Observations

It is funny how you don’t notice things that are missing in a society. You notice stuff that is different like all the weird food but you don’t notice little things like the fact that the world markets do not affect gas prices. Since we have been here gas has only fluctuated maybe 50 cents a gallon at most. Most days it is within 5 cents of the price last week. Needless to say the gas itself is literally $10/gallon.

The other thing I noticed last night while walking to Norwegian class was how few people use a Bluetooth earpiece for their phones. I really hate the Bluetooth earpieces in public places so I am surprised I haven’t noticed this sooner. Don’t get me wrong the Norwegians love their cell phones but they are more polite about them – they don’t talk on them while checking out at stores or in line etc. But on a whole this society is less 24/7 crazy – they are real believers in time off and leaving work at the office.

I am interested to see what type of experiences I have when I come home for Christmas. I will have been out of the US for 7 months at that point. Jason has already had some eye openers while in the US but I think I might even be more sensitive to them since I have been gone longer. Jason went to buy a “healthy” breakfast in Houston last week to avoid the unhealthy food he would get in the office. He was looking for something similar to what we eat here - light yogurt with muesli (which is fabulous!). He ended up with a yogurt parfait (with granola) but he quickly realized that it was 3 times the size of our normal portion in Norway. We all know the portion sizes are huge in the US but it was interesting for Jason to notice it and be really frustrated by it.

I have my practice driving lessons tomorrow at 7am (this seems to be the only thing open before 8am). Hopefully they go well and I can schedule the driving test before the snow arrives. Though I am told it can snow in October! Yippee!

Autumn in Norway

It has turned to autumn here. The trees, bushes and weeds are all changing colors and it is really spectacular.  I have never lived anywhere to see the change in seasons so this is really neat.  Here is the view out the kitchen window – it is where I spend most of my time on the computer.

It has also gotten cold.  The high today is supposed to be 5 C (41 F) and rainy.  I think this is the start of the season of cold, wet and dark.  The sun is now setting and rising at more normal times but we are losing 20 minutes a week so soon it will be dark!  Jason and I invested in flannel sheets and electric blankets 2 weeks ago and they are really nice at night!  Of course they don’t really have electric blankets only heating pads, which is kinda weird, but they work well.  We have also broken the heat in the bathroom – well we don’t think it was our fault and we don’t think our landlady is going to make us pay for it -thank god!  I guess some moisture got through the grout and shorted the heaters – what a stupid system!    But our entire bathroom (floor and walls) will be ripped out to replace the electric strip heaters under the floor and all the tile – it will take THREE WEEKS!  You could build an entire house in Houston in 3 weeksJ  We think the house is going to be mighty cold – strip heating is the dumbest idea ever.

 

Other then that things are going well.  Jason has been in Houston for a week and he has one more week to go.  I am on vacation from school next week (Autumn Break) so I am going to catch up with school work and plan our next trip to France/Spain. 

Drivers Licenses

This week we turned in our US drivers licenses and we now have temporary Norwegian licenses.  Getting a real Norwegian license should be an interesting process.  First we have to wait for the Norwegian version of the DMV to send us a letter indicating we can take the exam – then we have go to a driving school and take some lessons.  But the kicker is there is no set amount of lessons we have to take but instead just until the driving school thinks we are “ready”.  At $100 an hour that will be great!  Then when we are “ready” the driving school makes an appointment for us but we have to rent the driving schools’ special car to take the test – which of course costs 3 times the amount of a lesson.  Hopefully the day I am assigned to take the test it won’t be snowing or icy!  We have three months to complete the process – I will keep you updated on how that goes.  It was a strange feeling handing over our licenses, good thing we have a spare at homeJ

Not much else to report here.  Jason and I are back to the humdrum of life and work.  Jason’s work is pretty tedious nowadays.  And mine is really a constant challenge.  We have some work to do this weekend  - I thought I was done with weekend working!  The weather has started to turn cold here – the nights are 40 or so and the days are 60 max.  I have a feeling the winter will be colder then I expect. 

It was really strange to watch Hurricane Ike destroy the Houston area from here.  We didn’t have much footage of it but we did watch some on the Slingbox.  It was weird not have 24/7 coverage of it on every channel though.  Thankfully all our friends and their families in the Houston area are safe – most have power again but some are still waiting.  Makes us glad to be in Norway when you talk about not having power for 3 days in 90-degree heat and humidity!  

VACATION!

Zurich

It couldn't have come soon enough! Jason was tired of work and I was ready to be out of school for a week - sad since I have only taught for one week. We headed off on Friday to meet our friends from Houston, Natalie and Gavin, in Zurich Switzerland. We traveled wiht Natalie and Gavin all week which was great. We spent two nights in Zurich enjoying catching up and eating and drink good food and beer! Quite a change from Norway. Zurich had a lot of street food to enjoy and it was quite a nice city with some nice shopping. Then we headed to Lucerne by train. We spent 3 nights in Lucerne and I love the city. It is pretty small but absolutely beautiful, clean and friendly. We hiked the city walls and towers and crossed all the city bridges numerous times. We took a half-day bike ride out into the country side and meet up with a sweet widower who showed us his amazing house. On the last day we went to Mt Pilatus, which is the highest peak in the area and was a great trip. The trip to the mountain consists of a nice boat trip on Lake Lucerne, a 40 minute ride in the steepest cog railway in the world to the top and then to get down you take an aerial tramway to a gondola- good thing I am no afraid of heights (oh wait I am). We stopped on the way down the mountain to ride the longest summer toboggan run (1.3 KM) and Jason and Gavin did a ropes course. It was quite the day!

Sadly we left Switzerland and took a 5-hour train ride Munich. We spent the last 3 nights in Munich. Munich was also a great city- much larger and busier then the first two but very nice. We enjoyed the mandatory stop at the Hofbrauhaus – we were amazed how inexpensive the beer was and how good the food was. We also toured the city on foot and bus – we saw Nymphenburg Palace and Olympic Park and most of the other important sites. We were all slightly insulted though at the lack of recognition the city gave to Hitler and the Nazi Party in Munich. The famous square where the Nazi’s had many parades and held the book burning is barely even mentioned. We also took a day trip out to the famous King Ludwig II castles – Neuschwanstein (the Disney castle) and Linderhof - it was nice to see the German countryside and check out the massive castles. We also enjoyed a nice run in the huge English Garden and we were jealous we don’t have something like that in Trondheim! We returned to Norway on Saturday with some slight sadness about leaving the warm and inexpensive south but I think we have recovered and have settled back into daily life. Though we are excited for our next trip to France and Spain!

Highlights of the trip included:

-Swiss and German cows with honest to god bells on their neck!

-Learning out first hand about electric fences in Switzerland (unmarked I might add)

-Feeding the numerous and sometime vicious swans in Switzerland

-Good food including our favorite vanilla creamed filled croissants that almost made us late to a train!

-Seeing real people in Germany wearing lederhosen and tall socks in the street

See pictures of our trip in the picture section!

Start of School

I know, I know I have been a big slacker and have not updated the blog!  Sorry about that but it has been pretty busy around here.  So for those of you keeping tabs I am now officially a middle school teacher!  Weird change from college kids and corporate America but it will keep me challenged to say the least.  I have a 70% appointment and I teach 4 subjects – gym, science, home economics and religion. Interesting mix to say the least but hopefully I can handle it.   There are only about 30 kids in the whole school so the classes are small and you get to know the kids pretty well.  The kids are at that fun age where they like to push the limits and be generally obnoxious so that will be one of the biggest challenges for me I think. 

Through teaching I have met some new people including an American couple from Minnesota.   Kathryn teaches with me and we get along well and her husband Matt is a chemist working on the PhD so he and Jason have a good bit in common.  It is nice to have more friends.  We also started our Norwegian lesson – we shall see how much we learn - we are learning some basics but actually speaking to Norwegians will be a challenge.  Ha Det!  (Bye in Norwegian)

Stockholm

Mom and I headed to Stockholm last Monday morning. We arrived around noon and took the high-speed train the 40km from the airport to the city – it is fun to ride at 200 km/hour! We had to take the subway to our hotel so we didn’t arrive for awhile. The hotel was really nice and only a few subway stops from the main city. We had some lunch and wandered the local mall. We headed into the old town (Gamla Stan) for dinner. It was raining so we didn’t wander too far but found a nice café for dinner. It was much cheaper then Norway so that was a welcome change (but still not cheap by US standards).

Stockholm is really a beautiful city. It is situated on 14 (or 17 I can’t remember) islands that are all connected with bridges and ferries. The architecture is more European then Norway and the city is really clean and the subway system is very nice. I really liked the city but it does seem overly populated – they utilize a high congestion toll to keep cars out of the city.

So back to our trip - It rained all the next day so we spent most of the day attempting to stay dry and I think we did a decent job. We took the subway to Osermalm and then took a ferry the island of Djurgarden to tour the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a warship from the 1600’s that sank after 30 minutes on the water in the harbor of Stockholm. The boat was built 1 meter to narrow and the rocks used to ballast it were round so they all rolled to one side so the boat sank. The great part is that they knew it was not stable and therefore not seaworthy but they were scared to tell the King who was demanding it in Spain so they let it sail – opps! So in 1950 they found it (I guess they “lost” it) and pulled it up. It was mostly intact so they spent 17 years preserving it and now it is on display. It was pretty impressive to say the least! Then we headed to the National Museum to see some fine art, the most famous being Rembrandts' Self- Portrait. Then we were off to the Nobel Museum which was not so great but it is located in a beautiful town square so we had dinner in a cute café in the square and headed home.

The next day it finally stopped raining so we were able to get some good photos and see a little more of the city. We saw the Official Residence of the King - but they don’t actually live there! It was very nice and we saw a tiny bit of the changing of guard. We did go to a few interesting royal museums like the treasury and armory which held some pretty neat stuff like royal coaches and the crown jewels which were more interesting then Norway’s but still no comparison to England. Then we had some lunch then toured the Storkyrkan (Stockholm Cathedral) where the current King and Queen were married. After that we decided to take a canal tour which was a nice leisurely tour and we saw some other interesting sites like the Stockholm City Hall were they hold the Nobel Awards. Our last stop was Riddarholmsyrkan (The Ridderholm Church), which was where the royal family (until recent times) was buried so there are lots of crypts etc and the architecture was really neat. So the day was wrapping up since everything closes around 5pm. We wandered and I found a great oil painting of the Old Town so I bought that for our collection and then went to dinner in a very cute open-air café in a park. We headed back to the hotel and picked up our bags for the taxi ride to the airport at the hotel – we had early flights the next day so it was easier to do that. Overall Stockholm was a very cool city – I am pleased I got to see it (and that it stopped raining long enough to enjoy it!) There is defiantly a lot to see so it is somewhere I couldn’t go back to and enjoy more of the sights!

Roros

My mom was here in Trondheim for nearly 2 weeks so we saw a good bit of the local sights including the Nidaros Cathedral, Archbishop’s Palace, and the Crown Jewels. Seeing the crown jewels was interesting since there are not much of them. Norway was a very poor country before they discovered oil so the jewels are pretty minimal and the kings had to buy the jewels themselves since the government couldn’t afford them. It was quite a contrast to the British crown jewels. We spent some time at the local St. Olav’s Festival with commemorates St. Olav’s death (he is a huge Norwegian saint).

We also took a two and a half hour train ride to a town called Roros. It is an old copper mining town that is an UNESCO World Heritage site so most of it is protected. The buildings are all really cute and many of them have sod roofs. There are also the remains of the smelting process. The church in the town is quite large and it has the mining company’s logo on the bell tower since they built it. I think it is the only church in the world with a corporate logoJ We had a nice dinner in town and then took the train home. We ran into my landlady and her husband at the train station since that is were he is originally from. We ended up taking our landlady to her house and she gave us some cloudberries to try. They are somewhat rare and don’t bear fruit every year – not my favorite berry…

We also headed out to an island very in the Trondheim Fjord. It is a 10 minute ferry ride and the island is mostly used for sunbathing and picnicking by the locals. The island called Munkholen – used to be an execution grounds in Viking times, a monastery, a prison and most recently a German camp in WWII.