Recent Happenings

Two weeks ago Jason went on a fire-fighting course with his StatOil group. It was a half-day course where they got to put out a lot of different types of fires and in general play with fire. The best part was the course was taught completely in Norwegian even though StatOil specifically asked for it in English. Jason didn’t understand one word but somehow he got a certificate for passing the course! Jason was also pretty amused that all the fuel they used to start the fires ran into a drain that lead directly into the ocean.

Then on Saturday we took a road trip with Matt and Kathryn to Sweden! We had heard there were good prices on groceries and alcohol so we headed off bright and early Saturday morning. It took about 1.5 hours and it was a pretty drive. We also got to try out our brand new toll pass! It is the same concept as the States and works great. We were tired of finding $12 in coins for a round trip to the airport!

The town we went to in Sweden is called Storlien and it is literally just a border town for shopping. There were some cabins and a few restaurants but I think the main attraction is the grocery store. Busloads of Norwegians arrive every day to shop. Overall we were not very impressed but we were excited to find canned soda, which you can’t get in Norway (and I love cans!) so we stocked up on that. We also found some good deals on meat – bacon and chicken to be specific. In Sweden I could buy a kilo of chicken for about $9 USD – the same kilo would cost me $24 USD in Norway on a good day. Same goes for bacon – 1 kilo in Sweden is about $10 USD – in Norway about $30 USD. So we think we might be making some more trips to Sweden! Jason also discovered a great snack - chocolate covered banana chips.

We also had a fabulous lunch in a cute little restaurant in town. It was a buffet, which is rare, and the main course was a great venison, moose and reindeer stew.