Very few families own dryers so most everything is air-dried
-There is not one Starbucks in the entire country
-They follow winter sports like biathlons (where they cross-country ski and then stop and shoot at targets), ski jumping, and speed skating
-Cars cost three times what they cost in the states
-Police don’t carry guns
-Their legal limit for drinking and driving is .02
-They are huge fans of the roundabout
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Norway-2
I finally have my bearings here so I spent the last week exploring the city. I bought myself a bus pass, found a really good map, and learned the key phrases I needed to get myself back to Åsane just in case everything else failed me. The nice thing about having all of these jobs is that they are spread out all over Bergen so I get to see and familiarize myself with several different areas. Åsane, where I live, is just North of Bergen. Then I work downtown at the architecture office (right off of Bryggen)
and for two different women who live South of Bergen in a community called Helgeplasset. My Norwegian lesson takes me to a part of the city called Frydenbo which is on the top of a hill that overlooks all of downtown and the water, and just this week I started a new job, also in Åsane so I can officially add ‘laundry maid’ to my resume! Now on my way downtown every morning I stop by the local soccer field, let myself in to the men’s locker room, and bask in the stench of dirty socks and jerseys for an hour. I thought I could go with out gloves...big mistake. If my professors could see me now!!!
At Riss Landskap I work right across the street from Mariakirken (St. Mary’s church) which, it turns out, is the oldest building in Bergen.
I was told the pulpit was the pride of the church so on Monday I made a point of touring the inside and it definitely lives up to its reputation. I also found time during the week to walk through the Fisketorget which is Bergen’s main fish market (scaled down for winter), Torgalmenningen the main square in Bergen where all the big stores and touristy restaurants are (Dolly Dimples pizza place is a big one here), and around the Lille Lungegardsvann, a tiny lake with a fountain in the center of town. I discovered Johanneskirken (St. John’s Church) which sits at the top of a hill in town,
and spent an entire afternoon walking through the Picasso exhibit (which was amazing) and the three other art museums that are all part of the Bergen Art Museum. I was amazed at the scope of the collection this little art museum in Bergen was able to muster up. So I managed to cover most of the tourist hot spots although I still haven’t been out on the water and I haven’t taken the funicular up Mount Floyen both of which I’m told I can’t miss.
The weekend was the most fun I've had since I got here. Friday night we made dinner at the neighbors’ house which turned into the most casual gourmet dinner I’ve ever had. They had a friend come cook and he brought fresh tuna and blue shell muscles, so we had seared tuna with sesame seeds, pomegranate, arugula, and balsamic reduction and muscles in a creamy chili and coconut sauce. Dessert was a $200 bottle of wine and ‘crispo' their equivalent of a crunch bar, which also came with a great soundtrack and a foot rub from my ‘boss.’ We spent the rest of the evening music swapping, they introduced me to some really good Norwegian bands and then I got to share some of my favorites with them. On Saturday I went with the Aspelund-Strømme family to a swimming pool in Os. I had planned on reading by the pool but Janne’s brother brought his two month old baby so I volunteered and sat in baby heaven for two hours until they were all done and baby was asleep.
Then Kristen was kind enough to give me the grand tour of the area so we drove out to this beautiful hotel in Solstrand and looked across the Fjord to Fusa which is the town I take the ferry to to get to Stranvik, where my grandmother lives. We drove up to the very top of Fanafjellet (Fana mountain), had lunch in Fanatorget (another neighboring city), and then took the scenic route home. It was so nice to get out of town and see the countryside and more of the fjords. Saturday night was all about the city. I had a girls’ night with Helene and a few new friends. We went to Red Sun sushi and then had drinks at the Penguin which was a fun little bar down a tiny cobblestone street in the center of town.
It was good to have a week where everything started to feel familiar and ‘normal.’ The first week I had a hard time transitioning because I realized I’m actually living here. In a way I felt like I was doing the same thing here that I was doing at home except that all my friends and family are at home. Traveling around is a different story because it’s a new place everyday and it is so far from your normal life that you don’t even have time to miss it. It only took a flight around the world for me to realize that I really am a home-body which has actually worked in my favor. This week everything just fell into place, my being a home-body has made it really easy to make Bergen home and I realized that that discomfort and finding my way in completely unfamiliar territory is exactly what this trip is about for me. I’ve found that the key has been to find a good balance between living and traveling, even if it means something as simple as walking a new way to work everyday.
and for two different women who live South of Bergen in a community called Helgeplasset. My Norwegian lesson takes me to a part of the city called Frydenbo which is on the top of a hill that overlooks all of downtown and the water, and just this week I started a new job, also in Åsane so I can officially add ‘laundry maid’ to my resume! Now on my way downtown every morning I stop by the local soccer field, let myself in to the men’s locker room, and bask in the stench of dirty socks and jerseys for an hour. I thought I could go with out gloves...big mistake. If my professors could see me now!!!At Riss Landskap I work right across the street from Mariakirken (St. Mary’s church) which, it turns out, is the oldest building in Bergen.
I was told the pulpit was the pride of the church so on Monday I made a point of touring the inside and it definitely lives up to its reputation. I also found time during the week to walk through the Fisketorget which is Bergen’s main fish market (scaled down for winter), Torgalmenningen the main square in Bergen where all the big stores and touristy restaurants are (Dolly Dimples pizza place is a big one here), and around the Lille Lungegardsvann, a tiny lake with a fountain in the center of town. I discovered Johanneskirken (St. John’s Church) which sits at the top of a hill in town,
and spent an entire afternoon walking through the Picasso exhibit (which was amazing) and the three other art museums that are all part of the Bergen Art Museum. I was amazed at the scope of the collection this little art museum in Bergen was able to muster up. So I managed to cover most of the tourist hot spots although I still haven’t been out on the water and I haven’t taken the funicular up Mount Floyen both of which I’m told I can’t miss.The weekend was the most fun I've had since I got here. Friday night we made dinner at the neighbors’ house which turned into the most casual gourmet dinner I’ve ever had. They had a friend come cook and he brought fresh tuna and blue shell muscles, so we had seared tuna with sesame seeds, pomegranate, arugula, and balsamic reduction and muscles in a creamy chili and coconut sauce. Dessert was a $200 bottle of wine and ‘crispo' their equivalent of a crunch bar, which also came with a great soundtrack and a foot rub from my ‘boss.’ We spent the rest of the evening music swapping, they introduced me to some really good Norwegian bands and then I got to share some of my favorites with them. On Saturday I went with the Aspelund-Strømme family to a swimming pool in Os. I had planned on reading by the pool but Janne’s brother brought his two month old baby so I volunteered and sat in baby heaven for two hours until they were all done and baby was asleep.
Then Kristen was kind enough to give me the grand tour of the area so we drove out to this beautiful hotel in Solstrand and looked across the Fjord to Fusa which is the town I take the ferry to to get to Stranvik, where my grandmother lives. We drove up to the very top of Fanafjellet (Fana mountain), had lunch in Fanatorget (another neighboring city), and then took the scenic route home. It was so nice to get out of town and see the countryside and more of the fjords. Saturday night was all about the city. I had a girls’ night with Helene and a few new friends. We went to Red Sun sushi and then had drinks at the Penguin which was a fun little bar down a tiny cobblestone street in the center of town.
It was good to have a week where everything started to feel familiar and ‘normal.’ The first week I had a hard time transitioning because I realized I’m actually living here. In a way I felt like I was doing the same thing here that I was doing at home except that all my friends and family are at home. Traveling around is a different story because it’s a new place everyday and it is so far from your normal life that you don’t even have time to miss it. It only took a flight around the world for me to realize that I really am a home-body which has actually worked in my favor. This week everything just fell into place, my being a home-body has made it really easy to make Bergen home and I realized that that discomfort and finding my way in completely unfamiliar territory is exactly what this trip is about for me. I’ve found that the key has been to find a good balance between living and traveling, even if it means something as simple as walking a new way to work everyday.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Norway-1
The last two weeks have been, simply put, a bit overwhelming. I think the only way I made it through an entire week of goodbye’s was the emotional Vicodin that set in about Sunday and didn’t wear off until I saw the first exit sign for the airport on Wednesday morning. My flights were fairly uneventful aside from the two hours my plane from New York spent camped out on the jet way and the consequent six hour lay over I experienced in Amsterdam (which I spent playing cards with Anton from Germany). My host 
‘mom’ Helene (Helena) and her son Nicholas (6) picked me up from the airport and drove us back to their flat in Åsane which is just north of downtown.
I have a great little room on the bottom floor of their four-story flat, next to Helene’s office and across from ‘the room for the treadmill’. The house is in the middle of some minor remodels but is still beautiful and very cozy and also, ironically, Ikea’d out. I’ve only seen the inside of four homes now but they’ve all been pictures out of Ikea (or as its pronounced here-Ickea) catalogues.
I heard a few nightmare stories about au pairs before I left so I was a bit weary of my living situation but I have to say I could not have asked for a better family. Helene is a single mom, a physiotherapist, and a star runner of Bergen. She is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, very inspiring. We get a long great (and her English is perfect which always helps), we laugh a lot, share stories, swap books and chick flicks, and she even has me contemplating running a half marathon that’s coming up. Nicholas is about as sweet and cute as they come. He is half Belisian so he has a mop of brown hair on his little head and these big brown eyes. He doesn’t understand much English so communication is limited and yet he has been the best Norwegian teacher so far. We open the newspaper and I point and he says the word and then I repeat it until I get it right, he’s very patient with me. He attends an ‘outdoor daycare’ that is part of one of the companies Helene works for. When I went yesterday to pick him up they had all the kids in raingear and they were literally swimming in a giant mud pit. Helene and Nicholas have an ideal community here: her best friends live right next door and they basically run their families together, the school is minutes away, there is a soccer field in their backyard, and kids everywhere. The mall and central bus station are both a two-minute walk from the house and it is only ten minutes into the city.
The Aspelund-Strømme family that lives next door is just as welcoming and warm as Helene has been.
Kristen is a dentist and his wife Janne (Yannah) is a therapist and they have hired me as an au pair to get their three kids ready and off to school in the morning. The children have been the light of my days here. Vilde is nine and she is just beginning to learn English in school so we’ve been practicing together and if ever I run into a situation where I just cannot communicate with the other children we call Vilde (Vilda) to help sort things out. I’ve overheard her kindly reminding her siblings that I don’t ‘snakke Norsk.’ She and I have chosen song as our medium for communicating so we sing popular songs in English and she teaches me songs in Norwegian. 
Thale (Talla) is six and they say she has a bit of a temper but I have yet to be witness to it. She is a very independent, very happy, and very helpful little girl. 
We have absolutely mastered the art of sign language (our own version of course) and drawings so she uses a lot of pointing and charades with me. Andreas is three and wonderful. He follows me around telling me stories and asking me questions and is never discouraged when I don’t respond or can’t understand. He picks up whatever English he hears and uses it quite liberally; it needs to be on youtube. He discovered that when he says my name in question form I respond by saying his name the same way and that has been our main form of communication so far…it never gets old. They also have a dog Theio (Tayo) that has to be the least intelligent creature I have ever encountered. He trips over nothing, runs into walls, comes to anything but his own name, and has a snot problem. He literally leaves a trail of snot everywhere he goes. He sneezes snot balls and even has his very own snot rag.
My day starts around 6:30a, I wake the children up, feed and dress them, pack their ‘matpakke’ and walk them to their schools and I love every minute of it. I have time after that to work out and shower and then I walk to catch the bus by about 10:45a.
I have a job at a landscape architecture firm that is a block from Bryggen which is the historic port of Bergen. I buy groceries and prepare a traditional Norwegian ‘skive’ lunch for eight employees and myself (it is part of my job to have lunch and socialize with them). Then in the afternoons I’ve been doing odd jobs: cleaning house for two different women, assisting an English teacher, watching the children, and taking Norwegian lessons.
There is definitely a reason they call Seattle Bergen’s sister city. The mountains, the water, the rain, the grey, and the trees are all very similar to Seattle’s. The weather was pretty mild my first few days and then it just went crazy. Today there was a thunderstorm in the morning that was changing from rain to hail to snow, then lightning, then a wind storm hit, and after a two-hour drizzle it is now dumping snow. It has snowed everyday for the last three days.
Everything gets covered in a blanket of white and then by morning it’s all been washed away by the rain. Helene says the suicide rate is very high here.
There is a distinctly different pace here. Everything seems to run efficiently and to the point without being stressful or drama-filled. As it was explained to me Norwegians are a duty driven people so they have accepted that they have these tasks that must be completed and once they’ve finished their days work they truly relax. Most nights, after dinner is made, Helene and I sit with Kristen and Janne just talking and laughing and sipping tea.
‘mom’ Helene (Helena) and her son Nicholas (6) picked me up from the airport and drove us back to their flat in Åsane which is just north of downtown.I have a great little room on the bottom floor of their four-story flat, next to Helene’s office and across from ‘the room for the treadmill’. The house is in the middle of some minor remodels but is still beautiful and very cozy and also, ironically, Ikea’d out. I’ve only seen the inside of four homes now but they’ve all been pictures out of Ikea (or as its pronounced here-Ickea) catalogues.
I heard a few nightmare stories about au pairs before I left so I was a bit weary of my living situation but I have to say I could not have asked for a better family. Helene is a single mom, a physiotherapist, and a star runner of Bergen. She is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, very inspiring. We get a long great (and her English is perfect which always helps), we laugh a lot, share stories, swap books and chick flicks, and she even has me contemplating running a half marathon that’s coming up. Nicholas is about as sweet and cute as they come. He is half Belisian so he has a mop of brown hair on his little head and these big brown eyes. He doesn’t understand much English so communication is limited and yet he has been the best Norwegian teacher so far. We open the newspaper and I point and he says the word and then I repeat it until I get it right, he’s very patient with me. He attends an ‘outdoor daycare’ that is part of one of the companies Helene works for. When I went yesterday to pick him up they had all the kids in raingear and they were literally swimming in a giant mud pit. Helene and Nicholas have an ideal community here: her best friends live right next door and they basically run their families together, the school is minutes away, there is a soccer field in their backyard, and kids everywhere. The mall and central bus station are both a two-minute walk from the house and it is only ten minutes into the city.
The Aspelund-Strømme family that lives next door is just as welcoming and warm as Helene has been.
Kristen is a dentist and his wife Janne (Yannah) is a therapist and they have hired me as an au pair to get their three kids ready and off to school in the morning. The children have been the light of my days here. Vilde is nine and she is just beginning to learn English in school so we’ve been practicing together and if ever I run into a situation where I just cannot communicate with the other children we call Vilde (Vilda) to help sort things out. I’ve overheard her kindly reminding her siblings that I don’t ‘snakke Norsk.’ She and I have chosen song as our medium for communicating so we sing popular songs in English and she teaches me songs in Norwegian. 
Thale (Talla) is six and they say she has a bit of a temper but I have yet to be witness to it. She is a very independent, very happy, and very helpful little girl. 
We have absolutely mastered the art of sign language (our own version of course) and drawings so she uses a lot of pointing and charades with me. Andreas is three and wonderful. He follows me around telling me stories and asking me questions and is never discouraged when I don’t respond or can’t understand. He picks up whatever English he hears and uses it quite liberally; it needs to be on youtube. He discovered that when he says my name in question form I respond by saying his name the same way and that has been our main form of communication so far…it never gets old. They also have a dog Theio (Tayo) that has to be the least intelligent creature I have ever encountered. He trips over nothing, runs into walls, comes to anything but his own name, and has a snot problem. He literally leaves a trail of snot everywhere he goes. He sneezes snot balls and even has his very own snot rag.My day starts around 6:30a, I wake the children up, feed and dress them, pack their ‘matpakke’ and walk them to their schools and I love every minute of it. I have time after that to work out and shower and then I walk to catch the bus by about 10:45a.
I have a job at a landscape architecture firm that is a block from Bryggen which is the historic port of Bergen. I buy groceries and prepare a traditional Norwegian ‘skive’ lunch for eight employees and myself (it is part of my job to have lunch and socialize with them). Then in the afternoons I’ve been doing odd jobs: cleaning house for two different women, assisting an English teacher, watching the children, and taking Norwegian lessons.There is definitely a reason they call Seattle Bergen’s sister city. The mountains, the water, the rain, the grey, and the trees are all very similar to Seattle’s. The weather was pretty mild my first few days and then it just went crazy. Today there was a thunderstorm in the morning that was changing from rain to hail to snow, then lightning, then a wind storm hit, and after a two-hour drizzle it is now dumping snow. It has snowed everyday for the last three days.
Everything gets covered in a blanket of white and then by morning it’s all been washed away by the rain. Helene says the suicide rate is very high here.There is a distinctly different pace here. Everything seems to run efficiently and to the point without being stressful or drama-filled. As it was explained to me Norwegians are a duty driven people so they have accepted that they have these tasks that must be completed and once they’ve finished their days work they truly relax. Most nights, after dinner is made, Helene and I sit with Kristen and Janne just talking and laughing and sipping tea.
Prologue
With graduation behind me and the daunting task of deciding on a career path I decided, instead, on a trip around the world. So here it is: Norway for three months, France for three months, India for seven weeks, and Australia for four months. I loved what I studied and the security that comes with a job and a home were very appealing to me but I still could not shake the feeling that I had much more to learn before I could settle in. I need perspective, to do things I am not comfortable doing, survive on my own, experience different cultures and customs, open my eyes wide, quiet my ego, and find where my passion lies. I chose Norway because it has always been home away from home. So much of who I am is wrapped up in the Norwegian culture so what better way to ‘find’ myself? France I chose because, aside from it being…France…in Spring, I have taken over eight years of French and am hoping to get past that wall you can only break through by actually living in and experiencing a culture. My dear friend Annie and I have been accepted into a four week service learning program in India for an international health organization called Child Family Health International. So we will travel around visiting and assisting in HIV/AIDS clinics learning everything we can about public health in this setting and we plan on doing a bit of backpacking after we’ve completed the program. Australia, well, our winter is their summer so…
I count my blessings everyday that I have been able to manifest this for myself and I am eternally grateful to everyone who has helped me get to this place. To my family, friends, and loved ones I miss you more than you know and I take you with me wherever I go.
I count my blessings everyday that I have been able to manifest this for myself and I am eternally grateful to everyone who has helped me get to this place. To my family, friends, and loved ones I miss you more than you know and I take you with me wherever I go.
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