Cod Liver Oil

We had a nice dinner last night was Jason's project leader and his wife - who are both Norwegian.  They have two little ones- a girl who is 2 and a half and a newborn boy who is one month old (and SO cute).  After dinner the little girl got ready for bed and put her PJ's on - then came down to the kitchen for her nightly spoonful of cod liver oil!  Not only did she take it willingly she went back for seconds.  We talked about it for awhile - then it was suggested I try it - so I did.  Pretty gross - taste like fish but not as bad as I expected.  Olav told us Norwegians take it everyday and it is really important in the winter since it has 100% of their Vitamin D intake.  I will continue to take my Vitamin D tablets and Flintstones vitamins - no cod liver oil for me - isn't it used as punishment in the States?  The best part is they have these commercials on TV where this guy runs for miles and then comes home and pulls the cod liver oil bottle of the fridge and takes a big swig.  I can say that is the last thing I can think of wanting after a run!  Olav also told us they have to make the kids put on the PJ's first since it the oil gets on anything it ruins it- the smell can't be washed out- YUCK!

Snow with a Capital S!

We returned to Trondheim to find it had snowed straight from New Years Eve for 3 days so we had 4 feet of snow. It was really pretty but we were running out of space for snow…not sure where you shovel it to once the sides of the drive are 6 feet tall! You can check out a few photos in the New Photo Section. Well luckily (I guess) it warmed up and the snow began to melt. This was great for our yard snow mass but horrible for the roads since there was a thick layer of ice below the snow. (see the picture) The roads were dangerous but they still didn’t keep up with plowing etc. It took Jason 50 minutes to come get me one day – it is usually a 2 minute drive and he had to get out of the car 3 times to push the guy in front of him!

Then it snowed another foot…then warmed up…then snowed but now it is freezing. It is -10 Celsius, which is roughly 6 Fahrenheit. I am not used to this but it is really amazing to experience – you can feel how cold it is as soon as you take a breath- the cold almost suffocates you. I read a store about the cold in the Midwest and some guy who got frostbite by shoveling snow without gloves for 45 minutes in -12 F, now I know what an idiot he really is!

Light at the End of Winter

Norwegian schools have 2 week long breaks in the spring semester.  One is winter break in mid February and the second is Easter break.  Jason also gets 4 days off work for Easter – you have to love state church holidays!  So for the Easter break we plan to head off to somewhere warm to relax and celebrate our 30^th birthdays (a little late) and our anniversary (a little early).  We knew we needed to book soon since everyone goes away at Easter.  So we starting investigating our options and came up with….one- the Canary Islands.  Although we are excited to go we are slightly annoyed that we don’t have any options.  There is nothing else warm enough that is less then 8 hours away and there is no were else which has direct flights from Trondheim!  It is strange to live somewhere with such limited travel optionsLBut we have booked our week on the island of Tenerife.  We hope there will be lots of sun and enough to keep Jason entertained for a week at the beach.  I think we both also hope there are not too many Norwegians there and they don’t serve Norwegian breakfast buffet since it is Norwegian holiday week!  But that may be asking too much.  The place we are staying looks really nice and we hope there won’t be too many kids- we opted for the hotel without the mushroom water sprayer.   Hopefully this will help us with the “light at the end of winter!"

Christmas Travels

For Christmas we went to the States for 2 glorious weeks. It couldn’t have come at a better time – we were more then annoyed with Norway and all of it’s charm (or lack there of). So we took a looong flight from Amsterdam to LAX and spent 7 days with my parents in LA. Funny enough my parents had snow at their house! Not the weather we ordered but it was still nice and warm compared to Norway. My aunt came down so we had a nice family week. I got some good shopping in (I ♥ TJ Maxx and Old Navy!) and ate some good food. After a lovely Christmas day we headed off bright and early the day after Christmas (Boxing Day for the British) and flew to San Angelo, Texas.

We meet Jason’s brother, Chris, and our niece, Sydney in the Dallas airport and were lucky to get on their flight to San Angelo. The flight was literally “Deer Hunter Express”. There were maybe 50 people on board and at least 35 of them had camo on and picked up gun boxes in baggage claim. The weather was fabulous in San Angelo- I got to enjoy direct sunlight every afternoon while I read outside and the day we left it was 75 degrees.

We enjoyed having Christmas Part 2 with Jason’s family and more good food and family. I had the pleasure of getting a massage, facial and pedicure while I was there as well. We did more shopping including a Sam’s Club run for staples like parmesan cheese! Sadly we flew back to Norway on Friday January 2 (we had to pay our first excess bag fee!). The flight was shorter and our seats were better which made us happy. We soon realized how sad coming back was when we arrived to 4 feet of new snow! Thankfully we have AMAZING friends (Matt and Kathryn) who shoveled our driveway so we didn’t have to do that when we returned! After we got all the luggage in we were off to pick up the dogs – which we had been looking forward to for days! The dogs did great in the kennel and even figured out how to use the dog door.

As you know I have not been home for 8 months so I did have some observations while in the US:

• There are lots of obese people- not fat but obese. You see fat people in Norway but obese people are rare. We went to dinner one night and I swear there was a family of 6 who all weighed at least 250lbs.
  
• The roads are huge! Intersections with 5 lanes in each direction plus 2 turn lanes are pretty intimidating.
  
• There is so much choice – not only of restaurants and stores but also at the grocery stores. Aisles and aisles of cereal and canned goods!
  
• People are nice and will go out of their way for you. People actually talk to you and smile and hold doors open! Things that are not common in Norway.
  
• Kids/teenagers are not as rude as Norwegians. For awhile I thought I had put rose colored glasses on American kids since I think Norwegian kids are rude but I was glad to see it wasn’t the rose colored glasses it was real!
  
• Real parking spaces are great
• The cars were huge – I know there really are huge but when you are used to subcompacts and station wagon an SUV (or a parking lot of SUVs) is monstrous.

Oslo

Jason was invited to his company Christmas party in Oslo so we decided to make a weekend of it since I have not been before. Our friends Matt and Kathryn watched our dogs and we headed down early on Friday morning. It was snowing quite hard but we did some sightseeing. We tried to see the City Hall which is were they hold the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony but it was closed- but the building might be the ugliest thing in town! We did attend the worst changing of the guard ever but the highlight of that was we got to see the King of Norway leave the Palace in his limo. Though the locals say it is not uncommon to see the Royal Family – I still felt lucky! Then we warmed up and rested up for the party. It was at the world’s only Mini Alcohol Bottle Museum. It was really neat and we had a nice time. Dinner was excellent- we had reindeer –which was really good. Though we had to laugh that reindeer was the Christmas meal – pretty sure children in the US would cry at eating Rudolf.

The Christmas Party

We defiantly decided that Oslo would be a great city to live in but only as long as it was the company dime – it is the most expensive city to live in the world! Saturday we went to the Viking Ship Museum (Visa Commercial), which was interesting, but I have to say the Norwegians are not the best curators in the world. Many of the displays are confusing and give you little information. Then we went to the FRAM museum, which is a ship that went to both the north and south pole and was designed to get into the ice packs – it was stuck in the north pole ice for three years! Then we went to the Oslo Cultural Museum, which was having a huge Julemarket (Christmas market) so we got to see traditional gifts and foods. After warming up we headed to dinner at TGI Fridays. Dinner was great – American food is so good sometimes- but our dinner, which consisted of a potato skin appetizer, quesadilla for me and chicken sandwich for Jason and 2 sodas, was 450NOK, which works out to roughly $64 USD! And we thought it was pretty funny that all Norwegians were wearing fancy clothes like suits and ties…it is Fridays…but I guess that doesn’t translate for them.

The Viking Ship Museum

Our very cool room at the Grand Hotel- where the Nobel Peace Prize winner stays!

Cross Country Skiing

We bought cross-country skis a few weeks back – we finally had enough snow to try them out Saturday after Thanksgiving. Our Norwegian friend Lena and her husband Carlos offered to show us. Jason was a natural since he is already a skier, I on the other hand have a lot to learn! My mom can tell a great story of me taking ski lessons at the age of 5 – I was great at making snowballs but didn’t learn a thing about skiing. Thankfully Lena was very patient and I made some good progress. I learned the general motion of track skiing and how to climb hills. I learned how to go down hills and stop but that still needs LOTS of work. Most importantly I learned how to fall down! It is really great to see everything from 2 year olds to 85 year olds trucking along on their skis! Overall it was a good time though I could barely move my arm the next day. Hopefully we can get another day in before we head home. It is a great workout! Though we have decided that Norwegians don’t ski for fitness- it is more like hiking – they just want to be outside and enjoy nature and family. Some would say it is like their church.

Thanksgiving

It was strange to not have Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving but we got by. We had 3 couples over on Friday night for Thanksgiving dinner.  We had all the traditional food, which was really nice. Not everything tasted quite the same but it was close enough for us.  Jason was thankful for passing his driving test on Thanksgiving day in the snow and rain!  So we are both now official holders of a foreign license –we are pretty excited considering they last for 75 years!

The best story from Thanksgiving dinner came from Lena – our Norwegian friend.  We were talking about Bob Barker (random) and his famous line about spaying and neutering animals.  Then we got on the subject of how most animals in Norway are not fixed etc- she ends up telling us that most people give their cats birth control.  Everyone at the table died laughing – we thought she was kidding but she wasn’t. Another hilarious Norwegian idea- birth control pills for your animals!